Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Cultural Heritage

Deaccessioning Thomas Cole: Seward House’s Folly?

With the blockbuster movie “Lincoln” in cinemas around the country, his secretary of state William Seward has returned to the country’s collective consciousness. Aside from aiding Lincoln, he engineered the purchase of Alaska, you’ll remember from grade school.

ColeSeward’s residence in Auburn, N.Y. — a house museum — has been the home to Portage Falls on The Genesee by Thomas Cole – until last Thursday.  That’s when trustees of the Fred L. Emerson Foundation, which owns the painting — which was a gift to Seward — decided to remove it to a safe place so they could sell it. Why?

In a letter to museum members, which was printed last week in the Auburn Citizen, foundation president Anthony Franceschelli wrote that the board had only recently become aware of its value and therefore the need for greater security at the house. So they are selling the painting to increase security — or so they say. From the Citizen:

The letter explains that the home was left to the Emerson Foundation in the early 1950s by William H. Seward III, the former secretary of state’s grandson. In 2008, the foundation transferred the home, property and contents to the Seward House Museum to comply with new state regulations related to museums. But one item retained by the foundation was the Cole painting.

…Because of the Seward House painting’s potential worth and the need for greater security, the foundation and museum decided to remove it from the museum and agreed to sell it through a public auction or a private sale.

Officials said they will attempt to sell it to another museum…but it could also be sold to a private dealer depending upon the offers. There is no set timetable for when a sale may occur.

Proceeds from the sale of the painting will be split between the Emerson Foundation and Seward House Museum, according to Franceschelli and Seward House Museum President Dan Fisher.

Sound fishy? Does to me. The article found a comparable painting that sold for  more than $1 million.

According to its most recent 990, the Emerson Foundation has assets of about $75 million. As part-time president, Franceschelli receives about $25,000 a year — and there’s an executive director who receives nearly $200,000 a year. Other directors of this non-profit are also paid. Its grants, about $3.5 million a year, go to many local causes — and that’s good.

But it seems to me that the board had such an inkling of the value in 2008 — if they had transferred ownership to the museum, they could not deaccession it without raising eyebrows. So they thought they’d get around it this way.

As one of the Auburn Citizen commenters wrote:

When it comes to appreciating and preserving our local history, and in this case, the history of our country, we as a community have just taken a major step backwards. The Cole painting belongs at Seward House. Period.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Auburn Citizen

Do We Need To Reshuffle Native American Art Collections?

This decade may end up being the years of a great re-shuffling of art, with some museums — mostly in the U.S. — returning looted antiquities to the country in which they were found and, presumably, stolen, and others continuing to return Nazi-looted art that turned up in their collections. On the later score, The Guardian recently wrote about a promise by France to return seven paintings to the descendants of their owners, and today The Telegraph published an article about a new effort in France:

President Francois Hollande’s administration is setting up a group of experts and curators to pro-actively track down families, rather than simply waiting for them to come forward. The group, which will start work next month, will carry out its detective work with the help of a new computerised database compiled of digital scans of thousands of pages of relevant documentation currently gathering dust in archives.

hall-of-northwest-coast-indians_dynamic_lead_hero_imageIn a completely different area, I came up an article the other day with a new question: why is Native American art in the collections of natural history museums?

Written by Katherine Abu Hadal, a designer and researcher who is interested in Indian culture, the article was first published on her blog and then on Indian Country Today Media Network, it begins:

Natural history museums—they are all over the US and abroad too. They house amazing dinosaur fossils, exotic hissing cockroaches, and wondrous planetariums—right next to priceless human-designed art and artifacts created by Native peoples of the Americas.

Like me, you might wonder why these designed objects are juxtaposed with objects of nature such as redwood trees and precious metal exhibits. Yes, of course art is part of the natural world that we live in—but then, why are there no Picasso paintings or Degas sculptures on display in the American Museum of Natural History?

