Henry Varnum Poor Met to Receive American Pottery Collection

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The town of Ramapo, New York, is trying to save artist Henry Varnum Poor’s house by turning it into a museum, but it will now have to fight Poor’s son to salvage the contents of the house.

When the town of Ramapo saved the artist’s former house from developers, paying $1.3 million for the 6.4-acre property, it assumed the art inside the house, which includes paintings, portraits, murals, and ceramics, would stay put, the New York Times reports. The plan was to turn the sandstone home into a museum and artists’ residence. But Poor’s son Peter, who has had control over the house and its contents since his father died in 1970 (his sister, who co-owned the estate, passed away in 2002), has begun to sell the artworks inside the house or donate them to museums. Peter claims that when he sold the residence, known as Crow House, he maintained ownership of its contents. But Ramapo cites a 2008 "interim agreement" stating that "the parties wish to provide for the contents to remain in the house,” according to the Times.

Henry Varnum Poor’s works are in the collections of several museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, and the Wichita Art Museum, which recently bought a 26-piece tea set that he made in 1940.

Four ceramic pieces by Poor will be sold on Saturday at the Rago Arts and Auction Center in Lambertville, N.J. They are expected to go for $1,000 to $4,500 each.