The Met is Treating Lee Krasner as Pollock’s Equal—Will Market Follow?
Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in On Balance, the ARTnews newsletter about the art market and beyond. Sign up here to receive it every Wednesday. The Metropolitan Museum of Art says its upcoming exhibition, “Krasner and Pollock: Past Continuous,” is a “story of equals.” Set to open in October, the survey brings together 120 works by more than 80 lenders, with an explicit focus on considering Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner “on their own terms” while also placing them in relation to one another. Related Articles That is the museum’s version of the story. But the art market’s version is harsher, simpler, and much more familiar: Pollock remains one of the great trophies of 20th-century art. Krasner, his wife, widow, and interlocutor, and one of the most formidable painters of the New York School, still has to fight for every inch of price recognition. The price gap between these two long dead artists is sizeable: Pollock’s auction record sits at $61.2 million, while Krasner’s is just under 20 percent of that figure, at $11.7 million, set at Sotheby’s in 2019 …
