Today’s Wall Street Journal carries my review of Breaking Ground: The Whitney’s Founding Collection, which is on view now through Sept. 18 at the Whitney. As a window on one part of the art world between 1902 and 1935, roughly, it’s a fascinating display — and not because all the works, even “many” of the works are good.
Inadvertently, the show makes two points. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, the museum’s founder, bought “democratically,” supporting many artists, and it’s no wonder to me that in 1929 the Metropolitan Museum of Art turned downed her proposed donation and she instead founded her own museum. Indiscriminate buying is no way to stock a museum.
But neither is the market, which is what one museum director worried about to me recently, and whose thoughts I summarize at the start of my review:
Recently the director of a major American museum was gently venting about collecting contemporary art. Curators in that field, he said, are too attuned to the market, too eager to collect works by artists early in their careers, lest they be shut out later if prices rise beyond museums’ means. As a result, museums are acquiring many works that will not stand the test of time.
I end the review this way:
But if Whitney’s democratic purchasing policy didn’t work to the museum’s ultimate advantage, neither would following the market have. In 1930, for example, she purchased “Mrs. Gamley,” a forgettable portrait by Luks, for $8,000. The same year, she bought Hopper’s masterpiece “Early Sunday Morning” for just $2,000 and Demuth’s iconic “My Egypt” for $1,500. In the end, there is no substitute for a discriminating eye.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Whitney Museum