Shadow over Miami

Increasingly, wealthy private art collectors are making their collections public. It is a handsome gesture that allows art lovers access to these treasures while maintaining the balance and often the ambiance of the original setting. But going public invites public scrutiny, sometimes with embarrassing results. For, while a private collector can airily point out his "Rembrandt" to a visitor with little risk of contradiction, once the work is placed on public display, a misattribution is no longer a private vanity but a public disservice.

So, at least, thought the Miami Beach Music and Fine Arts Board. In 1963, John Bass, a retired sugar-company executive, offered the city his private collection of 100 works of art, including paintings attributed to Rembrandt, Hals, Vermeer, Rubens, Botticelli, Goya and El Greco. The board urged the city council to call in outside experts to certify the paintings. But the council, loath to look a gift horse in the mouth, voted down the recommendation, spent $160,000 transforming the old public library into the Bass Museum.

When the board demanded an investigation, the council, under leadership of then Mayor Elliott Roosevelt, adopted a resolution calling for dissolution of the board. Last week the Art Dealers Association of America charged that the authenticity of at least eleven of the most important paintings in the Bass Museum "is open to serious question."

Among the most suspect: a Vermeer Self-Portrait that Bass tried to auction off at Manhattan's Parke-Bernet in 1962. Since only 30 unchallenged Vermeers are known to exist, a genuine Vermeer should have brought as much as $1,000,000. But there were so few bidders for Bass's Vermeer that he was forced to buy it back for $90,000.

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