Who’d Buy a Painting They Can’t Possess?
The Chagall murals dominate the lobby of the Metropolitan Opera House, and the Lincoln Center plaza in front of it.
Photographer: Jonathan Tichler/Metropolitan OperaWhy would anyone buy a work of art they can’t move? For centuries people have bought art because they want to possess it, live with it, control it. But the Metropolitan Opera is forcing the art world to rethink one of its most fundamental assumptions.
The New York institution is putting up for sale two massive paintings by the Russian-born French master Marc Chagall that have been a defining feature of the opera house lobby since it opened in 1966. Titled The Sources of Music and The Triumph of Music, they dominate the Met’s narrow lobby and, through massive windows, much of Lincoln Center. The two murals are deeply linked to their location: They feature not only composers such as Mozart and Wagner but even former Met General Manager Rudolf Bing, flying over Manhattan with a mandolin. Were they to move anywhere else, they’d lose much of their idiosyncratic charm, the very thing that makes them so desirable.