Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

Museum Funding-Fundraising

Judge Rules In Favor Of the DIA

Steven-Rhodes1Thank goodness: This afternoon, Judge Steven Rhodes that the Detroit creditors who pressed to remove art from the walls at the Detroit Institute of Arts to better inspect them during appraisals can’t do it. According to the Free Press,

Rhodes also denied the creditors’ motion seeking access to up to a million additional pages of historic documents about the art housed at the city-owned museum. However, Rhodes said he would allow creditors to work with DIA officials to allow access to artwork in storage at the museum.

The rulings are a setback for major bond insurers Syncora and Financial Guaranty Insurance Co. — who could collectively lose more than $1 billion in Detroit’s bankruptcy. Creditors’ attorneys are pushing for a sale of art and had asked Rhodes to compel Detroit emergency manager Kevyn Orr to consider outside bids for DIA art worth up to $2 billion from four clients aligned with creditors.

Rhodes agreed that removing the paintings would put them at risk of damage.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Free Press 

 

Two Steps Forward, A Half-One Back, In Detroit

Where the Detroit Institute of Arts was ever going to get the $100 million it has to raise to keep up its end of the deal for freedom with Detroit’s emergency manager Kevyn Orr has been a mystery. Now it may be getting a solution. Detroit newspapers are reporting that the Big Three automakers may be about to pledge $50 million to the cause, which would make the DIA independent of the city, prevent its art from being sold, and help reduce cuts to the city’s pensioners.

DIAAccording to the Free Press,

The DIA approached the auto companies about six weeks ago to ask them to contribute more than $50 million as a group, one person familiar with the talks said. The total donation for the three may end up closer to half that amount, said the source. But once the automakers are on board, the museum might make similar requests to automotive suppliers. The DIA also asked for help from several non-auto foundations, including the Los Angeles-based Getty Foundation. Today it said it is mulling the request.

…A deal may be as close as a week away.

There are many more details in the article, and an excellent statement from General Motors and the GM Foundation: “The DIA must be central to any plans for a revitalized Detroit. Both GM and the GM Foundation are giving very careful consideration to how we can help preserve this treasure at such a critical time.”

The DIA has to raise another $200 million over the next nine years for its endowment, replacing the $23 million in receives each year in the temporary millage enacted in the three Detroit area counties. And it still must raise about $10 million a year for its operating budget. Let’s hope the Big Three come up with the money.

As for the step backward, the DIA is having to spend time and effort fending off city debt insurers Syncora and FGIC, which requested a ton of information from the DIA so its collection could be valued independently. DIA attorneys have now filed an official objection to their proposal, a “motion allowing their representatives to physically remove as many as 12,000 works from the walls and archives, snapping digital pictures of the front and back of each piece.” The Free Press continues:

The city-owned DIA tonight said the proposal “invites disaster” and “poses serious risks to the collection” because of the delicate condition of the works. 

The museum also protested the creditors’ request for access to what the DIA described as a trove of “over a million pages of hard-copy documents, many of which are originals that can be more than a half century old.”

The museum said it had already provided nearly 90,000 pages of records on its collection, as well as physical access to some documents.

“These files cannot be inspected and hastily copied without risking damage or destruction,” the museum said in the filing. “Many that are not used in day-to-day Museum operations are stored in the Museum archives and are not well organized or easily accessible.”

The issue is in court on Thursday. I hope the judge rules that this is a nuisance issue, with no basis for going forward.

 

Keep The Pre-Raphaelite, Sell Contemporary Art, Expert Says

While inveighing against the Delaware Art Museum’s planned deacccession of William Holman Hunt’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil at Christie’s in London next month,  Pre-Raphaelite expert Mark Samuels Lasner (below) brought up a very touchy subject: why not sell undistingished contemporary artworks instead?

mark-samuels-lasnerLasner, who according to USA Today is “a senior research fellow at the University of Delaware Library and an expert on Victorian literature and art,” called the planned sale “sacrilege.”

“Isabella and the Pot of Basil is “an extraordinarily significant painting,” said Lasner, who has amassed a 9,000-piece collection of Victorian books, manuscripts and letters that has been exhibited worldwide.

In 2009, Lasner helped organize the “Useful and Beautiful” international conference and related exhibitions, which highlighted Delaware’s Pre-Raphaelite treasures. For the last 10 years, he has helped fund an annual Pre-Raphaelite student fellowship under a joint program between UD Library and the museum.

But Lasner said he is weighing no longer supporting the museum – either through fellowship funding or a financial bequest – in light of the Hunt sale….

The Pre-Raphaelite collection is the museum’s “core, the reason for the institution’s very existence,” along with American illustration, Lasner wrote.

The Lasner proposed an alternative — selling “post-1950 contemporary art holdings, ‘most of which are undistinguished.’ ”

Most museum directors I’ve discussed this with won’t go there. Some would like to sell contemporary art works they feel will not stand the test of time. But there are two problems: they don’t want to offend living artists — not only the ones whose works would be sold, but also others who might take offense at the practice. Second, they’re afraid that the works aren’t worth much — and that their sale would be a signal of an artist’s insignificance, depressing prices even more.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the American Printing History Association, Chesapeake Chapter

Insiders Duel on Delaware Deaccessioning Dilemma

In two opinion pieces, the grandson of the Delaware Art Museum’s founder — and current board chair — faces off against a former member of the museum’s collections committee regarding the museum’s decision to sell art works to pay its bills. Both add facts or make some interesting points, but it’s the latter, I think, who emerges ahead.