…When Native American, Pacific, and African art and artifact is lumped in with natural history exhibits, it sends a message that these groups are a part of the “natural” world. That the art they produce is somehow less cultured and developed than the western art canon. It also sends the message that they are historical, an element of the romantic past, when in reality these peoples are alive and well, with many traditions intact and new traditions happening all the time.

She raises some good points. It’s true, of course, that art museums collect Native American art — as they should. Natural history collections are a throwback in many ways, and they’ve had to adapt their displays as science has advanced. Shouldn’t they have to adjust to the now-prevailing view of Indian artifacts, that is – art?

No one likes to admit errors. And we can’t have museums reordering their collections with changing fashions all the time. But in this case, natural history museums could either sell or lend their Indian art collections to art museums.

That, at least, is what I think I think is the best answer to this problem.

Photo Credit: Hall of the Northwest Coast Indians, Courtesy of the American Museum of Natural History

The Al-Sabah Collection Is Going Places — Not Just Houston

Al-Sabah jewelryIt was news last fall when the  Museum of Fine Arts in Houston announced a five-year partnership with Sheikh Nasser Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah and his wife, Sheikha Hussah Sabah al-Salem al-Sabah, of Kuwait — through which the al-Sabahs would send parts of their collection for long-term viewing in Houston. They want their treasures seen around the world, as a means of expanding the view people have of Muslims to include its culture. Given so many political ties in Texas (the Sheikha visited George H.W. Bush last week), and with its oil companies, it was natural for the family to choose the MFAH (though having Mahrukh Tarapor, formerly with the Metropolitan Museum and now senior adviser for international initiatives to the MFAH, must have helped).

So the other night, the MHAF unveiled its entry in the Islamic race: a gallery filled with about 70 objects on loan from the al-Sabahs. It can’t compare in volume with the Met’s newish Islamic wing, which attracted more than 1 million visitors in not much more than a year, or with the Louvre’s new wing for Islamic art — topped by that golden “flying carpet” — but still. Apparently what the Kuwaitis sent is choice. The museum’s description:

Among the highlights showcased in this display are spectacular Mughal jewelry, illuminated manuscripts, exquisite ceramics, and intricately decorated ceiling panels. More than 60 examples from the 8th to 18th centuries are on view, made in the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia. The collection also includes carpets, glass and metalwork, paintings, architectural fragments, scientific instruments, and works on paper.

And there’s much more where that came from, and the Kuwaiti News Agency is out with an article that says that there will be more international sharing of the 30,000 works in the collection (which is on permanent loan to the state of Kuwait).

Al-Sabah-porcelainBut not with U.S. museums — even though its clear that the public has an appetite for art of the Muslim world.

Houston’s renewable deal is exclusive in the U.S., the KNA said. Rather, it added, “plans are underway to potentially launch exhibitions in Italy, Finland, South Korea and Singapore, where there are few Islamic art collections available to the public.” KNA did not name the institutions involved, but it provided a lot more background on Kuwaiti thinking.

Among American museums, the other good places to see respected collections of Islamic art are the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Freer-Sackler in Washington and the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art.

The current al-Sabah selection is expected to remain in Houston for about a year; then, there will be a switch-out.

Photo Credit: Two 17th century pieces from India, courtesy of the MHAF

A Short Message About Museums And Antiquities

Hugh Eakin has it exactly right in his long piece in today’s New York Times, headlined The Great Giveback. In it, he chronicles what has been happening at American museums regarding the antiquities in their collections. While some of those objects have clearly been obtained under suspicious circumstances — and have now been returned, as they should be – many do not have proven problems. Yet museums have fallen victim to what amounts to extortion some foreign governments — sometimes voluntarily.

Ka-NeferNeferMeanwhile, the looting that these cases were supposed to stop has gone on, possibly getting worse. And many of the stolen objects are being purchased by collectors in other countries that do not care about the looting.

I normally refrain from writing about these cases lest I be accused of conflict of interest because of my consulting work. However, I don’t believe that prohibits me from citing an excellent article. He is a reasonable voice on a topic that attracts extreme positions.

