Albright-Knox Post Mortem: A Complete Defeat

On the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page today---coinciding with the first day of a series of auctions of 207 objects from the collection of the Albright-Knox Gallery---former museum administrator Tom Freudenheim publishes his second WSJ piece decrying the sales. (Here's his first piece, in which he described the importance to him, as a boy growing up in Buffalo, of the earlier, non-contemporary works in the collection that have now been deemed disposable.)

A quasi-journalist nowadays, Freudenheim managed to crash the no-press barrier at the recent museum members meeting where the sale was debated, because he is a longtime Albright-Knox member. In today's piece, he gives an inside view of that meeting and debunks the notion that "this failing Rust Belt community can raise money only by divesting itself of its cultural capital because there's no new wealth to tap. In fact, I've...been told that there are massive fortunes in the region, many of them made locally."

This underlines an important issue that is all too common to the sorry sagas of museum deaccessions: They are an easy expedient for trustees and administrators who aren't doing their job of adequately supporting their institutions with their own gifts and through energetic fundraising.

Freudenheim writes:

Some of those millionaires [in the Buffalo area] are even trustees of the museum. In the old days, writing big checks to support acquisitions and other museum programs was considered every board member's first responsibility. Today, it seems, they prefer to cash in the gifts of earlier generations.

Freudenheim also raises questions about today's museum officials' overruling the considered judgment of their predecessors: "A significant number of the [deaccessioned] masterpieces...were quite intentionally purchased by previous distinguished directors," he notes.

Having lost the battle, he nevertheless optimistically opines that "this storm in Buffalo might be just the beginning of a revolution in which the public begins to reclaim its rights to public institutions and demands an accountability that museum directors and trustees will ignore at their peril."

But the Buffalo example provides little evidence of this so-called peril: The trustees and director appear to have gotten away with their raid on the collection, with the support or acquiescence of most of the local community. The Battle of Buffalo, it seems to me, was nearly a complete defeat.

We need the Michael Govans of this world---respected museum directors who are not afraid to lead the charge against deaccessions---to begin to set things right. The only other hope is that State Attorneys General begin forcefully intervening on behalf of the public for whom museums hold their collections in trust.

So far, there are few signs that either of these things are going to happen any time soon.

March 20, 2007 12:17 AM | | 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 March 20, 2007 12:17 AM.

Phoenix Rises from the Antiquities Ashes was the previous entry in this blog.

Halbreich's Legacy and Her Next Act is the next entry in this blog.

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