Israel Museum selling 39 pieces that could net up to $17 m.

paintings being sold include Portrait de Gabrielle by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Pablo Picasso’s Paysage a Mougins, Chagall’s Le cirque circus pictures.

By MELANIE LIDMAN
CAMILLE PISSARO’s Le Louvre painting 311 (photo credit: Wikimedia )
CAMILLE PISSARO’s Le Louvre painting 311
(photo credit: Wikimedia )
The Israel Museum is selling 39 works of art from its permanent collection in order to raise money to purchase new installations, the museum announced on Sunday. The items could bring the museum as much as $17 million, if all of the artworks are auctioned at their top estimated price. The paintings being sold include Portrait de Gabrielle by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (estimated $1 million), Pablo Picasso’s Paysage a Mougins (estimated $800,000), one of Marc Chagall’s Le cirque circus pictures (estimated $2.5 million), a Paris landscape called Le Louvre, Matin, Printemp from Camille Pissarro (estimated $2.5 million) and René Magritte’s Le droit chemin still life of an apple and a stone (estimated $3.5 million), according to Sotheby’s, the auction house overseeing the sales. The “deaccession,” or selling process, is part of the museum’s three-year renewal project, which included an inventory of the museum’s 500,000 items.
“In an effort to refine and strengthen these holdings, the museum is implementing a carefully- focused de-accessioning plan,” said museum director James Snyder in a statement.
“This plan will eliminate redundancies and generate funds for the targeted acquisition of works that will enrich the collections and their presentation in the galleries, by amplifying focal points and filling gaps where they exist.”