Museum Funding-Fundraising

As I suspected, Frank Robinson’s “Invitation to A Dialogue,” the results of which are published in the Review section of today’s New York Times, elicited responses about the situation of the Detroit Institute of Arts in the midst the city’s bankruptcy, no matter what he later said his intentions were. And predictably, they only reinforced the false dichotomy he posed in his invitation. A chance to shed light on the issue has been lost.

Interestingly enough, Robinson wrote “ a private note (not for publication)” to me after my post, presumably by way of explanation. Why it has to be private is beyond me (you can imagine for yourself), but I will honor his request and say only that he might have got better responses in the Times had he stated his supposed goal more articulately. Instead, the Dialogue was, of course, headlined Sell Masterpieces to Help Save a City? So much for intentions.

The good news: of the five responses published today (including one co-authored by Timothy Rub, director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and current president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, and Christine Anagnos, the executive director, just two advocate a sale of DIA’s paintings. Read them at the link above.

A few RCA readers copied me on the letters they sent to the Times, and I told them that I would print the unpublished ones here, along with one of my favorite (of many) works in the DIA’s galleries.

UPDATE, 8/13– Scroll down for the letter just sent to me by Karen Hopkins, president of the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

From Amy Whitaker, Art Business Faculty, The Sotheby’s Institute, and author of Museum Legs:

Regarding Detroit, it is a false choice between pensions and art.  Rather, it is a riddle of art and economics that can only be solved by the lever of governance.

If pension shortfalls truly represent a triage moment, where saving lives must triumph over making lives worth saving, then the sale of the collection is a form of amputation that requires surgical precision and governance: one group to set a dollar goal, another to set criteria for selecting art for sale, another with veto power, and time lines with consequences.  Process is the only base sturdy enough to support an outcome as risky as demolishing the original Penn Station.

To explain the riddle: My father, a scientist, used to get asked how he and my mother, an English professor, got along being in such different fields.  He would say that he was in the business of saving lives but she was in the business of making lives worth saving. In actual fact, he worked on quality of life issues like debilitating headaches, and she imparted life survival skills like being able to write in complete sentences.

Art and economics have this relationship.  They cannot be neatly untangled.  Museums are not justified by their impact on tax revenue but by their connection to human creativity—the same creativity that spurs innovation and its much larger economic impact (i.e., the whole reason America has been a great nation).

Museums harness the creativity of today by stewarding that of the past. Creativity is the only long-term engine of economic growth there is.

Public collections of art also represent the dignity of protecting things that cannot easily be measured, against things like budget shortfalls that can.

We would be served by thinking about funding the arts the way we think about funding basic science.

From Randall Bourscheidt, former Deputy Commissioner of Cultural Affairs and Chairman of the Advisory Commission for Cultural Affairs in New York City:

Frank Robinson’s suggestion that works of art be weighed against human lives — the entirely false comparison he makes in the sad case of Detroit’s bankruptcy — reflects a misunderstanding of the value of both. How could a former museum director confuse the market value of individual paintings with the cultural value of public institutions like museums?

There are at least two good reasons to keep the Detroit Institute of Arts collection intact:  first, it is one of the reasons why tourists visit the city and spend money; second, its survival — like that of libraries and parks and community centers and houses of worship and schools and universities — will be a beacon of hope to the people of Detroit who are enduring this time of hardship.  The first value can be measured in dollars, like the sale of art works; the second can only be measured by the citizens of Detroit.  Let’s hope that Detroit does not set the precedent of selling off its patrimony.

From Jennifer Vorbach, art advisor and independent curator:

Picture this: I am standing looking at a vitrine of Calders next to a stranger, next to a young African American teenager whose outward appearance strongly signals rebellion and inner city toughness. He’s clearly come with his school, to the National Gallery, on a Wednesday morning, as the room is teeming with similar kids.  In front of us is a sculpture
entitled “Funghi Neri.” He turns to me and asks: “I wonder what Funghi Neri means.” When I tell him that it means black mushrooms in Italian, he beams and says “well, maybe I should learn Italian.”

Looking at art in public collections opens many portals for many people. It enhances the human experience, and tells of life by visual means, generation after generation. One cannot equate the admittedly vital but transient benefits of pensions with the enduring experience of culture.

