Picasso Art Home Revamp

Anne Baldassari runs Paris's Picasso Museum. The 17th-century building houses more than 500 paintings and sculptures, not to mention thousands of drawings, engravings and archives, that the artist's heirs gave the French state in lieu of inheritance tax -- a fraction of the art works he clung to until his death in 1973. Now, the museum is revving up for a facelift and redesign that will see it shut down for two years from January 2009 with the art collection restored and re-framed. Custodian of a collection retained by the artist himself -- "these were HIS Picassos" -- she aims to reduce loans made annually to exhibitions with themes that might be as arbitrary, she quips, as "Picasso and flowerpots." From January, the collection will feature in an exhibition at Madrid's Reina Sofia Museum. Also next year, two shows will be staged at Tokyo's National Art Center Museum and at its Suntory Museum of Art. Each foreign stop will help the museum raise the 20 million euros ($27.3 million) in non-government funds needed for the renovation. While popular with visitors -- the 22-year-old Picasso Museum drew 500,000 last year -- it has a labyrinthine layout. Its steep ramps and stairs, its wiring and air conditioning no longer meet current standards. On her immediate slate: "Picasso Cubiste," a comprehensive art exhibition opening at the Picasso Museum in September with loans from New York's Guggenheim, Metropolitan Museum of Art and its Museum of Modern Art, among other institutions. (For full source and full article click the Headline). Irish Art