The Met Opera’s Chagalls Are For Sale, They Just Can’t Be Moved

Why would anyone buy a work of art they can’t move? For centuries people have bought art because they want to possess it, live with it, control it. But the Metropolitan Opera is forcing the art world to rethink one of its most fundamental assumptions.

The New York institution is putting up for sale two massive paintings by the Russian-born French master Marc Chagall that have been a defining feature of the opera house lobby since it opened in 1966. Titled The Sources of Music and The Triumph of Music, they dominate the Met’s narrow lobby and, through massive ...