New Britain Museum of American Art

Connecticut

A museum in New Britain bought a famous five-panel Thomas Hart Benton mural for five hundred dollars, less than the cost of the crane needed to move it.

culturehistoricalpeople

In the late nineteen forties, word reached New Britain that the Whitney Museum in New York might unload Thomas Hart Benton's mural series called The Arts of Life in America. Representational art had fallen out of fashion. Benton himself had always felt cheated over the price he got when he sold the murals to the Whitney. Sanford Low, the New Britain museum's first director, was a friend of Benton's. He arranged for his museum to take the five panels for five hundred dollars. A member of the Stanley family, which founded New Britain's Stanley Works, paid the bill. Hiring a crane and hauling the paintings home cost more than the paintings did. That kind of bargain was house policy. When the museum started collecting, a curator from the Metropolitan Museum told its officials that American art was the cost-effective choice. They rarely paid more than a thousand dollars for anything. The collection is now worth millions.

This is the first of 2 parts. The rest runs about 2 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
Low arranged to have the New Britain museum acquire the works for $500, paid for by Alix Stanley, a member of the family which founded Stanley Works. The purchase price was less than it cost to hire a crane for the move and transport the pictures.

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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