Getty and Londons National Portrait Gallery to jointly buy a masterpiece

NEW YORK – In a highly unusual move, the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the National Portrait Gallery in London will jointly buy Joshua Reynolds’ Portrait Of Mai (Omai), considered one of the most important early portraits of a person of colour in British art history. In a deal announced on Friday, the painting will be sold for £50 million (S$82.3 million). The two museums will each pay half the cost. The work, which was painted around 1776 and depicts an 18th-century Polynesian man standing barefoot and wearing flowing white robes, “will travel periodically” between Britain and…