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Hidden in Plain Sight

Andrea Delbanco

If a treasure were hanging right before your eyes, would you recognize its value? For more than five decades, teachers and students at Community School, in North Attleboro, Massachusetts, did not realize that they had a valuable work of art on display in their auditorium. A few months ago, a visitor to the school took note of the 7-by-10-foot painting. He suggested that the school find out its value.

The painting, titled Afghans, was donated to the town around 1950, and has been hanging in the Community School ever since. A Russian artist named Alexandre Iacovleff created the painting. His other works have recently sold for as much as $2 million. Art experts believe that Afghans could be worth more than $1 million. Folks in North Attleboro were shocked by the exciting discovery. But now they face the complicated question of what to do with the valuable painting. Should they sell it or keep it in town?

School superintendent Rick Smith says that the painting should be sold. "I believe that the painting is just too valuable to be kept in town," Smith told TFK. "We have no place to safely display it." Smith says the money made from the sale could be used to start a college scholarship fund for local students who want to study art.

But Gregory Smith believes the work should stay in town. Smith is the grandson of Edith Whiting Thompson and William Charles Thompson, who donated the painting. He wants more thought given to its fate. For now, while the school and community decide what to do, Afghans is being held at an art-auction house in New York City for safekeeping.

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