IN Museum Discovers It’s Had a Picasso for 50 Years

Most museums would love to have a Picasso in their collections.  A small Indiana museum has just found out that they’ve had one for nearly a half-century…they just never knew it.

FOX News Radio’s Chris Hoenig has the story:

It sat in storage at the Evansville Museum for 49 years, a glass piece given to the museum as a gift in 1963 that they thought was by a virtually-unknown French artist.

(Bower) “The documents indicated that the artist was a person named Gemmaux.”

Museum curator Mary Bower says what they didn’t realize in the 60’s was that “gemmaux” was just French for the type of glass work done.  The man who had done the work: Pablo Picasso.  The dream sort of ends there, however.

(Bower) “All the costs associated with displaying, preserving, insuring, securing it…that was a prohibitive financial burden on the museum.”

So the museum is selling, using New York auction house Guernsey’s – who first alerted them to the piece being a Picasso – to broker a private sale.

Chris Hoenig, FOX News Radio.