Lloyd Webber’s Presale Exhibition at London’s National Gallery

Museums generally decline to be showcases for privately owned artworks that are known to be headed to market. Auction houses, not museums, are the appropriate venue for presale exhibitions.
But one of the works featured in the National Gallery of London’s current exhibition, Rebels and Martyrs, is none other than Andrew Lloyd Webber‘s Picasso, “Angel Fernández de Soto,” 1903, the upcoming sale of which, according to the hit-musical composer in an interview with Bloomberg, will be “the biggest news in the art market in 30 years.” He said that the sale proceeds would be devoted to the education of young performers.
CultureGrrl readers already know what I think about the hype over this work.
On June 30, two days after the exhibition opened, the National Gallery issued this statement to explain the unseemly commercial nexus:
The National Gallery has a long and happy relationship with Lord Lloyd Webber. He has lent “Angel Fernández de Soto” by Picasso (1903) to the National Gallery for 3 months annually for more than 10 years, where it has been enjoyed by countless visitors.
We are delighted he has allowed the painting to be included in the current Sainsbury Wing exhibition—“Rebels and Martyrs: The Artist in the Nineteenth Century”—where it plays a significant role.
The National Gallery weighs up the advantages of continuing to include “Angel Fernández de Soto” in “Rebels and Martyrs” with the benefit to the public in seeing the work and the benefit to the argument and scholarship of the exhibition as a whole.
The National Gallery currently has no plans to remove the painting from the exhibition.

“Rebels and Martyrs” closes Aug. 28 and painting will be auctioned at Christie’s, New York, on Nov. 8. When I asked if the museum had any rules about such things, Tracy Jones, a spokesperson for the National Gallery, told me that future possible displays of art bound for market “would be looked at on a case by case basis.” So much for policy guidelines.