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2018-02-Bank-of-America-Art-Conservation-Project-2017-Delaware-Art-Museum-Andrew-Wyeth

Who Gets the Conservation Dollars??

Ruth Osborne
2013-09-11 - Bank of America Art Conservation Project

Bank of America: The Art Conservation Project.

The Bank of America Conservation funding program has been lauded for providing large numbers of museums around the world with grant money to restore works in their collections. This program has been going on since 2010 (see here for our earlier background article). While no numbers or even estimates of these funds is given in public documents, nor of the approximate costs of works’ restoration in previous years, it can be assumed that these amounts are staggeringly high.

Take, for instance, some of the masterworks awarded conservation grants in 2013:

Jackson Pollock, Number 1A, 1948 (1948)

Alfred Bierstadt, Sunset Light (1861)

Daniel Maclise, The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife (1854)

Pheonix and Armada portraits of Queen Elizabeth I (c. 1575 and c. 1588)

Rembrandt van Rijn, Scholar in His Study (1635)

Titian, Ecce Homo (1543)

Gustave Courbet, L’Atelier du peintre (1854-55)

 

2018-02 - Bank of America Art Conservation Project 2017 Delaware Art Museum Edward Loper

Edward Loper Sr., Elfreth’s Alley, 1948. Courtesy: Estate of Edward Loper Sr.

Considering the auction prices for works by these artists range somewhere in the realm of $1 mil+, the conservation price tag for the above pieces are likely tens of thousands of dollars. One would therefore hope that the institutions receiving such large grants, in whom much trust is being placed by Bank of America’s Conservation program, would be ones who’ve proven their trustworthiness to the public that is ostensibly the noble reason behind a conservation project.  Then why is the Delaware Art Museum – yes, that museum whose Board slapped the faces of several authorities in arts stewardship just a few years back with its deaccession and sale of important works – receiving money to conserve not one, not two, but thirteen of their paintings?

 

In case you need a refresher, here’s our 2014 post on the DAM’s decision to auction off works by those same artists upon which its reputation has been built over the past 100 years. These included the auctioning of paintings by Andrew Wyeth, Winslow Homer, and Pre-Raphaelite William Holman Hunt. The latter brought in some underwhelming profits, which made the public fear the desperate Museum go even further with more deaccession sales. The DAM blacklisted by the American Alliance of Museums, the Association of Art Museum Directors, and various other highly-regarded arts professionals.

 

But let’s take a look at how these 13 paintings factor into the overall 2017 list of BoA award recipients:

(1) Art Institute of Chicago  – El Greco

(2-4) Saatliche Museen zu Berlin – 3 Renaissance sculptures

(5-10) Brooklyn Museum – 6 Assyrian palace reliefs

(11) Cleveland Museum of Art – Krishna Lifting Mount Govardhan

(12) Courtauld Gallery – Botticelli’s Holy Trinity with Saints Mary Magdalen and John the Baptist

(13) Des Moines Art Center – Heith Haring Dancing Figures

(14-18) Crocker Art Museum – 5 paintings by Wayne Thiebaud

(19-31) Delaware Art Museum – 13 regional paintings

(32) Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco – Morris Louis painting

(33) Isabella Steward Gardner Museum – Farnese Sarcophagus

(34) Hirshorn Museum & Sculpture Garden – 2 works by R Rauschenberg

(35) James A. Michener Art Museum – Henriette Wyeth

(36) Mexican Cultural Institute of Washington, D.C. – 3 fl mural panel

(37) Minneapolis Institute of Art – Frank Stella painting

(38) Musée national Picasso-Paris – Picasso mixed media work

(39) Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid – Joan Miró

(40) North Carolina Museum of Art – Statue of Bacchus

(41) Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan – Giovanni Battista Tiepolo painting

(42-62) The Studio Museum in Harlem – 21 works by Romare Bearden, et. al.

(63-65) Tate Modern – 3 Modigliani paintings

(66) San Diego Museum of Art – Noguchi sculpture

 

Not only does the DAM make the list with many world-renowned collections of art, but their award makes up nearly 20% of the works to be conserved with this year’s conservation grant! On top of that, the award will go towards at least one work by Andrew Wyeth, whose name was on one of those the Museum sold in lieu of endowment funds a few years ago.

2018-02-Bank-of-America-Art-Conservation-Project-2017-Delaware-Art-Museum-Andrew-Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth, Pennsylvania Winter, 1947. Courtesy: Andrew Wyeth.

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2017-02-13 Barnes Foundation Hornick Unbounded Histories

Doing Over Barnes: Is Shaman Drumming Necessary to Connect with Art?

Ruth Osborne

If one is to visit the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia (for the story on its relocation from the original Barnes home in Merion, PA, see here and here), between now and February 19th, one would find something interrupting its experience of the art in this immense and extraordinary collection: shaman drumming and poems to stream on your smartphone as you walk through the galleries.

