Yup, you may think the Brooklyn Museum is in such dire straights that it’s not buying art — but think again. Today it announced a purchase thanks to a deaccession.
The purchase first: it is a wonder, a mother-of-pearl-inlaid Mexican folding screen, shown at left, commissioned about 1700 by the viceroy of New Spain, that combines Asian, European, and American artistic traditions. The six-panel screen, painted in oil and tempera, is in laid with mother-of-pearl. Known as a biombo enconchado, these folding screens are rare, and at the time of purchase by the Brooklyn, was the only surviving one in private hands. Here’s a description from the press release, edited for brevity:
These panels constitute half of a twelve-panel screen, created after Asian models by artists working in the circle of the celebrated González family in Mexico City, where it was displayed in the …viceregal palace. The other half of the screen is in the collection of the Museo Nacional del Virreinato in Tepotzotlán, Mexico. The complete screen was commissioned by José Sarmiento de Valladares y Aines, the count of Moctezuma y Tula, during his reign as viceroy of New Spain from 1696 to 1701….Sarmiento declared his allegiance to the Habsburg dynasty in the New World by having the front of his monumental folding screen painted with a major Habsburg victory over the Ottoman Empire, a scene from the Great Turkish War (1683-87). He requested a hunting scene …for the back…which would have served as a backdrop for the women’s sitting room in the palace. Both sides of the screen are framed with a mother-of-pearl encrusted floral decorative border inspired by Japanese lacquerware created for the export market.
In 1701 …Sarmiento…was recalled to Spain…his prized biombo enconchado in tow. The screen was later divided into two in Europe, and one half found its way to the United States by 1965, when it was recorded in a private collection in San Francisco; it entered the Museo Nacional del Virreinato by 1970. The Brooklyn Museum’s half of the screen was in England…for generations, in the collection of Cockfield Hall, until the family sold…the screen…in 1996.
The screen, which won’t go on view until September 2013, was acquired with funds raised by the deaccession of Vasily Vereshchagin’s 1897 Crucifixion by the Romans (pictured at that link). Sold at auction last November, the painting fetched nearly $2.7 million, more than expected, and now the Brooklyn has used the funds for the Mexican screen. The museum did not disclose the screen’s price, but it was presumably less than that total.
Fair trade?
My feeling — at least we know how the deaccessioning money was spent, or think we do (money is fungible).
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Brooklyn Museum