WELLESLEY, Mass. (AP) – Wellesley College has lost a 1921 painting by French cubist Fernand Leger that was likely worth millions of dollars, officials said.
Woman and Child had been in the collection of the college’s Davis Museum and Cultural Center since 1954. It vanished last year after it was one of 32 works borrowed for an exhibit at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, The Boston Globe reported on Aug. 27.
“We’ve all wondered about it,” Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, associate professor of art at Wellesley, told the newspaper. “It’s a tremendous loss for the college, but, beyond that, we just don’t have a lot of information.”
Police were told, and the museum’s insurer, Travelers Insurance, has paid a claim. Last year, Leger’s paintings sold for an average of $2.8 million, and the newspaper quoted an unidentified Travelers official as saying the payout was “in that area.”
Travelers is offering a $100,000 reward for the painting, the Globe said.
The painting was a 1954 gift to Wellesley from Professor and Mrs. John McAndrew, given in honor of Alfred H. Barr Jr. Professor McAndrew was not only a faculty member but also director of Wellesley College’s museum.
Along with 31 other works from Wellesley’s collection, Woman and Child was lent to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art for exhibition and returned in April 2007.
In an Aug. 27, 2008 statement addressing The Wellesley College Community, the institution’s president, H. Kim Bottomly, explained that upon the artworks’ return from Oklahoma, they “were kept in their crates, in the museum’s fifth floor galleries, while a museum construction project was completed. Several of these works were included in the first phase of the reinstallation of the collections, which opened in the fall of 2007.”
Bottomly said the 21-inch-by-25-inch Leger painting was discovered to be missing in November of that year, when it was requested for digitization as part of the museum’s program to digitally document all of its holdings. “All other works have been accounted for,” Bottomly said.
It was unclear whether the painting was stolen or might have been mistakenly thrown out when packing crates were discarded. The painting had been placed in a crate with two other artworks, which are not missing.
A Wellesley museum official “asked me, ‘Do you have our Leger, by chance?'” Oklahoma City Museum of Art registrar Matthew C. Leininger told the Globe. “I said, ‘No, why are you asking?’ That’s when she said they couldn’t find it. I said, ‘Oh, boy.'”
Leininger said he checked his own museum’s crate room and vault again, but knew that the painting had been properly sent.
According to Bottomly’s statement, information on the Leger was placed on the Art Loss Register shortly after the work was discovered to be missing, and an investigation is ongoing. Bottomly said the college has employed an external audit firm with in-depth experience about museum operations to conduct a review of the museum’s existing internal controls and management, and to assess risk.
“The museum is making adjustments to its policies and procedures to enhance controls regarding museum operations on a defined timeline,” Bottomly said. “These measures are being overseen by the Audit Committee of the Board of Trustees and have been shared with the full Board of Trustees as appropriate. This issue remains a high priority for me.”
Bottomly said that new procedures and controls, and a new management system that ensures protection of the college’s art collection will be in place by October. She added in her statement that “the loss of this valuable and irreplaceable painting has saddened the entire community.”
Copyright 2008 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. Auction Central News’ staff contributed to this report.
AP-CS-08-27-08 1447EDT