I hate to be repetitive, but again I have to hand it to Graham Beal, director of the Detroit Institute of Art, who just seems to be doing most things right during this horrible period. In today’s New York Times, he responded very appropriately to an article comparing its situation with that of struggling museums.
Since I missed the letter, until Charlotte Eyerman posted it on Facebook, I will quote a little of it here and link to it here:
To compare the thriving Detroit Institute of Arts with the shuttered Fresno Metropolitan Museum of Art and Science and the existentially challenged South Street Seaport Museum is, to say the least, a stretch.
Thanks to the passage last year of a regional property tax that emphatically affirmed this institution’s value to our region, the D.I.A.’s financial situation is more secure than it has been for 40 years….
…After two months of hectic coverage, I call upon journalists to resist the temptation to jump to disaster scenarios or to make the D.I.A.’s singular and highly complicated situation part of a broader story about the structural challenges faced by museums in general.
Or, as I said last week:
New York Times has an article about the closing of the Fresno Metropolitan Museum, which over-expanded and had to close in 2010 — offering it as a template for, or lessons relevant to, the situation at the Detroit Institute of Arts. I don’t think so. They are just not comparable.
Further, it’s a little dangerous to mix them all up, imho.