Picasso exhibition puts genius and organization in the frame

The splendid exhibition now at the UCCA Center for Contemporary Art in Beijing marks the third time that works by the seminal 20th-century Spanish artist Pablo Picasso have been shown in China.Yet with 103 works - 34 paintings, 14 sculptures and 55 drawings - Picasso: Birth of a Geniusi s "by far, the biggest and most thoughtfully curated exhibition" of them all, as UCCA Director Philip Tinari put it.

I had therefore assumed that the process of borrowing the art from the 5,000-strong collection of the state's Musee National Picasso-Paris must have been lengthy and convoluted. In fact, it took only about a year, partly because the Paris museum's Head of Collections, Emilia Phillipot, had already been contemplating "a show about how Picasso became Picasso", Tinari told me.

Nonetheless, it was a daunting undertaking to ship, safeguard and finagle through customs works valued at a total of 800 million euros ($900 million). The Musee Picasso-Paris, insurers and Picasso heirs set a lot of conditions. For example, no more than 100 million euros' worth of art could be transported on one plane from Paris - so that meant at least nine planes were involved, each accompanied by a courier.