Real Clear Arts

Judith H. Dobrzynski on Culture

DIA Reaches Almost 80% of “Grand Bargain” Goal

detroit-institute-ofThat was the news out of the Detroit Institute of Arts’ press conference this morning: It has another $26.8 million in commitments from corporations pledged toward the $100 million it agreed to raise to buy its independence in the Detroit bankruptcy.

The new money in today’s announcement came from:

  • $10 million from Roger S. Penske and Penske Corporation,
  • $5 million from DTE Energy,
  • $5 million from Quicken Loans and the Rock Ventures Family of Companies,
  • $2.5 million from BCBSM,
  • $1 million from Meijer,
  • $1 million from Comerica Bank,
  • $1 million from JPMorgan Chase,
  • $800,000 from Consumers Energy and
  • $500,000 from Delta Air Lines Foundation.

Just in case you can’t remember the grand bargain, here’s the boilerplate description from DIA’s press release:

The grand bargain will provide Detroit’s pensioners more than $800 million from local donors, local and national foundations and the State of Michigan over a 20-year period, subject to present value discounts for more rapid donor payments. The funds will be directed to a supporting organization of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan and then disbursed for city pension payments over the next 20 years. As part of the grand bargain, the City of Detroit will transfer ownership of the DIA’s collection, building and related assets to the private nonprofit corporation that currently operates the museum, Detroit Institute of Arts, Inc…

…The Grand Bargain was proposed by the mediators of city’s bankruptcy and led by Chief Judge Gerald Rosen of the U. S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, and attorney Eugene Driker.

There will have to be more to come, of course, but this is a really good position for the DIA to be in.

Now we still await the announcement of the vote by affected parties in the bankruptcy for or against the plan.

 

American Art Bonanza Left By Richard Mellon Scaife

Billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, scion of two wealthy families, died on July 4, leaving a large art collection — apparently — to two small Pennsylvania Museums. Scaife’s attorney called the art collection “expansive.” And according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review — which Scaife owned:

The Westmoreland Museum of American Art in Greensburg and Brandywine Conservancy near Philadelphia will split Scaife’s art collection, according to the will. The will allows the organizations to decide how to divide the collection and sets up a rotating selection system to resolve disagreements.

The only direction Scaife gave, apparently, was that his works by John Kane, the American self-taught artist (whom I came to like earlier this year, when I visited the Milwaukee Art Museum to review Uncommon Folk: Traditions in American Folk Art), would go to the Westmoreland museum. There are at least eight Kanes in the Scaife trove.

Born in Scotland, Kane was a laborer who turned to art after losing a leg. His Bust of a Highlander (Bust of a Scot), c. 1925 and shown here, intrigued me: it’s bold, direct, charming.  

JohnKaneThe Met has one of his paintings, The Monongahela River Valley, Pennsylvania, and the Whitney owns two — though I could not find out what they were by searching the collection online.

Those going to the Westmoreland Museum of American Art include  Along the Lincoln Highway and Boulevard of the Allies, which “depict Pittsburgh during the industrial boom of the early 1900s.” I couldn’t find them online either.

Other than the Kanes, we don’t know what is in the collection. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer:

…lawyer H. Yale Gutnick, one of Scaife’s executors and a longtime friend and colleague, said he could not estimate the value of the collection or even characterize the paintings and artists.

On Monday, Gutnick said the paintings were largely by American artists. He called it a “very, very substantial collection” put together “over many, many years.”

He declined to define it further. “There’s so much, I can’t describe it all,” he said. “It would take me three days to go through it.”

Scaife also left $15 million outright to the Brandywine Conservancy (and museum) in Chadds Ford, Pa., intended for the “maintenance and management of a conservancy” that he “built on the grounds of his childhood home,” said the Tribune-Review. 

Scaife was a conservative who donated to many conservative and libertarian causes over the years, and also gave money to historic preservation, environmental protection, educational institutions and the arts. I look forward to finding out what art he left us.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Milwaukee Art Museum

 

China: Museum-Building Slows Down

China is still building museums like a maniacal child erecting skyscrapers with Legos — but the rate has now slowed from one a day last year to one every three days, according to Cathy Giangrande, the co-author (with Miriam Clifford and Antony White) of  the new Chinese Museums Association Guide, which updates their 2009 book China: Museums.

798ArtZoneThe Sinosphere blog of The New York Times just did a Q&A with Giangrande. In it, she reveals some noteworthy thoughts — or updates on what we know. To wit:

  • “In terms of content, one of the biggest changes is that museums, especially contemporary art museums, now sometimes include foreign artists. In the past, Chinese museums held almost exclusively Chinese collections.”
  • “The most obvious [strength] is the beauty of many of the designer museums now being built. However, they are often only architectural showcases, rather than useful gallery space. This is a pattern which we have seen particularly with the new contemporary museums.”
  • “ One of the challenges for contemporary museums is finding good content and presenting it in a digestible form for the emerging middle class.”
  • “Many of China’s museums still exist to reinforce a sense of patriotism and to tell an official version of history. Exhibitions in Chinese museums are still reviewed by the censors before opening, although, reading between the lines of those we spoke to, there is a sense that this process is getting less stringent.”
  • “What is needed is much better curatorial standards and also, in some cases, exhibition design. Lack of professionally qualified museum staff was a reoccurring theme when we spoke to museum directors and the Chinese Museums Association. But this too is being addressed by sending students abroad to learn in museums in the U.S. and Europe. The bar needs to be raised, but they are on it and it’s just a matter of time.”

Photo Credit: 798 ArtZone in Beijing by Miriam Clifford, courtesy of the NYTimes

The Most Common Expansion Mistake Hits The Perez

Time and again, over the years, there is one common mistake made by many museums that expand — which often gets them into trouble and which is avoidable, mostly. Now it has hit the Pérez Art Museum Miami — and we are not surprised.

