New York Public Library accused of selling city’s cultural legacy
Published October 30th, 2005
In December, the New York Public Library is moving ahead with the sale of two portraits of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, and 16 other paintings.
The sales are going ahead despite universal criticism of the NYPL when it sold Asher B Durand’s Kindred Spirits, a classic of the Hudson River School, to a Wal-Mart heiress in a sealed-bid auction last May, for a sum of $35m (£19.7m).
Opponents then charged that the east coast institution was jettisoning part of the city’s cultural legacy. The library countered that it was desperate to shore up its endowment fund.
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