A museum dedicated to works from art dealer Ileana Sonnabend’s legendary collection opened this past weekend in the Renaissance city of Mantua, Italy, thanks to a partnership with the Sonnabend Foundation. The nearly 100 artworks on display, valued at $270 million, include masterpieces by Pop artists, Arte Povera sculptors, and contemporary artists.
With her second husband Michael Sonnabend, Ileana Sonnabend (1914–2007) opened Sonnabend Gallery in 1962 in Paris. They closed it in 1968 and opened a new gallery in New York in 1971. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Sonnabend galleries were instrumental in introducing European avant-garde art to American audiences and American Pop Art to Europe.
Along the way, the couple built an unrivaled collection of postwar art, including pieces by Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, Pop paintings by Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, Minimalist works by Donald Judd, installations by Arte Povera artist Michaelangelo Pistoletto, and conceptual photography by Bernd and Hilla Becher and Bruce Nauman.
In 2008, following Ileana Sonnabend’s death, her adopted son Antonio Homen and her daughter Nina Sundell, heirs to the collection, sold off a large portion of it to cover estate taxes. At the time, the value of the estate’s assets was estimated to be as high as $1 billion, with more than half of that due in taxes.
Now a portion of the collection fills 11 galleries in the Palazzo della Ragione, a 13th-century building once used as a town hall. The project, Sonnabend Collection Mantova, was produced by the Municipality of Mantua, the Sonnabend Collection Foundation, and Marsilio Arte.
The Sonnabend Foundation Collection has loaned the pieces to the municipality for six years with the option to renew the loan for another six, explained Mayor Mattia Palazzi during a press conference. However, the mayor stressed his hope “for the museum in Mantua to become a permanent home” for the works.
