Those who have admired and nodded meaningfully at Piet Mondrian's work "New York City I" in various museums over the years might be surprised to learn they were looking at it upside down. As Art News explains, it seems that somebody at New York City's Museum of Metropolitan Art put it on display incorrectly in 1945 and nobody noticed. As a result, the artwork has hung the same way ever since. It's been part of the collection at Germany's North Rhine-Westphalia museum since 1980, and a sleuthing curator there just discovered the gaffe, per the Guardian.
"Was it a mistake when someone removed the work from its box at MoMA?" says Susanne Meyer-Buser. "Was someone being sloppy when the work was in transit? It’s impossible to say." The 1941 work is made up of intersecting lines of colored adhesive tape. Meyer-Buser discovered that a photo of the Dutch abstract artist's studio shortly after his death shows the piece on an easel the way it should be, with the thicker intersecting lines at the top instead of the bottom. That syncs with a similar oil painting by Mondrian called "New York City." Also, given how they think Mondrian created the work, from top to bottom, it would explain why the tape doesn't currently reach what is currently the "top" of the canvas.
“The thickening of the grid should be at the top, like a dark sky,” says Meyer-Bruser. “Once I pointed it out to the other curators, we realized it was very obvious. I am 100% certain the picture is the wrong way around.” Easy fix, right? Not so much. Meyer-Bruser says the work has been hanging upside down for so long that it might be destroyed by "gravity" were they to correct the error after nearly eight decades. She adds, as only an art curator can: "Maybe there is no right or wrong orientation at all?” (More Piet Mondrian stories.)
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