OCMA’s quiet sale of 18 paintings raises hackles
Laguna Art Museum
“Spring in the Canyon” by William Wendt is one of 18 sold by OCMA to a private collector.
The sale of the California Impressionist paintings to a private collector is seen as a snub to some in art circles.
The Orange County Museum of Art was tooling along, a sporty little contender in the contemporary art world, its reputation sparkling from the good reviews its exhibitions consistently have earned in Southern California and across the nation.
And then, suddenly, it got splashed with grime. At least that’s how some critics see it, although museum director Dennis Szakacs insists there was nothing blameworthy in OCMA’s sale of 18 California Impressionist paintings from the early 1900s. A private collector, whose name the museum won’t divulge, bought the pieces in March for $963,000, a price many experts think was about half what the museum should have gotten.
The transaction, approved unanimously by OCMA’s board, has put the Newport Beach museum in the cross hairs of one of the art world’s many controversies over “deaccessioning,” the term for when a museum sells art from its collection.