Five Picassos Went Missing From The L.A. Times. What Happened To Them?

From the Los Angeles Times, July 12:

The downtown complex that has housed the Los Angeles Times for decades is filled with notable spaces: the pristine examination kitchen, the bustling newsroom together with the historic Globe Lobby with its 10-foot-high murals, busts of yesteryear publishers together with hulking linotype machine.

Then there’s the community room, a drab, workaday gathering topographic point for employees together with visitors that inspires few selfies. But for years, something remarkable resided inwards this otherwise unremarkable space, largely unseen.

It was art, 5 pieces framed equally one, oftentimes hidden behind a lowered projection screen.

The creative mortal was Pablo Picasso.

 Five Pablo Picasso lithographs from his "Imaginary Portraits" serial in 1 trial hung inwards a corporate dining room at the downtown complex that houses the Los Angeles Times.

The 5 lithographs were abstract depictions of famous literary figures, including Shakespeare, done inwards vibrant brushstrokes.

They were alongside the final vestiges of a 110-piece fine art collection assembled inwards the piece of cake 1960s together with early on ’70s yesteryear the newspaper’s bring upwardly company, Times Mirror Co.

physician Franklin Murphy, the old UCLA chancellor who became Times Mirror’s master copy executive inwards 1968, built the collection with Otis Chandler, who served equally Times publisher from 1960 to 1980 together with whose solid unit of measurement owned the paper together with its parent.

Works yesteryear 20th century artists Picasso, Rufino Tamayo, Helen Frankenthaler, Milton Avery, Richard Diebenkorn, Isamu Noguchi, Ellsworth Kelly, Saul Steinberg, Claes Oldenburg together with many others were set on display inwards 1973 with the opening of the Times Mirror Building, which adjoined the existing paper headquarters.

The artwork was a physical manifestation of the company’s immense ability together with momentum inwards those halcyon days, said writer Margaret Leslie Davis.

“It was this ethos that Los Angeles had arrived. [They] are non buying Old Masters — this isn’t for the socialites, this isn’t for the ladies page. This is modern together with bold, reflective of the novel Los Angeles,” said Davis, whose mass almost Murphy, “The Culture Broker,” details the creation of the fine art collection. “This was actually radical. It showed tremendous gustation — an informed sensibility of what was worth buying together with presenting inwards damage of the Times Mirror picture to the world.”

Corporate dining rooms were named after artists — Picasso, Tamayo together with Steinberg — whose industrial plant hung inwards them. The 5 Picasso lithographs were from a 29-piece develop of his artwork that had been on display.

“The Picasso Room was exclusive — y'all had to hold upwardly an officeholder inwards the corporation, a high-up editor to larn there,” said Roger Smith, who joined the paper inwards 1977, subsequently became national editor together with left inwards 2013. “I don’t intend I got Picasso privileges until the 1990s. It was, ‘Oh wow, I've form of arrived.’”.....MUCH MORE