The Multibillion-Dollar Maneuvers Behind the Met’s Raphael Show
Artnet News reports that the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibition “Raphael: Sublime Poetry” assembles what experts estimate to be art worth billions of dollars, a feat New York dealer Robert Simon (who helped bring “Salvator Mundi” to light before it sold as a Leonardo for $450 million) attributes to the Met’s “money and power.” The show is described as the largest U.S. survey of Raphael Sanzio da Urbino (1483–1520), featuring 33 paintings and 142 works on paper, with loans from about 60 public institutions across 11 countries. Major lenders include the Louvre, Uffizi, and Prado, and the National Gallery of Art’s “The Alba Madonna” (1509–11), in Washington since 1937 after Andrew Mellon’s acquisitions, including a 1931 purchase from the Soviets. Private loans include Raphael’s two most expensive auction works, lent anonymously by New York billionaire Leon Black, and the exhibition was curated by Met scholar Carmen Bambach.
From This Briefing
This story was covered in Museum Money Games and AI’s New Frontier