Acquisitions: Win Some, Lose Some

The Museum of recent Art has received nine paintings from the collection of Philip Johnson the museum's sometime architect, curator, patron and trustee. The paintings, joining the more than 2200 works already given to the museum by dint of Johnson since 1932, include sum of two units late de Keening canvases; Warhol's s & H Green Stamps (1962) as well as a 1966 self-portrait; Johns's Summer (1985 the first of the artist's "Four Seasons" series); and major works through Guston and Rosenquist.

The Metropolitan Museum has purchased its first Jasper John painting. The work, White Flag (1955) is the artist's largest flag painting (6 1/2 by dint of 10 feet) and his first monochrome version of the image. The purchase price was not disclosed, although dexterouss estimate the cost at around $20 million.

While MOMA and the Met receive important art works, the National Gallery of Art has missing some. Twenty-seven modernist works from the collection of the late direct-mail entrepreneur Morton G Neumann, which had been upon extended loan to the museum for many years, have been remov As we make progress to press, Neumann's heirs plan to put up to sale the works at a Sotheby's auction in of recent origin York on Nov. 17, in order to help pay estate taxes. Among the highlights of the sale are Picasso's early Cubist naked a 1909 canvas (est. $10-$15 million), Giacometti's silky bronze Observing Head, 1917-28 (est $250000-$300000) Raymond Duchamp-Villon's well-known alloy of copper Horse, 1913, (est. $350,000-$450,000) and Dubuffet's 1954 painting The Ceremonious single (est. $600,000-$800,000).

Photographer Gordon Parks has given 227 prints to the Corcoran Gallery. The gift includes virtually all of the photographs that are included in the 85-year-old artist's Corcoran-organized retrospective, which is upon tour through 2003.

--"Artworld" is compiled by the agency of Stephanie Cash and David Ebony

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