I’ve covered some pretty amusing political stances in my life — I did work as a reporter in Washington many years ago and later supervised political coverage at Business Week — but as anyone in New York knows, it’s Albany that looks like a joke nowadays.

New evidence for that comes in an article in today’s Wall Street Journal. It says that a bill is likely to be passed this week that will allow non-profits to tap their endowments without obtaining approval from the NY Attorney General’s office or the courts. Under current law, non-profits, like museums, operas, and theater companies, may not draw from the principal of their endowment funds when it falls below its original value, aka as being “underwater.” Many endowments, suffering from investment losses since 2008, are underwater.

This permissive stance is crazy enough on its face value — talk about allowing the easy way out of difficult situations and stealing from the future. And the draw-downs would essentially be done in secrecy, since non-profits take such a long time to file their annual reports and tax statements. We would not know, for example, that a struggling group was down to its last pennies until 18 months or so after-the-fact. Now, we the public may not know, but the AG’s office or the courts know — and whiffs of that usually get out, one way or another. 

But it gets worse: a big proponent of the bill is Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, the very same Democrat from Westchester County who has been trying to prohibit any deaccessioning of any items in a collection for any other purpose than buying more items (not just works of art — the Brodsky bill would apply to libraries, historical societies, historic houses, and zoos) for the collection. No matter how dire the situation. Close the museum, the library, but don’t sell anything. According to the WSJ:

“The heart of the back-and-forth is long-term financial stability, versus getting yourself out of this catastrophic meltdown,” said Assemblyman Richard Brodsky, a Westchester Democrat who is a co-sponsor of the Assembly’s bill. “What you’re really doing here is essentially dipping into capital for a whole host of reasons that can be justified, especially when we’re in extraordinarily difficult times.”

So Brodsky thinks that raiding endowments without supervision is ok, but deaccessioning even with supervision is never ok.

I’m on the opposite side: Raiding endowments may be necessary but never without supervision. And, as I have written, in an op-ed for The New York Times, arguing for an orderly process that allows consideration of deaccessioning, “de-accessioning shouldn’t be impossible — just nearly so.”

I believe that museums in danger of closing should submit their proposals to sell art from their storerooms for purposes other than buying art to an independent arbitrator. If they make a convincing case, judged by the arbitrator, they must first give other public collections two chances to buy the art — once, in a right of first refusal; a second time, after a public auction, when they all have an opportunity to match the winning public bid. This process would discourage deaccessioning, allowing it only as a true last resort.

I could attempt to analyze motivation here, but I won’t given in to the temptation.

My previous posts on this subject are here, here, here and especially here, where I answer arguments.

 

Reynold Levy, president of Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, has an interesting take on the current climate for arts philanthropy: he thinks arts groups are enjoying a renaissance with donors.

That’s what he told Crain’s New York Business, anyway, which just published an article saying that arts philanthropy in the Big Apple is doing just fine, thank you, because it gets better press coverage than giving to social causes.

The last part, anecdotally, is true — but the first, the renaissance bit, clashes with what I’ve been hearing. True, I’ve been chatting about this with arts people from many cities, not just New York, but virtually everyone is telling me that gifts are down (as is earned revenue and, in most cases, attendance).

Crain’s Exhibit A: Everyone knows that David Koch gave $100 million to renovate (and name) the old New York State Theater at Lincoln Center, and that Stephen Schwarzman gave $100 million to the New York Public Library.

Crain’s Exhibit B: “when New York investment managers Fiona and Stanley Druckenmiller last year gave $100 million to NYU Langone Medical Center to establish a neuroscience unit, the donation failed to make headlines. And when the couple, who donate generously to organizations that fight poverty and cancer, turned up as the No. 1 giver of 2009 on The Chronicle of Philanthropy‘s annual list, many in the city’s nonprofit world wondered, “Who?” “

The article cites a few experts, and — sounding very much like the fundraiser he is — Levy (above) told Crain’s: “Universities are not tourist attractions; hospitals aren’t. The arts are a tourist attraction.” Donors want that recognition, and entrance to the club.

There’s a cloud in the story, though, which says that West coast tech-types would rather solve social problems than go to the ballet.

I say, to arts groups, use what you’ve got — if donors want publicity, you can always mention the Crain’s article. Here’s the link to it. 

You never know what you’re going to find when you set off to interview someone, especially someone of achievement who has a public persona.

I have to say I was not pleasantly surprised, but pleasantly gratified when I met last week with playwright A.R. “Pete” Gurney.