2017-02-13 Barnes Foundation Hornick Unbounded Histories

Hornick working on “Unbounded Histories”: Ensemble view, Room 23, Barnes Foundation, 2012. Courtesy: The Barnes Foundation.

Painter and sound artist Andrea Hornick is being hosted at the Barnes for an artist’s project, a series of performance programs called “Unbounded Stories”, described on their website as “a sound intervention”:

“The poems subvert the logic of traditional audiotours by offering unexpected narratives and dream-like imagery. Hornick worked for months directly in the collection, putting herself in a trance-like state in order to access the depths of her own psyche, letting the works of art lead her toward stories and images that the mind normally keeps buried. The narratives—deeply personal, and often with a feminist edge—emerged from these sessions.”

Why might the Barnes feel the need to promote another “new way” to encounter the artworks? Why not just let the original collector himself, Albert C. Barnes, whose own meticulously arranged presentations are maintained to this day at their new home in Philadelphia, speak to the viewer? Or, why not take note from Barnes and allow the works to speak for themselves to arrange them in one’s mind?

 

2017-01-10 Barnes Foundation facade

Barnes Foundation exterior 2012.

We would encourage readers to think critically before a museum or gallery with a program like this meant to enhance and offer new alternative narratives the art. Sometimes art is just art. And while each individual’s response to an artwork is valuable in and of itself, think before you add someone else’s story into the mix and try and force yourself to dig deeper where there may not be much more to dig. The works at the Barnes were purchased, collected, and hung according to how the owner viewed their aesthetic relationships to each other. Is this not enough of a suggested lens for visitors today to use to view the works? Was Barnes not already providing an extremely unique – and yet simultaneously open for others’ further interpretation – experience for whoever walked through the galleries? Is not the program itself is simply forcing upon the viewer something akin to what Barnes – the one who brought all these works together in the first place – was already doing in his home before all was disrupted by the powers that be in Philadelphia – who had no personal foundation in his collection – in just to plop it on the side of the Ben Franklin Parkway?

 

We would argue that this program is in fact pulling one’s attention away from the art itself. And listening to someone else’s superimposed overtures about artworks to try and pull out deeper meanings in one’s psyche that may just not be there is potentially dangerous for the pressure it puts on the viewer/listener.  Philadelphia attorney, engineer, and former student at the original Barnes Foundation, Nick Tinari, provides some insight:

“The irony is that the original building was replete with Barnes’ collection of antique clocks and you would hear them ring and echo throughout the galleries, not to mention the sounds of the birds outside in the arboretum. The only thing one can possibly hear there now is the massive construction project ongoing out the south-facing walls.”

If the reader is indeed looking for a new narrative through which to understand the Barnes Foundation? We suggest they also consider the very informative 2009 documentary “The Art of the Steal”.

2017-01-10 Barnes Foundation Art of the Steal

 

 

By Ruth Osborne

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2015-11-04 - de Young Museum San Francisco facade
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The Business of Museums: Mismanagement at the de Young in San Francisco.

2015-11-04 - de Young Museum San Francisco Dede Wilsey

de Young Museum CEO Dede Wilsey. Courtesy: Panache Privée.

Ruth Osborne

We often forget that museums are a big business. They draw in millions annually, contribute billions to the national economy, transport major works of priceless artistic value miles around the globe, and provide jobs for hundreds of thousands in the U.S. alone.

 

Most of this work is done behind gallery walls – from conservation labs to accounting offices to research libraries. According to an AAM study, museums are also believed by visitors to be “one of the most trustworthy sources of objective information.” If we are to uphold the character of the museum as an expectedly trustworthy institution, then the public must also know what goes on behind the scenes.

Last month, news emerged surrounding a new financial scandal at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. The origin of the scandal was a complaint by the CFO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (the umbrella over the de Young and the Legion of Honor, proudly self-proclaimed as “the largest public arts institution in the City of San Francisco”). According to the CFO Michele Gutierrez, CEO of de Young and FAMSF Board President Dede Wilsey initiated an order to pay a retired staffer $450,000 for a “disability severance payment” sanctioned by the City Charter. This retiree, reportedly, already collects a $56,580 annual pension from the city. The payment was signed off by the Gutierrez but, she supposedly found out later, was not given final approval by the entire board before the check was issued. Mind you, the FAMSF is an institution that receive $16 million in city funding each year.

This was not the first time that the FAMSF have been in the news for mismanagement. In the past few years, the museums have gone through a series of high-profile firings, a wrongful termination lawsuit, a deaccession and sale against a living donor’s bequest, and another scandal involving items from Wilsey’s personal collection being handled and prepared for shipment during business hours on museum property and with museum personnel. For a museum that receives millions in public funds annually, especially in a climate in which arts funding is increasingly rare and precious, one would hope that such an institution is being run in an ethical manner.

