Gelman collection in limbo

Somewhere a great collection of 20th-century Mexican art has been hidden.

The works, by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco and their contemporaries have been removed from a museum in Cuernavaca, about an hour south of here, until further notice as a legal battle unfolds over the collection's rightful ownership.

The paintings belonged to Jacques Gelman, a Russian-born producer of Mexican films who died in 1986, and his wife, Natasha, who jointly began amassing art after they were married in 1941. The couple were best known for creating a sweeping collection of 20th-century European art that Natasha Gelman left to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York upon her death in 1998.

There seems to be little doubt about the Gelmans' intentions, but bring in cousins with opportunistic lawyers eager to exploit any twist in Mexican law, and you have a shuttered museum and art on the run. From the International Herald Tribune.

Posted by David on December 2, 2008 10:21 PM