The sheer volume of his output — 42 plays, three novels, a libretto and a half-dozen one-act curtain-raisers — is impressive. I admire anyone who can churn out that much and keep on going. 

As I write in a Cultural Conversation with Gurney, published in today’s Wall Street Journal, this playwright laureate of the declining WASP reign in America not only just saw his new play, The Grand Manner, open at Lincoln Center Theater — but he also has two more in the wings. Office Hours is on the fall docket at The Flea, and Black Tie will begin in January at Primary Stages. Plus, he’s making notes for the next one.

Gurney told me that he writes the same way most professional writers write: he treats it like a job, is at his desk every weekday at 8:30 a.m., writes for four hours, breaks for lunch, then hits the computer again.

He began using a computer 20 years ago, when his father-in-law gave him an old Radio Shack model. The first play he wrote on it turned out to be Love Letters. 

Gurney, as I write in the WSJ, is more innovative that he sometimes gets credits for.

But he doesn’t seem to be upset about that. Though his eyes lit up when I mentioned his innovations, Gurney also volunteered stories that diminished him. And that made me appreciate him even more. There’s a lot to be said for the tradition he represents.

National Endowment for the Arts chief Rocco Landesman keeps saying he’d like to restore NEA awards to individual artists — and he, of course, is not alone. Guess what? The NEA does give awards to individual artists — and I’m not sure it should.

Maybe the hot, humid weather in NYC has made me cranky, but the NEA press release that arrived late Thursday, announcing lifetime achievement awards in jazz, heritage and opera, has stuck in my craw like gum on a shoe.

The awards were seemingly well-deserved: they went to the Marsalis family (Wynton is at right), Philip Glass, Martina Arroyo, Eve Queler, and several other well-known artists. Well, that’s nice — until you read that these people received a total of $450,000, or $25,000 each.

As the press release says:

Among the group are four Grammy Award-winners (McCoury, Mandel, Marsalis, and Keepnews); a MacArthur Fellowship recipient (Jackson); a Golden Globe awardee (Glass), and a Pulitzer Prize recipient (Marsalis).

This raises a host of questions:

Should the federal government be honoring artists in this way? It doesn’t, as far as I know, give lifetime achievement awards to, say, philosophers, or historians, or lawyers, or medical researchers, or most other professions.

If it does give lifetime achievement awards, should they carry a monetary award? The Oscars, the Emmys, most Pulitzers, and plenty of other prestigious awards are awards, period — with medals or statues, perhaps, but no money. Is this the best way to use the NEA’s limited budget?

Would the awards be just as prestigious without the money? I don’t see why not. $25,000 probably means little to most of these awardees, but it means a lot to other NEA recipients — in many programs. NEA is known for piddling out small amounts to many organizations, giving them a so-called stamp of approval that allows easier fundraising elsewhere.

And, as far as I can tell, the National Medal of Arts — “the highest award given to artists and arts patrons by the United States Government” — involves no money. 

Should the NEA re-evaluate the jazz-opera-heritage awards program? You know what I think — yes, it should. I don’t see why the money is justified, and it can be better applied elsewhere.

 

 

People love mysteries — just look at book sales — and I always think that the art world should take more advantage of that thirst (see here and here, for example). That’s why I’m highlighting an exhibition that just started at the Yale Center for British Art.

“Seeing Double” is built around a 1829 painting called “Interior of the British Institution” by John Scarlett Davis. YCBA says Davis “sought to make a splash on the London art scene” with it. He made not only a visual puzzle but also “an exploration of the art world in the 1820s London.”

An image of a 19th-century art exhibition, the painting is also an elaborate puzzle that includes miniature works by famous British artists….Long recognized as a valuable record of a period exhibition venue, “Interior of the British Institution Gallery” represents canvases by Sir Joshua Reynolds and Thomas Gainsborough, among other British artists. What is less known is that the figures that chat amiably or stoop to examine canvases are themselves replicas of paintings. Davis copied the figures from pre-existing portraits, most notably by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

Take a look:

Yale hopes “Seeing Double” will reveal new connections among works in its permanent collection — any maybe other collections. Yale asks visitors to help decode the picture and thus learn about display and replication.

This puzzle may be too difficult for casual viewers or even regular museum-goers that are not expert in 19th British art. But people who read and love mysteries don’t always solve them, either — and they come back for more. There’s a model in this, for occasional use. 

Photo Credit: Courtesy Yale Center for British Art