BlogBack: Daniel Grant on the Eakins Controversy

Daniel Grant, author and contributing editor of American Artist Magazine, reacts to my diatribe against the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' sale of "The Cello Player" to help pay for "The Gross Clinic":

The Philadelphia Museum's and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' need to deaccession works from their collections to raise the $68 million to pay for "The Gross Clinic" needs to be seen in a larger context: What do museums really need and how may they achieve their goals, for the public benefit?

My concern about the Association of Art Museum Directors' deaccession policy is that it reflects a distaste for private ownership of art, as though individual collectors represent a menace to high culture. It is an onerous policy that discourages museums from ridding themselves of objects that may be duplicative or for which they have no use.

How many Renoirs must the Metropolitan Museum have in storage that will never be put on display in its galleries? If one private collector puts one of these lesser Renoirs on his or her living room wall, far more people would gain enjoyment from it.

Back in the 1980s, when the Japanese were heavily involved in the purchase of Impressionist paintings, there was great fear of our losing our cultural heritage to them. Today's newly rich buyers from China, Russia, India and the Middle East seem to be buying their own national artists more than ours. So now our fears have moved away from foreigners to our own wealthy collectors---Alice Walton among them.

The outcry over the New York Public Library's recent deaccessioning of its Asher Durand, the Guggenheim's deaccessioning of modern works back in the 1990s, and the current nervousness about the Pennsylvania Academy's Eakins suggest a very rigid idea of what cultural institutions should be doing.

February 1, 2007 9:40 PM | | Comments (0)

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Me Elsewhere

Highlights from my writings and broadcasts: 


MY BOOK
The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf)

IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
NY TIMES OP-EDS:
For Sale: Our Permanent Collection (museum deaccessions)
Fashion Victim (Chanel at the Met)
Destroying the Museum to Save It (Barnes Foundation)
Reassembling Sundered Antiquities (Parthenon marbles)

WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Los Angeles' New Broad Museum of Contemporary Art
Philadelphia's New Perelman Building
The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled by Wal-Mart Heiress

Tricks of the Auction Trade

The Seattle Art Museum: A Work in Progress

Upside Down and Backward, Yet Tame (Boston ICA)
Edith Wharton's Library Is Now an Open Book
Extreme Makeover: Smithsonian Edition (American Art and Portrait Gallery renovation)
This Museum's Expansion is Simply Effective (Minneapolis Institute)
Truth in Booty: Coming--and Staying--Clean (antiquities controversies)
A Betrayal of Trust (NY Public Library's art sales)
The Lost Museum (MoMA's art sales)
Endangered Species (single-collector jewel-box museums)
Money in Motion (the Guggenheim's finances)
The Fine Art of Genocide? (appraisals of Hitler's art)

LA TIMES OP-EDS:
Make Art Loans, Not War
Museums Can't Compete (public collecting endangered)

ART IN AMERICA:
Refreshing the Smithsonian (the renovated SAAM and NPG)
The Atrium That Ate the Morgan (Renzo Piano's addition)
Hot Pots and Potshots (controversies over museum antiquities)
Musings on Museums (book review of "Whose Muse?")

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO:
Criticism of AAM's Cultural Diplomacy Initiative

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO:
Guggenheim Director Steps Down
Philippe de Montebello's Retirement
Fall '07 Art Auctions
Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" Show
Commentary on the Art Market
Tour of Sculpture Gardens, with Slideshow
Audio Commentary on the Met's New Greek and Roman Galleries
Glenn Lowry's Unorthodox Compensation Package
Commentary on the Art Market

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC RADIO:
Museums' Purchase and Sale of Eakins' Works (about one-third of the way into the program)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' sale of Eakins' "The Cello Player"

BBC-TV:
Impressionist/Modern Auction at Sotheby's

more of me elsewhere

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on February 1, 2007 9:40 PM.

BlogBack: In Defense of Jed Perl was the previous entry in this blog.

Getty Files Its First "Independent Monitor" Report; Brand Gets His Own WSJ Op-Ed is the next entry in this blog.

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