Putting Pablo to the Vote

The pride of the Basel Museum of Art in Switzerland has long been two fine Picassos, Two Brothers (1905) and Seated Harlequin (1923). They had been on loan from the local Staechelin Foundation for 20 years. The museum more or less assumed that they were there to stay--together with a dozen impressionists and postimpressionists that, in the eyes of some collectors, are even more valuable. Unfortunately, last spring a plane belonging to a charter airline controlled by Peter Staechelin crashed, claiming 126 lives. As a result of lawsuits, the airline went bankrupt. To raise funds, Peter Staechelin persuaded the foundation, of which he was a principal officer, to put the two Picassos up for sale.

Consternation reigned at the Basel Museum. The foundation intimated that a wealthy American had offered $2,560,000 for the Picassos, but for the sake of sentiment, it would be willing to let the museum have them for a mere $1,950,000. The museum's annual acquisitions fund is only $65,000, but the Basel city government voted to contribute $1,372,000, provided that the remaining $578,000 could be raised from private sources. Dozens of townsfolk pitched in to raise the money, schoolchildren canvassed the streets, artists offered paintings and pottery for sale at a street fair, and the city's chemical industry, one of the biggest and richest in Europe, came to the rescue with a generous donation of $342,000.

The "Contributions Thermometer" outside the museum speedily rose until it shot $45,000 above the required mark, but a number of staid Swiss violently dissented. Some felt that the city's funds would be better used for hospitals and schools, while others simply disliked Staechelin (many a Easier had owned stock in the airline, and many others lost their jobs when it went bankrupt). The anti-Picasso faction drummed up enough signatures on a petition to force a referendum. After a spirited campaign, the city opted last week to buy the Picassos by a vote of 32,118 to 27,190. With the money assured, the city government cannily required the foundation, as part of the final transaction, to leave the impressionists and postimpressionists on loan for the next 15 years. And Picasso himself was so touched that he announced "a little sur prise" gift from his private collection: a Rose Period oil called La Famille, two big, brand-new Picassos done in his contemporary style, and a watercolor study for his first cubist work, Les Demoiselles a"Avignon, a painting which shocked some of his fellow artists but which changed the course of art history when he painted it in 1907.

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