From Brian A. Oard, writer:

In Frank Robinson’s letter of 8/5/13, “Invitation to a Dialogue,” he  correctly refers to the situation at the Detroit Institute of Arts as  “agonizing” even as he retails a thoroughly bogus, demagogic argument based upon  a false choice between art and pensions. The argument implies that selling the  DIA collection would be a panacea for all that ails Detroit. In reality, it  would likely be no solution at all. At best, the ‘worst case scenario’  mega-auction will give the city a one-time infusion of cash comparable to a  crackhead’s head-cracking rush. When the hit wears off, Detroit will be left  with yet another big empty building, and all the longterm problems that led to  this mess will remain unaddressed.

On Aug.6, the DIA released a statement predicting that “any forced sale of  art would precipitate the rapid demise of the DIA.” To read an  art museum’s prediction of its own imminent “demise” is a uniquely chilling  experience. There’s certainly nothing new or unusual about the traditional  American philistinism that looks at one of the world’s great aesthetic treasure  houses and sees little more than an overflowing chest of pirate’s gold, but the  actions of Detroit’s soi-disant City Manager are evidence of a truly  astounding stupidity. Instead of selling or leasing or loaning or whatever else the  auctioneers and authoritarians have in mind, Detroit should be using the stellar  DIA collection as a crystal around which the depressed and depressing downtown  can be reinvented. Instead of an auction, the city needs an ad campaign to  generate international tourist revenue by informing the world of all the  masterpieces hidden behind the DIA’s imposing façade. Here, off the top of my  head, are a few taglines for such a campaign:

• “You don’t have to go to  Paris to see Van Gogh.”
• “You don’t have to go to  Rome to see Michelangelo.”
• “You don’t have to go to  France to see Cezanne.”
• “You don’t have to go to  Mexico to see Diego Rivera.”
• “Come to Detroit and see the  world.”

Most Americans, even most  citizens of Michigan, have no idea of the excellence of the Detroit collection.  The DIA is a large, encyclopedic museum containing countless artworks that would  be the envy of any art museum in the world, even the Met or the Louvre. It is  home to Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry murals, generally considered to  be the artist’s most important surviving work north of the Rio Grande. In the  European galleries alone, the DIA holds perhaps the best late Titian in America  (Judith with the Head of Holofernes), two of Michelangelo’s preparatory  sketches for the Sistine Chapel ceiling, Breughel’s The Wedding Dance (one of only two major paintings by Brueghel in American collections), Fuseli’s  iconic masterpiece The Nightmare, four major paintings by Van Gogh,  including a self-portrait and one of the portraits of Postman Roulin, a late  Cezanne still life of three skulls, a small panel by Jan van Eyck, and many more  priceless works. If these works go to the auction block, they will likely be  lost to the public and hidden away in the high-security warehouses where Russian  oil oligarchs store their artistic investments. Such a sale will be an act of  cultural looting comparable to those that occurred in Europe during the dark  days of 1933-45. It will snuff out one of the last signal fires of hope still  burning in downtown Detroit. It will be an American tragedy.

This is your chance, and it may be your best chance, to make the case for art museums. Right now, online, The New York Times has invited a dialogue with readers that will run in Sunday’s Review section. You must respond by tomorrow (Thursday) to be considered for publication.

Frank Robinson, former director of Cornell’s art museum, the Williams College Art Museum and RISD, has posed the question — to my mind, way too simplistically. Nonetheless, the last words of his post are: “How many lives is a Rembrandt worth?”

You can read his entire “Invitation to a Dialogue” letter here.

Robinson sets up the question around the mess in Detroit, beginning “…How can we equate a few pieces of canvas with paint on them with the pensions of thousands of firefighters, nurses, police officers, teachers and other civil servants?”

First off, no one sensible is equating the two, and that is part of the problem. It’s not that simple. Robinson makes matters worse by saying this “problem” is repeated in many places around the country because art museums get tax breaks, and that many museums are increasingly dependent on government aid. Really? I’d like to see some statistics for that assertion – minus the tax deduction argument, which countries in Europe and elsewhere have decided is the best way to go. At time when others are copying us, this former museum director is undercutting the very system that works.

Finally, Robinson repeats the hoary tale that museums are not open to everyone. That is just nonsense. I’ve seen museums twist themselves into knots trying to broaden their audiences — even doing the equivalent of selling their souls for it. Yes, I am thinking of all those Star-Wars-like exhibitions that never belonged in an art museum.

Throughout his letter, Robinson mixes apples with oranges with cherries and bananas and even throws a few tomatoes in — quite an accomplishment for a 322-word letter.

But you can respond far better than I.

Don’t let this opportunity go by. Write your opinions to letters@nytimes.com. The anti-museum folks are out there.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Cornell