Photo: GV
Judith H. Dobrzynski, a former Times art writer, had an interesting op-ed piece in The New York Times the other day (1/2) called “The Art of the Deal.” She lays out the financially troubled state of America’s fine arts museums – a condition known by now to all who follow this industry – and then advocates for a revisit of the self-imposed rule that museums cannot sell art to balance their operating budgets. After all, what museum doesn’t have store rooms stocked with secondary works?
Dobrzynski calls for the creation a system monitored by an informed but “neutral” third party that would help decide whether the sale of works of art from a museum’s permanent collection is warranted by extreme and unusual circumstance effectively beyond the control of the museum. Is the alternative – presumably, the financial collapse or near collapse of the museum – so dire that a temporary bending of the no-sell rule is allowable?
She concludes: “until [museums' money troubles go away] , de-accessioning shouldn’t be imposssible – just nearly so.”
Whether her point of view gets any traction remains to be seen. But one distinction she failed to draw might be worthy of exploration: namely, the distinction between art that is part of a donor bequest (or purchased with donor-restricted funds) and art that is purchased by the museum’s trustees with funds they have themselves raised.
It is a distinction much like that between “permanent endowment” funds, that are held in the public trust and are untouchable, and “quasi-endowment” funds, that have been assigned by the museum’s trustees to long-term investments but which, at their discretion, can be unassigned.
In other words: what trustees choose to do they can choose to undo, with cash and, presumably, with art.
I have no idea what proportion of our nation’s public art assets have been assembled in this way; at the Walters, it is a very tiny portion of our collections, most of which (and the best of which) were part of the Henry Walters bequest of 1931.
But for other museums – and specifically, the ones whose very survival is risk – it may be worth looking into.
Gary Vikan, director of the Walters Art Museum since 1994, has been with the Baltimore institution for more than 20 years. A native of Minnesota, Gary received his B.A. from Carleton College in 1967 and his Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1976 before working as Senior Associate for Byzantine Art Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C.