In 1961, the Museum of Modern Art displayed Matisse’s Le Bateau upside down for 47 days.
Roughly 116,000 visitors passed it. Matisse’s own son passed it.
Then Geneviève Habert—a stockbroker who had returned to look at it three times—noticed that the reflection was more intricate than the boat itself. A guard assured her the catalogue must be wrong.
She persisted.
The museum eventually turned it around.
Perhaps connoisseurship is not knowing more than everyone else.
Perhaps it is simply refusing to let authority do the seeing for you.
#TheModernRaconteur #LeBateau #Serendipity #ElegantNonsense