Rummage Sale

Like busy housewives, most big museum directors are plagued with a recurrent question: what to do with the things-you-don't-want that are now stacked up in the attic. Last week Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum took the broom by the handle and put the surplus art up for auction. With a bang of his gavel. Auctioneer Anthony Bade started off the Met's five-day jumbo sale at Manhattan's Parke-Bernet Galleries, began unfolding a bargain hunter's Arabian Nights' dream come true. On the block were some 2,000 art objects ranging all the way from a complete New England pine-paneled room, to Gothic gargoyles, Kulah prayer rugs, elephant chains, chess sets and 161 paintings, mostly costume period pieces and Barbizon school works by nearly forgotten 19th century painters.

More than 400 bargain seekers and art dealers ran up the first day's take to $34,065, starting with $70 for a 14th century Syrian enameled glass perfume sprinkler and winding up 216 lots later with a bargain $25 for a 7-ft. long, 16th century carved Florentine bench. Top price for the day: $950 for a 14th century French polychrome stone statue, Virgin and Child. Other buys and bibelots: $200 for a 13th century stained glass lancet panel from Salisbury; $210 for a 10-ft. Beauvais tapestry; $150 for an 8-ft. tall, 16th century Burgundian cabinet; and $160 for an ironbound door from Ahmedabad, Bombay. With sales at week's end totaling $111,010 and the paintings still to come, the Met seemed assured of clearing at least $150,000--and had already cleared 50,000 cu. ft. of storage space.

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