Or from making another point: far too many journalists have bought the line of the “country of origin” claimants and archaeologists without examining the circumstances, the dynamics and the politics at work. The same thing happened, on occasion, in Nazi looting cases. It was far easier to buy the arguments of, and be sympathetic to, the claimants than it was to report out “the best available version of the truth,” to quote that line about the purpose of journalism.

Not all of the claimants of antiquities or World War II loot deserved that bias toward the “underdog.” Some are taking advantage of a complicated situation.

Let me close with Eakin’s final paragraph, pitch-perfect:

Looting is a terrible scourge, and museums must be held to the highest ethical standards so they don’t unwittingly abet it. But they are supposed to be in the business of collecting and preserving art from every era, not giving it away. By failing to deal with the looting problem a decade ago, museums brought a crisis upon themselves. But in zealously responding to trophy hunting from abroad, museums are doing little to protect ancient heritage while making great art ever less available to their own patrons.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the St. Louis Art Museum via the NYT

 

Lessons For Many From Fort Ticonderoga

Historical homes and other places have been losing their appeal to visitors for years. So, the other day, when I saw something positive about Fort Ticonderoga, which was in pretty dire straits a few years ago, I stopped to look. 

FortTiconderogaA quick recap: In August, 2008, the Fort was set to celebrate its 100th anniversary (for visitors) when it lost the support of its biggest donor, Forrest Mars, of candy fame, owed money,  and set out to sell some of its collections to cover the debt. As the New York Times reported at the time:

The fort had a shortfall of $2.5 million for the [new] education center. The president of the board that governs the fort, which is owned by a nonprofit organization, said in an internal memo this summer that the site would be ”essentially broke” by the end of the year. The memo proposed a half-dozen solutions, including the sale of artwork from the group’s collection.

”The fort is facing a financial crisis, which puts its very existence in question,” the president, Peter S. Paine Jr., said in the memo, which first surfaced in local newspapers last month.

Instead, the fort received a lifeline, a new executive director, and with an $85,000 grant from the Perkin Fund (a Massachusetts family foundation) hired a consultant named PGAV Destinations in July, 2011 to develop a three-phase master plan. It’s that group that recently reported that its “phase one”

created a 38% rise in both memberships and program revenue; 18% growth in both admissions revenue and annual giving; an 8% increase in field trip revenue and a 6% increase in paid attendance in 2012 over 2011.

For a little context: The Fort drew aome 75,000 visitors in 2010 — it did not say how many were paid. Nor could I find in its annual report the baselines for membership, donors, etc. So, while those markers sound good, and are going in the right direction, it’s not clear how much progress has been made. General admission is $17.50 — very steep — although residents of Ticonderoga have free access.

That is one thing PGAV changed, according to the press release: As one of its “six essential ‘Quick Wins’ (“easily implementable steps that involved little-to-no capital expenditures”), the Fort altered pricing (but gave no details). It also added special events and tours  and discontinued “superfluous free programs.” Hill said: “The quick wins not only provided immediate sources of revenue, but they also provided rich opportunities to experiment with new strategies that will inform later steps in the comprehensive plan.”

What is the lesson here for other cultural or historical venues — including art museums? (After all, Fort Ti’s Education Center is home to  The Art of War: Ticonderoga as Experienced through the Eyes of America’s Great Artists — “Fifty works from the Fort’s extensive art collection are brought together for the first time in a single exhibition, to present a visual history of Fort Ticonderoga. Fort Ticonderoga helped give birth to the Hudson River school of American art with Thomas Cole’s pivotal 1826 work, Gelyna, or a View Near Ticonderoga, the museum’s most important 19th-century masterpiece to be featured in the exhibit.”)

Sadly, sometimes such practical steps are hard to make without outside impetus from a consultant — which is often wasteful. Organizations know what to do — they just can’t do it. (See: the Corcoran.)

And also, sometimes, it takes a crisis to galvanize action. That’s also a sad comment — but human nature.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Fort Ticonderoga