Oh, Kelly Crow of WSJ, you got yourself a juicy art market scoop. We now know who owns Edvard Munch’s 1895 pastel version “The Scream” that fetched $119.9m at auction earlier this year — New York financier Leon Black:
Now that the buyer has been identified, the new parlor game surrounding the iconic artwork will be guessing where it will end up. Mr. Black’s long-term intentions for his Munch remain unclear. He sits on the boards of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, setting up a potential tug of war between two of the country’s most powerful art institutions. Neither owns a “Scream,” aside from lithograph-print versions of it.
I love this part:
A spokesman for Mr. Black, 60 years old, declined to comment.