Just a few days after news of this new scandal involving Wilsey hit the newsstands, the FAMSF issued a statement denying any wrongdoing on behalf of their CEO or the disapproval of her actions by the board at large. Their defensive statement appears to gloss over the large staff turnover that has occurred over the past year, arguing that as the result of recent evaluation by management consultants they have “[reorganized] the institution and [changed] personnel and job responsibilities.”

It should also be pointed out that, since Wilsey has been Board President two decades ago, sudden changes in its bylaws enabled the new president to remain without a term limit. These don’t seem like ideal procedures for a well-run public art collection.  And yet, the FAMSF remained on the American Alliance of Museums’ list of accredited institutions in 2014.

Another accredited institution that has recently seen itself through financial mismanagement and shaming (it actually did receive an AAM sanction) is the Delaware Art Museum. News of the board’s bad stewardship over the collection – by means of selling art to make up for a bond debt – developed over the course of last year. The $19.5 million in debt was no doubt assisted by the $32.5 million the Museum shelled out for a 2005 expansion. As a result, the Museum took a blow to its artistic legacy as well as to future precedent for collections management practices.

With museums spending millions on expansions, additions to their collection, traveling exhibitions, transparency is not to be taken for granted. There is a higher and higher demand for institutions to be constantly spending in order to draw attention and relevance in an increasingly competitive art world.  At the same time, those funding art institutions are failing to see their benefit to the local community and society as a whole, thus causing museums to strive to keep what little funding they have and remind people that art and history is relevant.  The same week that this (most recent) scandal in SF emerged, the AAM announced it was putting the Illinois State Museums on probation as a result of their closure on September 30th after state budget decisions reached a stalemate. AAM Commission Chair Burt Logan took issue on how this closure would “impact […] the long-term viability of the museum, including affecting its ability to retain a professional staff and operate at the highest professional level […]”. The closure has caused museum staff to seek refuge for their collection during the interim, certainly not ideal care for the works being shuttled back and forth.  The State Museum’s director of science Eric Grimm has commented on the situation that caused the closure: “It’s a travesty […] I think it’s political corruption and malevolent anti-intellectualism.”  In an atmosphere like that of the past fifteen years, the need for greater oversight in the arts is becoming more and more evident.

By Ruth Osborne

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2005-10-25 - ArtWatch International ICOM Petition
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Petition to the International Council of Museums

Petition circulated by the Association to Respect the Integrity of the Artistic Patrimony (ARIPA)
ArtWatch International, Inc. and ArtWatch UK

The International Council of Museums (ICOM) has a ethological code (1986, revised in 2001) which fixes the moral duties of the museums clearly defined towards the public.

Specifically, this code favored contacts between the public and the museum personnel, for the sharing of knowledge and information, and providing access to the collections, access to documents and to information about the works of art. (Art.7.2, passages in this code 2.6, 2.8, 3.1, 8.3, 8.6 the code of 2001).

Now, the new “”restructured”” code which has just been adopted by the consulting committee of ICOM, in its 65th session last October, through simplification and generalization, has made for the disappearance of these crucial points. At the moment, these contacts and engagements are not mentioned except towards contact between the professional colleagues of the museums and the scientific and academic community, rather then to the public.  This restructuring has therefore introduced an imbalance where the public has no more guarantees of services of transparency, information and openness.

We, the undersigned, demand that the International Council of Museums in its new code complete it with a special Bill of Rights (Bill of Rights of Museum Visitors, following the ideas suggested by a member of the executive council of ICOM).  We propose to integrate all the moral duties so far recognized by ICOM and to returning the points which have vanished and which we mentioned in the proceeding paragraph.

The Bill of Rights for Museum Visitors

Introduction: The museum is an institution which is a public service, as defined by the statutes of ICOM. This charter stipulates clearly what the public can expect from the museum profession. Even though the public can not participate in the national legislation it could play a quasi legal or judicial role when the legislation is badly defined or inexistent about the questioned concerned in the introduction.

With reservations of restrictions based for reasons of confidentiality or security, the museums recognize the following rights to their visitors :

1) a reasonable museum should provide meetings with personnel and access to collections not on view by arranging a meeting or some other arrangement. [art. 2.8],

2) obtain access for the information requested concerning the collections [art 2.8],

3) know about new acquisitions, in a constant and regular manner [art.3.1],

4) get a rapid response to all correspondence and all demands for information from the museum professions and to be courteous and polite in this matter [art.7.2],

5) to share the experience and expertise of the museum professionals [art.7.2, 8.6] and to know the result of there researches [art.8.3],

6) to gain a controlled access but unlimited to the objects and documents demanded which are confided to the museum, because of personal research or some other specific interest [art.7.2],

7) there should be favorable conditions for associations that stand for the objectives of the museums. These organizations should be recognized, their activities encouraged and there should be a harmonies relationship between these associations and the personnel of the museums [art.2.6].

ArtWatch International, Inc.

 

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