For over 50 year , a 19 - by-20 - infantry leg curtain painted by Pablo Picasso hung in the Mies van der Rohe Seagram Building in Midtown Manhattan . The strange matter is , the building owners did n’t ownLe Tricorne(painted in 1919 ) , nor did they necessarily even require it there . After a long contravention and subsequent journeying , the curtain finally find a new home at the New York Historical Society , where itwas unfurledthis retiring Sunday .
The New York Landmarks Conservancy has ownedLe Tricornesince 2005 , but the work has occupy its spot at the Mies van der Rohe Seagram Building since 1959 . In recent year , owners RFR Holding wanted to take the painting down , reportedlyto restore geomorphologic damageon the wall where it was hanging — though there ’s been some dispute about the veracity of those claims .
The Seagram Building and the Four Seasons restaurant where the drape was installed gained landmark status in 1989 , but the Picasso was n’t cover under those auspices . In February 2014 , the owner planned to take the piece down in the middle of the night ; the Conservancy had to hie to stop it with a court - ordered arrest in the form of a restraining order . The battle found resolution last summer when the Conservancy concord to take it down and loan it for good to The New York Historical Society .
The curtain finally came down in September 2014 ; slay it took 12 painstaking hr . The team did n’t cognise forwards of prison term how the work was fasten to the wall , and ended up detect hundreds of staples attaching it to two pieces of wood that were bang to the wall with stainless blade screws . The concern in hit the largest Picasso in the United States was that the paint or sheet might snap or binge , though gratefully , nothing like that occurred .
It was rolled from bottom to top around a 23 - metrical unit long tube-shaped structure with a deal crank , then enfold in bubble wrap and taken to a preservation nub in Massachusetts where it was clean , preserve , and indemnify .
The Picasso was once the theater curtain for the Ballet Russes ’ production ofLe Tricorne , and the artist ’s married woman at the time — Olga Khokhlova — was a ballerina in the fellowship and is render in the piece .
Peg Breen , the President of The New York Landmarks Conservancy , toldThe New York Timesthat the piece was meant to be “ New York ’s Picasso . ”
It arrived through a 2nd story windowpane to the New York Historical Society this past weekend and was rolled up to the wall to be instal . The New York Timesdescribed the sound of the riggers tardily but surely tugging on the chain - connexion pulley as being like “ an ascending tumbler pigeon coaster . ” The initiation itself only took about 15 proceedings .
