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The western German town of Krefeld has scrapped plans to sell a painting by Monet, the most precious canvas in its local museum, to raise money to repair its leaking roof, a spokesman said on Friday.
The proposal of parting with the 20-million-euro (25.5-million-dollar) Monet, which outraged the German art world, was voted down by the town council on Thursday night, he said.
"The Monet sale in Krefeld is no longer on the table. This was decided after three months of deliberations in which we took into account the nationwide debate."
He said the debate has generated massive interest in the painting, which is one of a series by the French Impressionist master depicting the Houses of Parliament in London.
It was donated to Krefeld's Kaiser Wilhelm Museum in 1907 and never attracted much publicity until this summer.
The cash-strapped town council mooted selling the work after its culture department warned that the museum urgently needed repairs that would cost roughly six million euros.
The museum has not been renovated since the 1960s.
It has a leaking roof and the air conditioning is reportedly in such poor shape that some paintings had to be put into storage during the summer to protect them.
But when the plan became known in Berlin, a bankrupt city with a vast collection of art treasures, cultural representatives and curators said it was unthinkable.
The head of the Gemaeldegalerie, Bernd Lindemann, remarked: "If you push the idea to its logical conclusion you end up with the frightening notion of a completely renovated gallery with nothing to put in it."
The mayor of Krefeld this week warned the council that if it sold the Monet it could not spend all the money on the museum but would be obliged to plough most of the cash into other pressing projects.
The council is now considering selling its shares in the energy supplier RWE instead to raise the money to renovate the museum.
It has agreed to lend the Monet to the National Art Center in Tokyo for a three-month-long exhibition which begins in March.
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AFP 031100 GMT 11 06
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