Museum’s sale of Chinese artifacts draws ire from donors’ family
The Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma, Wash. Image by Joe Mabel. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
TACOMA, Wash. (AP) – The children of a couple who donated Chinese artifacts to the Tacoma Art Museum in the 1970s are upset now that the museum is selling off the robes and jewelry.
Al Young of Shoreline told KIRO-TV they believed the museum would keep the items in its permanent collection. They were told the whole collection was worth only $30,000. The 130 items were described as tourist keepsakes that were not museum-quality.
But when a third of the collection was auctioned in San Francisco those items netted $230,000.
The family has gone to court in an attempt to prevent the remainder of the collection from being auctioned.
The Tacoma Art Museum says the lawsuit has no merit.
The museum decided two years ago to focus on Northwest art.
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Information from: KIRO-TV, htthttp://www.kirotv.com/index.html
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AP-WF-03-04-13 1328GMT
ADDITIONAL IMAGE OF NOTE
The Tacoma Art Museum in Tacoma, Wash. Image by Joe Mabel. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
