{"id":704,"date":"2005-06-01T07:49:07","date_gmt":"2005-06-01T14:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2005\/06\/for_honor_or_cashor_something\/"},"modified":"2005-06-01T07:49:07","modified_gmt":"2005-06-01T14:49:07","slug":"for_honor_or_cashor_something","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/for_honor_or_cashor_something.php","title":{"rendered":"For honor or cash…or something in between"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/a> to honor the donors, Jacob Stockinger had two reactions<\/a>. The first was gratitude to the donors for supporting a great museum. But the second wasn’t so warm and fuzzy:<\/p>\n


\nBut 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.)
\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(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<\/i> reaction was to request public comment and publish excerpts the following week<\/a>. The gist of the public comment was captured in this short response:<\/p>\n


\nI 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.
\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In his rebuttal to the barrage<\/a>, museum director Russell Panczenko walks through the history of the museum and its name…suggesting that Professor Elvehjem was certainly respected, but was not<\/i> 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:<\/p>\n


\nPrivate 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.
\n<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/i> by the state, then became an institution supported<\/i> by the state, and now seem to be an institution merely located<\/i> in the state.<\/p>\n

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?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-704","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=704"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/704\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=704"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=704"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=704"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}