Homer-MilkingTimeBoth pieces were published in the Wilmington News-Journal. Dick Poole — the non-trustee collections committee member until 2013 — wrote first. His piece, dated Apr. 28 and headlined Please, Don’t Sell Delaware museum’s art treasures — began emotionally, with him “on my knees begging” trustees not to sell. It got much better when he asked financial questions, for example:

…recent financial history demonstrates that the Delaware Art Museum already has survived much worse financial stress without closing or selling art that has long been accessioned into its collection. At the depth of the Great Recession in 2008-2009, the Museum’s reserves fell to $20 million while it was saddled with a debt of $25 million. At its Annual Meeting in 2011, the Museum announced that it had refinanced its debt until 2013 “on very favorable terms.” By year-end 2011, reserves had climbed to almost $24 million, and the debt had been reduced to $21 million. The Museum negotiated a plan to pay off $6.5 million of debt in 2014, $7 million in 2015, and $7.5 million in 2016, with no mention of selling art to do so….

…at the end of 2013, the reserves were up to $25.6 million, and the debt was reduced by $1 million, to $20 million. Contrary to the impression created by the trustees’ announcement that it must sell artwork from the collection to avoid shutting down the Museum in October 2014, the Museum’s Audited Financial Statements as of December 31, indicate that “the Museum has the option to convert the bonds to a variable rate loan to be paid in monthly installments at the bank rate [of 8%] until the loan is paid in full.”

On May 6, 7 and 8, the Museum trustees are holding …Q&A sessions….let’s propose that the trustees put a hold on their decision to sell our art, agree among themselves to raise $3.5 million to be matched by $3.5 million from the Museum’s membership and art lovers throughout the State, use the $7 million in proceeds to pay down the debt, and refinance the remaining $13 million in debt.

Meanwhile, the board chair – Gerret van S. Copeland — answered no questions and issued no response to that challenge in his piece, dated May 3 and headlined If the Art Museum closes, we lose a piece of ourselves. He reasserted that “the trustees considered every reasonable option to pay off the debt – including fund raising, strategic alliances, and refinancing with local and regional banks. But none proved viable.”

He then declares that raising money, as Poole proposes, would not be that simple:

…It took the trustees four years to raise $6.7 million of a $10 million campaign to celebrate the museum’s centennial. Over the past five years, our volunteer trustees have generously given more than $5 million in personal contributions to support museum operations. Before the trustees voted, we approached our funders to ask for their support. Many of them told us they would be happy to support us if we could relieve the debt. Needless to say, the expectation that we can raise tens of millions of dollars in a short amount of time is not possible.

That’s an amazing statement. The museum has 19 active trustees, according to its website, plus two honoraries. Those numbers suggest that they 1) are not particularly generous and 2) don’t believe in the museum enough to invest in it while it’s in the red. It looks like they are saying they won’t throw good money after bad.

Yet the museum’s board voted for the museum’s recent expansion, which is why it has such a hefty debt load. I realize they are not all the same players — three trustees were elected last May — but Copeland’s opinion piece is truly revealing, perhaps in more ways than he intended.

Photo Credit: Winslow Homer, Milking Time, which has disappeared from the museum’s walls and database and may be for sale

 

174 LACMA Donors = $4.1 Million + 10 Varied Acquisitions

This past weekend, collectors associated with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art set a record at their 29th annual Collectors Committee fundraiser — contributing more than $4.1 million and deciding to buy 10 quite diverse works of art. Among the artworks: Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres’ Odalisque (below right); contemporary works by Roni Horn, Chinese artist Feng Mengbo and Iranian artist Mitra Tabrizian; an 18th-century Virgin of Guadalupe by Antonio de Torres; a pair of 9th century Japanese lions (below left) and a print – Taureau et Picador, from 1952 – by Picasso.

LACMA-IngresOdalisqueThis is one kind of museum participation that I quite like. In fact, I know of a few variations — the men do in on their own at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in an annual event called “One Great Night in November” — and it would fun to have a competition among the major museums each year. Which one could raise the most money for purchases in one event? 

In LA, the collectors bought each of the nine pieces proposed by curators, and at the outset of the evening, director Michael Govan announced that one trustee, Carole Bayer Sager, had purchased Helen Pashgian: Light Invisible, a monumental piece now on view that consists of “twelve two-part columns framed out of molded acrylic.” It’s an immersive experience, one that changes as viewers walk around, past and through the forms. 

To be a member of the Collectors Committee at LACMA, one must contribute at least $15,000, or $30,000 for Benefactor Level membership, or $60,000 for Angel Level membership.  “All membership money [goes] directly to a pooled fund that gives Collectors Committee members the privilege of helping make acquisitions for the museum,” the museum explains on its website. And this year, the press release for the weekend’s results said that “87 couples joined Collectors Committee 2014, including 23 new members. ” That is impressive.

LACMA-9thCJapaneseLionsThe release adds: “Throughout its 29-year history, this event has made 202 acquisitions through donations totaling more than $32 million.”

In LA, the event goes on for more than 24 hours. It begins on Friday evening, “with exclusive dinners for Collectors Committee members in the homes of seven LACMA trustees, each prepared by celebrity chefs and paired with wines presented by renowned California vintners.”  (Can’t resist: the dinners, not the trustees, are prepared by chefs.)

Then, “On Saturday morning, LACMA curators presented artworks proposed for acquisition; at the annual Collectors Committee Gala on Saturday night, members enjoyed a dinner prepared by chef Joachim Splichal (Patina Group) and voted on which artworks to acquire.” Details in the release — as some works were simply purchased outright by trustees, just as Sager had.

Here’s a list of acquisitions with images. Nice.