It would be pretty hard for the Guggenheim Museum* to be picky about donations nowadays. As Bloomberg (among others) recently revealed, the Gugg was deep in the red last year, yet that was an improvement:
In 2009, the Guggenheim Foundation’s deficit narrowed to $12.3 million in 2009 from $14.6 million in 2008, as expenses declined more than revenue. Contributions and grants fell 22 percent to $20.3 million. In the first half of 2009, the Fifth Avenue museum cut about 25 jobs, or 8 percent of its positions, after the foundation’s endowment shrank 18 percent in the nine months ended June 2009.
Nonetheless, I was particularly disappointed to read the other day that the Guggenheim is taking another step toward being a corporate billboard (e.g., Google, Deutsch Bank, BMW:
Now it has announced that Samsung, the South Korean manufacturer, has provided a naming gift for curator Alexandra Munroe. She will henceforth be known as the Samsung Senior Curator of Asian Art.
But not to me. That will be the last time, if I have control (which I don’t always, as some publications require a person’s full title), that I will use the Samsung reference.
It’s not that I am ungrateful. I well understand a donor’s desire for recognition. But some requests are seemlier than others. Samsung and the Guggenheim could have worked out something else — credit in printed materials, on a donor wall, at exhibitions curated by Munroe, and so on. Instead, Samsung and the Guggenheim seem to be proud of establishing this awful new precedent. Take a look at this sentence in the press release, which did not mention the size of Samsung’s gift:
The Samsung Senior Curator of Asian Art will be the first named position in the field of modern and contemporary Asian art at an international art museum in the West.
Bully. Samsung has a Foundation of Culture, bent on fostering appreciation for Korean art. It has sponsored Korean art galleries and exhibitions at many museums, including the Metropolitan. It put its name on Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, in Korea. That’s all fine. But naming a curator this way crosses a line for me. I hope other museums — and other companies — do not follow this course.
Photo Credit: David Heald. © 2006 SRGF, NY
*I consult to a foundation that supports Works & Process at the Guggenheim