PerezMuseum-FirstThursdaysAccording to the Miami Herald (among other places), 

The Pérez Art Museum Miami wants a $2.5 million boost in government support [from the hotel tax], with taxpayers set to cover a third of the museum’s budget next year. 

Housed in a new $130 million waterfront headquarters built largely with government money, PAMM’s celebrated debut late last year also tripled the non-profit’s annual operating expenses, to $14 million from $5 million. Private dollars have not kept pace with the higher costs, leaving a gap that PAMM wants Miami-Dade to help close with a 60 percent increase in the museum’s operating subsidy from hotel taxes, according to interviews and budget documents.

The mistake: trustees probably underestimated the rise in operating costs and overestimated the amount of money they would raise to cover operating expenses.

PAMM is already subsidized by Miami-Dade County, to the tune of $2.5 million a year. It wants more — even though, “… other non-profits supported by Miami-Dade face a 10 percent cut, and as [Mayor Carlos] Gimenez is warning of police layoffs and service reductions. Gimenez was poised to offer $4 million, not $5 million.

His budget was to include nearly “700 job cuts to bridge a $64 million deficit,” the Herald reported. This budget is his “worst-case scenario.” 

I cannot claim to understand Miami politics, and many elements may be at work here. I’m confining myself to the museum’s situation.

PAMM has an endowment of only $14 million — way below what is needed and way below the museum’s long-term goal of $70 million. Plus, said the Herald:

Budget documents show the museum expects to generate about $8 million next year from private sources, including $4 million from concessions, ticket sales and events, and about $4 million in donations and endowment revenue. That leaves a gap of more than $5 million that would be closed by government dollars.

Museum officials say attendance and membership sales are on track or even ahead of projections after PAMM’s Dec. 4 debut during the annual Art Basel week. Almost all of the museum’s corporate sponsors renewed for 2015, PAMM said.

Having invested $100 million to build the new Perez and relocate from the old Miami Art Museum, the government is not going to walk way, Michael Spring, Gimenez’s cultural chief, said, according to the Herald. The museum is doing well, attendance-wise. 

But it’s pretty quick to come back for another unexpected handout, isn’t it?

UPDATE, 7/16: PR representatives of the Perez have sent a clarification to me and, they say, to the Miami Herald — saying that “The $4 mil in county funding being discussed for FY2015 will fulfill the commitment planned for back in 2004 and 2005. This is the same commitment that the county had made to PAMM for FY2014. Unfortunately, because of a gap in the county’s funding, the county only gave the museum $2.5 million for the last fiscal year.”

However, the Herald does not seem to have changed any of its stories.

Photo Credit: A free “First Thursday” at the Perez, Henry Perez/Manny of Miami, via the Perez Museum

Timken Intrigue, Part 2: The Power Play

If a dispute isn’t about money, it’s usually about power. And that is what appears to be behind the problems at the Timken Museum of Art (below). Not programs, not old-school art versus contemporary art, not money.

When we last wrote about the Timken, we weren’t quite sure whether director John Wilson quit or was pushed out or why. It’s not quite true that the board disagreed with Wilson’s strategy, as several people including me surmised. Wilson has done a fine job. Attendance when he took over in 2008 was about 143,000. Last year, it was 197,000. Wilson added context to the collection of Old Masters, American paintings, and icons with exhibits: putting works by Gabriel Orozco in among the Russian icons because he used similar techniques; mounting the Robert Wilson Video Portraits show to illustrate that Wilson drew inspiration from Old Masters, to name two. But my sources say those shows did not ruffle the feathers of the board.

TimkenEven if they did, they drew audience. And Wilson’s best effort hasn’t yet happened: he has arranged for the Timken to borrow a Vermeer from the Rijksmuseum and a Raphael from the National Gallery in London for the Timken’s anniversary celebration next year. Not everyone can do that!

Meanwhile, the endowment, after losing value in the recession, is back to where it was, at about $25 million. Admission is free, but Wilson increased voluntary contributions — just by asking for them and putting a dollar amount at the contribution box (first $5, then $10) — to about $5,000 a month. For a museum with a budget about $2 million a year, that’s a noteworthy amount.

The problem was, Tim Zinn — who moved from trustee to president in 2012 — had other ideas. He wanted Wilson to continue his curatorial duties, but he also wanted to return to the Timken’s old governance structure, my sources say.

Walter Ames, who was the lawyer for the Putnam sisters, whose collection formed the Timken (they were kin to the Timkens), used to run the museum with “visiting directors.” They included, my sources say, Agnes Mongan and AB de Vries, t he retired director of the Mauritshuis. Thus Ames was able to run the museum himself. He passed that power to his daughter and grandson, Nancy Peterson and John Peterson (who I’m told never wanted the job and committed suicide).

Zinn, I’m told, likes that model. He is president, but not CEO, of Ceretec, “a privately held corporation developing and producing innovative, cutting-edge medical devices and pharmaceutical products.” Zinn wanted to make the decisions and, when Wilson wouldn’t go along, he made clear to Wilson that his contract, which was up in mid-August, would not be renewed. So Wilson quit as of July 1.

Zinn reached out to David Bull, 80, to become “visiting director” because Bull is on the Timken’s advisory board — another way the museum tapped curatorial help in the past without having its own.

But Bull, I’m told, has no intention of leaving New York and will in fact simply visit the museum on occasion. Wilson was a member of AAMD, but I doubt the Timken’s new arrangement qualifies for the AAMD’s museum standards rule that “The museum must be administered by a professional staff.”

This is no way to run a museum.