Which of these artists created a piece that was accidentally hung upside-down by the Museum of Modern Art?

‘Le Bateau’ (The Boat) is a 1953 paper-cut gouache of a sailboat on the water. Stunning in its simplicity, it consists of pieces of paper cut from sheets painted with gouache (an opaque watercolor) and was created shortly before Henri Matisse died.

On Oct 18, 1961, when New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA for short) opened its doors to a new exhibit, entitled “The Last Works of Matisse: Large Cut Gouaches”, MoMA was blissfully unaware that it had, in effect, capsized ‘The Boat’. For the next 47 days an estimated 116,000 visitors walked past the painting without realizing it was upside-down. That number did not count the curators and museum workers, though it did include Matisse’s son, Pierre, an art dealer.

Eagle-eyed Genevieve Habert, a Wall Street stockbroker and Matisse aficionado, noticed the mistake. After three trips, during which she compared the piece with its photo in the exhibition catalogue, she notified a museum security guard, who dismissed her concerns.

Habert contacted The New York Times. The day before the story ran, MoMA’s director of exhibitions flipped the painting and apologized for the mistake.

Upon later examination, deep existing screw holes indicated that this was not the first time ‘Le Bateau’ had been upside-down. There were also (fainter) holes that showed it had been hung correctly at some point in the past.

Ironically, the show closed December 4, 1961; ‘Le Bateau’ was displayed correctly only as the Matisse exhibit was being dismantled.