Date: Mon 01-Feb-1999

Publication: Ant

Author: LIZAM

Quick Words:

painting-Lincoln-Center-Johns

Full Text:

No Painting Sale, Says Lincoln Center

NEW YORK CITY (AP) -- The Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts has dropped

its highly criticized plan to sell the Jasper Johns painting "Numbers, 1964,"

which had drawn offers of up to $15 million.

Board members last month agreed to sell the painting to raise money to improve

the aging buildings in the center's complex. The board voted January 25 to

keep the painting because of the "intensity of the public reaction."

The center has never sold its artwork, and the painting -- a

nine-foot-by-seven-foot rendition of numbers in a grid -- was created

specifically for the New York State Theater, where it has hung for 35 years.

Johns said he was very pleased when he learned Lincoln Center planned to keep

his only public artwork. The New York Times said up to $15 million had been

offered for the painting.

Opponents of the sale feared it would lead to the sale of other Lincoln Center

art pieces, which include works by Marc Chagall, Elie Nadelman, Henry Moore

and David Smith.