At least one arts journalist in Madison, Wisconsin, is in a bunch over the name change of a local museum. After the Elvehjem Museum of Art — part of the University of Wisconsin-Madison — announced a $20 million gift for a new building and simultaneously changed its name to the Chazen Museum of Art to honor the donors, Jacob Stockinger had two reactions. The first was gratitude to the donors for supporting a great museum. But the second wasn’t so warm and fuzzy:
But my second reaction is that a big mistake, a really clumsy miscalculation, has been made. Private money alone should not determine who gets a public building named or, worse, renamed, after them….Whatever happened to the days of honoring public service, not just private wealth? (I half seriously joke with friends that if you have enough money to buy a public building, you’re not being taxed enough.)
(Conrad Elvehjem, for whom the museum building was originally named, was not a major donor, but a university faculty member and president who died during its development in the 1960s.) Stockinger’s third reaction was to request public comment and publish excerpts the following week. The gist of the public comment was captured in this short response:
I agree that private philanthropy should not outrank public service. And that the names of public buildings should not be put up for sale to the highest bidder.
In his rebuttal to the barrage, museum director Russell Panczenko walks through the history of the museum and its name…suggesting that Professor Elvehjem was certainly respected, but was not the driving force behind the museum, or an avid supporter of the arts (even according to his own family). And that the building, if not the museum, would still carry his name. Further, he says:
Private gifts to public institutions play a very important role in our culture. It is unfortunate that some people equate voluntary contributions with business transactions. Personal generosity is motivated by many factors, but in my experience, commerce, which is defined as the exchange of one thing for another of equal value, is not one of them. Renaming the museum, on the one hand, acknowledges an extraordinary act of generosity, but it also recognizes and points to the fact that when the new building is finished, the museum will be a very different place than it is today.
There has always been a tension between the purpose of public universities and their need for private money. As the squeeze continues from public funding sources, expect to see the private side of the coin play a larger role. As one administrator in our university likes to say, we began as an institution funded by the state, then became an institution supported by the state, and now seem to be an institution merely located in the state.
So what’s a public arts organization to do when a portion of its public longs for recognition of service over cash, but also seems unwilling to open the public purse?
Mr. Panczenko’s point about a private donor’s motivation for making such a major gift is one that deserves more attention. Private gifts to a capital campaign like this are made out of an extraordinary commitment to a museum’s mission and its community — it truly isn’t just a business transaction.
In my experience as a development officer, most Americans know very little about philanthropy and its motivations, and they are often very cynical about it. It seems to me that the citizens of Madison should be glad to know who helped them to enjoy a beautifully revitalized museum, not to mention proud that they’re living in a time of great commitment to the cultural life of their city.
The real question, in my mind, is whether the largess of the donor will have any effect over the CONTENT of the museum, or the access the public has to the facility. If neither of those are affected by the gift, and we’re simply talking about recognition of a large donors gift through naming, I then think that Mr. Stockinger’s complaints, and those of his readers, simply fall into the realm of misplaced nostalgia — and tired, uninformed economic theory. The renaming of the space, if content and access are not changed or restricted, to recognize a large gift is nothing more than a very large plaque for that donor, much the same as the smaller ones given to smaller donors of all stripes.
The arts have enough difficulty garnering support. We don’t need to alienate potential large donors through misplaced populism based on romantic ideas about the downtrodden proletariat.
I have worked with organizations for over 3 decades raising capital funds to build new arts facilities. Nearly every facility is named for a major donor. It happens because the institution searches and make a good case for their project. That probably was the case in Madison as well. Conrad Elvehjem was most likely an excellent person but it would have made more sense to find a person who had a close historic relationship to the Museum or, as happened, someone who would insure its very existence.
Due respect for Russell, there are only two factors that prompt philanthropy: altruism and vanity; the latter makes a great commodity for commerce.
I’m surprised at the comments. I remember the time I found out that the Elvehjem had changed its name. I thought immediately that there had been a sell-out; now that I’ve researched it, I’ve found out that that was indeed the case.
All over, we have major historical figures and significant individuals giving way to the highest bidder. Money talks, history balks.
It’s obvious which way the museum went: they gave a major donor more significance than the discoverer of niacin. After all, what’s a Nobel prize worth anyway? Nothing, in this case.
Not to mention that at least one (both?) of the Chazens are on the museum board – isn’t that some kind of conflict of interest?