A Picasso for UWT
Here’s a feel-good story: the University of Washington, Tacoma now has its own Picasso, thanks to a peace and reconciliation mission, a peace activist, and a little generosity all around.
The original Picasso line drawing, “La Visage de la Paix” (The Face of Peace), which has had quite an interesting international journey, was gifted to UWT by local peace activist the Reverend Bill “Father Bix” Bichsel. The past journeys of the sketch include, of course, being created by the famous Spanish artist, and apparently some time spent in Japan, before travelling back to Tacoma with Bichsel and the other members of his 2009 group who, according to a story in today’s TNT, travelled to Japan to “express our sorrow for the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” The Tacoma reconciliation group met and exchanged gifts with the Japanese Peace Committee. Apparently this drawing was one of the gifts from Japan. Quite a gesture.
According to the TNT story, the Tacoma group originally offered the art piece to the Tacoma Art Museum, but they passed, and UWT’s involvement with the original trip made it a natural next choice. If you want to see the Picasso sketch now, it’s on display at the UWT’s library.
Read more from The News Tribune.
(Photo provided by UWT)
Filed under: Arts
3 comments
P Published Author RR Anderson May 9, 2012
Tacoma Art Museum couldn’t see a good thing if you flash-burned its shadow into their dumb concrete triangle block head.
Bravo UW Tacoma!
F fredo May 10, 2012
It doesn’t look like it’s bolted to the wall. I predict that pretty soon it will be missing and someone’s going to observe “we should have paid attention to fredo when he mentioned the art wasn’t bolted to the wall.”
G Gina May 10, 2012
The art museum probably couldn’t accept the drawing since the peace group likely didn’t declare it when they brought it through customs into the US (declaring anything over $10,000.00, which this picture’s value surely would be)… so, this may be considered an illegally smuggled item since I’m sure the group would have sold it, not donated it, otherwise.