Talks blow up over world's largest museum dedicated to Picasso and Jacqueline

It was to have been the world’s largest museum dedicated to Pablo Picasso and Jacqueline Roque, his second wife, but the project skipped due to unsuccessful negotiations between the artist’s stepdaughter, Catherine Hutin-Blay, and the city of Aix-en-Provence, which was to have housed the museum venue in a former convent.

In 2018, Catherine, the daughter of Picasso’s second wife Jacqueline Roque, had announced that she wished to purchase the former Dominican Preachers’ Convent, located in Aix-en-Provence, to turn it into a museum intended to house the 2,000 pieces of her stepfather’s collection of works, inherited from her mother.

However, in December 2017, Hutin-Blay, which also owns Vauvenargues Castle, where Picasso and his second wife are buried, had entered negotiations to buy the convent for 11.5 million euros. However, the city wanted to increase the value of the property to 12.2 million euros in view of the success in tourism that the new museum would achieve.

Negotiations began to break down when the city tried to add as a clause that the former convent premises, recently used as a school, would have to house a museum for at least 15 years after the building was upgraded (the work would take five years, while in the original plan the museum was to open in 2021).

Maryse Joissains, mayor of Aix-en-Provence, wrote in a Facebook post that “the city had to have this guarantee. This is the last clause that Catherine Hutin refused to include in the sales contract, even though she had initially agreed to it. We could not take the risk that this place would change destination or be resold quickly.”

The new museum would be named after Jacqueline and Pablo Picasso and would focus on Roque’s influence on Picasso’s art. The two met in 1953 and married in 1961; their marriage lasted until the artist’s death in 1973. During those years, Picasso painted her in more than four hundred portraits.

“Should Catherine Hutin-Blay change her mind and thus accept the calusola,” concluded Maryse Joissains, “we will gladly relaunch this project.”

Pictured, Pablo Picasso and Jacqueline Roque at their home in Vallauris in 1961. Ph.Credit André Villers

Talks blow up over world's largest museum dedicated to Picasso and Jacqueline

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