BlogBack: Reader Defends My Take on Cleveland’s "Bricks-and-Mortar Morass"

Ted Gallagher, a self-described attorney "with a strong amateur art historic streak," responds to Michael Thomas's BlogBack that took issue with my post on the Cleveland Museum's proposed diversion of acquisitions funds to its capital campaign:

Michael Thomas bends logic beyond all reckoning. He grants the Cleveland Museum leave to invade dedicated acquisition funds for high-end building projects because "no art museum in America has adhered for as long to the highest cultural and ethical standards." So, is he saying that as long as a museum operates properly and ethically for a good long while, the rules of donor relations can be flouted?

Yes, it may very well be an emergency, as he says: "They need to finish their building. They need to get the money somewhere." But Thomas doesn't defend donors' rights to dedicate funds to a specific purpose. He doesn't propose, alternatively, that the museum seek to "borrow" from the donors, with a promise to repay the loan with interest. The only thing getting "real" here is the sure loss of future donations, where trust is the coin of the realm.
COMING TOMORROW: An art museum director, in another BlogBack, cleaves to my Cleveland position.
September 2, 2009 9:35 PM | |

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CULTUREGRRL (Lee Rosenbaum) is the artworld's award-winning "best blog."

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LEE ROSENBAUM I'm a veteran cultural journalist with many pieces in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and major art magazines. I have been a cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC and WQXR) and have provided arts commentary on NPR and public radio stations in Philadelphia and Los Angeles. I am a HuffPost Arts writer. I've been profiled on the PBS NewsHour with Jim Lehrer's Art Beat and in the Chicago Reader. I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at at Investigative Reporters and Editors 2011 Annual Meeting, Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and a conference of the Museum Association of New York, on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University, on arts blogging at American University and on Smithsonian exhibition controversies at Rutgers University.

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The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf)

MAINSTREAM MEDIA

NY TIMES ARTS & LEISURE
Two Painters: So Alike, So Different (Caravaggio/Hals)

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:
American Indian Installations
Morgan Library Renovation
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts' Expansion (designed by Rick Mather)
Crisis in Art Bibliography (Getty and BHA)
Profile of the Met's Tom Campbell
Elevating American Indian Art (Nelson-Atkins)
Landesman Produces Controversy
New Modern Wing at Art Institute of Chicago
Michael Conforti Profile
Making Sales Look Stronger
Lee Krasner's "Little Image "Paintings
Ando-Designed Stone Hill Center for Conservation and Clark Exhibitions
Los Angeles' New Broad Museum of Contemporary Art
Philadelphia's New Perelman Building
The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled by Wal-Mart Heiress

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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)
National Museum of the American Indian

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

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PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Her Art Came First: Anne d'Harnoncourt's Labor of Love

ART IN AMERICA:
[Note: The AiA links, alas, are no longer active.]
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?")

NPR:
Crystal Bridges controversies
Crystal Bridges Museum's $800 Million (from American Public Media)
Smithsonian's "Hide/Seek" Controversy
Sotheby's Polaroid auction (at 1:20)
AAM's Cultural Diplomacy Initiative

WQXR, NEW YORK CLASSICAL RADIO
Rising Ticket Prices
New Museum's Dakis Joannou exhibition
Modernist Abstraction Exhibitions in NYC

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO:
NY State's New Deaccessioning Rules
American Folk Art Museum sells building to MoMA
Art Deaccessioning: Right or Wrong?
Musical Diplomacy on "Soundcheck Smackdown"
Vermeer's "Milkmaid" at the Met
Art in the Obama White House
Museum of Arts and Design Opens
New Met Director, Brian Lehrer Show
Tom Campbell Named Met Director
Whitney Museum's Expansion
Fake Coptic Art at Brooklyn Museum
Spring '08 Art Auctions
Should Veterans or Newcomers Lead Arts Organizations?
Murakami at Brooklyn Museum
Whitney Biennial
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 Fall '07 Art Market

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC RADIO:
Philadelphia Museum's "Gross Clinic" Deaccessions
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"

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA PUBLIC RADIO
Getty Museum's antiquities scandals (at 22:38)
Getty Trust's New President, James Cuno (at 12:10)
Getty and LA MOCA Directorship Controversies (at 44:30)
Reminiscences about James Wood (at 19:28)

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

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on September 2, 2009 9:35 PM.

"United We Serve": Should the Arts be Politically Exploited? was the previous entry in this blog.

BlogBack: Michael Botwinick on Cleveland’s Donor Boner is the next entry in this blog.

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