Barbra Streisand once sold a powerful Gustav Klimt painting to fund her new passion for Frank Lloyd Wright inspired design. At the time it felt practical. Decades later, after a record Klimt sale, she is publicly mourning the loss of the artwork she truly loved.
That is exactly what happened to Barbra Streisand.
In 1969, at the start of her superstardom, she bought a haunting Gustav Klimt painting called “Miss Ria Munk on Her Deathbed” for $17,000. It was a serious piece by a serious artist: a young woman from a wealthy Viennese Jewish family, painted after her tragic death. Dark, emotional, complicated. The kind of image you do not just “decorate” with. You live with it.
Three decades later, Streisand felt like a different person. Her eye shifted away from Klimt’s golden, swirling worlds and toward the clean lines of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Arts & Crafts Movement. To fund that new passion, she sold the Klimt. At the time, it felt rational. Grown-up. Even smart.
Now, in her 80s, she calls that decision one of her great regrets.
After seeing another Klimt portrait sell for more than $236 million, she posted an old photo of herself with the painting and wrote, “Oh how I regret selling her. You should never sell art you truly love.”
Barbra Streisand’s $100 Million Art Regret: The Klimt She Let Go!
As Streisand looks back with regret at letting the Klimt go, it helps to remember that selling was never just about money for her. She has always treated her homes like living artworks, reshaping them whenever a new aesthetic took hold. A 1994 Christie’s auction of her Art Deco and Art Nouveau pieces captures this pattern in motion: entire rooms, styles, even eras, cleared out to fund the next obsession.
USA – Barbra Striesand Auction
It is about how time can suddenly show you the true weight of what you let go. That shock became very real when another Klimt portrait, of Elisabeth Lederer, sold at Sotheby’s in New York for $236.4 million in November 2025 after a fierce bidding war. The buyer was not just paying for gold paint. They were paying for rarity, survival, and a fragile family history that also touches Ria Munk.