Picasso’s “Le Tricorne” mural (left) is headed from its present Four Seasons location in the Seagram Building (top right) to the New-York Historical Society on the Upper West Side (bottom right) (images courtesy, clockwise from left: juanomatic/Flickr, alexschwab/Flickr, dtpancio/Flickr)
The Picasso tapestry slated for removal from the Four Seasons restaurant in the Seagram Building has found a new home at the New-York Historical Society, the New York Times reported. The piece, titled “Le Tricorne” (1919), had been at the center of a legal dispute regarding the potential hazards of its deterioration if removed. A February injunction temporarily barred Seagram Building owner RFR Holding from taking down the work as part of planned structural work. In an article appearing that month, Vanity Fair architecture critic Paul Goldberger decried this fate. “If the curtain is removed, it would be an act of destruction to Philip Johnson’s conception of the Four Seasons,” Goldberger wrote.
RFR Holding, founded and helmed by real estate magnate Aby Rosen, has now agreed to relocate the piece to the Upper West Side museum, where it will anchor the second-floor gallery. This comes after lengthy negotiations with the New York Landmarks Conservancy, owner of the tapestry, which was installed at the Four Seasons in 1959; Rosen pledged to cover the costs of conservation and relocation to the new space.
But the risk of damage to the tapestry presumably remains. Speaking to the Times in February, Landmarks Conservancy President Peg Breen said “that art conservation experts hired by the conservancy warned her that moving the brittle tapestry, which stretches 20 feet across, could destroy it.”
And just like that it will never make it back to the four seasons. Oh well at least it is in good capable hands.