John Lennon’s Piano, As soon as Borrowed By Andy Warhol, Heads to Sale – ARTnews.com

A Baldwin grand piano that handed by means of the fingers of two of essentially the most influential artists of the twentieth century, John Lennon and Andy Warhol, will go on public sale in September at Alex Cooper Auctioneers (ACA) in Towson, Maryland, in line with the Baltimore Banner.

John Lennon purchased the Live performance Grand Mannequin D piano in 1978 from the Baldwin Manufacturing unit Retailer in New York Metropolis, in line with ACA. The next yr he gave the instrument to his good friend, artwork vendor and curator Sam Inexperienced, who organized Andy Warhol’s first American museum exhibition on the Institute of Up to date Artwork on the College of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. A plaque that reads “For Sam Love from Yoko and John 1979” was added simply above the Baldwin emblem on the entrance of the piano.

Inexperienced was near each Lennon and his spouse, Yoko Ono. The couple typically hung out at Inexperienced’s house on Hearth Island, and Lennon performed the piano and wrote songs there, a few of which wound up on his 1980 album with Ono, Double Fantasy.

Just a few years later, in 1983, Inexperienced lent the piano to Warhol, who displayed it prominently on the Interview journal places of work in New York Metropolis. 

In 1988, after its show within the Interview places of work, Inexperienced loaned the piano to the New York Academy of Artwork, which was cofounded by Warhol, to be used throughout “particular occasions.” For Inexperienced, that turned out to be an unlucky choice. When, in 2000, he found the piano was being “misused” and performed by college students day by day, he requested that it’s returned.

However the college was not in possession of the piano. They’d offered it, together with a group of different “deaccessioned pianos” that had been within the college’s basement, to a piano tuner named Harold Katz, for a meager $3,000. 

Inexperienced sued the college—which argued that Inexperienced had donated the piano, not lent it—for $1.6 million. 

The piano was finally discovered on the Mercersburg Academy, a college-prep boarding college in Pennsylvania, purchased from Katz by an Alabama man named Buddy Bain, for round $100,000, in line with the New York Publish. Inexperienced’s lawsuit was dismissed. 

Whereas the piano visibly exhibits the wear and tear and tear of its travels, dings within the enamel, a circle melted within the end, presumably from an ash tray or oil lamp, the public sale home says the instrument is playable and will probably be tuned earlier than it’s offered. Bidding opens September 30 with an estimated worth of $2 million–$3 million.