Musée Picasso — Hôtel Salé

Musée Picasso — Hôtel Salé

Paris, France

The tall slate roofs and carved gate ahead belong to the Hotel Sale. The name means the Salted Mansion, and it was an insult. In the sixteen fifties, a contractor named Pierre Aubert won the job of collecting the salt tax.

The tall slate roofs and carved gate ahead belong to the Hotel Sale. The name means the Salted Mansion, and it was an insult. In the sixteen fifties, a contractor named Pierre Aubert won the job of collecting the salt tax. France taxed salt so brutally that smuggling it was a full-time career. Collectors were private businessmen who kept a cut, and Aubert kept considerably more than his cut. He skimmed a fortune and poured it into the biggest, showiest mansion in the neighborhood. His neighbors watched it go up and named it after exactly where the money came from. Salted. The nickname stuck so hard it's on the museum tickets today.

Aubert got about four years to enjoy it. His patron fell from power, the auditors arrived, and by sixteen sixty-three he was ruined and the mansion was seized. Hold that thought — a tax man builds the house, the tax man loses the house. The house isn't finished with taxes.

Jump forward three hundred years. In April nineteen seventy-three, Pablo Picasso die

d at ninety-one, and he left no will. What he did leave was roughly forty-five thousand works of art. Paintings, sculptures, sketchbooks, ceramics, filling houses and chateaux across the south of France. Because along with being the most famous artist alive, Picasso was a pack rat of the highest order. He sold what he felt like selling and kept the rest. He kept the paintings other artists gave hi

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Quick Facts

The Hôtel Salé was built in the 1650s for Pierre Aubert, a salt-tax collector who skimmed a fortune; Parisians nicknamed it "Salted" after where the money came from, and the nickname is on the museum tickets today
Aubert was ruined within a few years — his patron fell from power and the mansion was seized by 1663
Picasso died in April 1973 at 91 with no will, leaving roughly 45,000 works of art filling houses and châteaux across the south of France
Picasso really said "I am the greatest collector of Picassos in the world"
A French law passed five years before his death lets heirs pay inheritance tax in art; the family paid with more than 200 paintings plus thousands of sculptures, drawings, and prints — the largest tax payment in the history of art
The state restored the Hôtel Salé and opened the Musée Picasso there in 1985
Diego Giacometti, brother of sculptor Alberto, designed the museum's benches, railings, and chandeliers — his last completed work; he died just before the doors opened
When Picasso's widow Jacqueline died, her daughter settled that inheritance bill the same way, and the collection grew again

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