Responding to the Montclair critics

James writes:

Over the weekend, the former director of the Whitney Museum, David Ross, published a letter in the Wall Street Journal seeking to apply the lessons of my Montclair editorial to the rulebook for all museums:

Museums will lose the public trust if they evolve into vehicles for holding long-term assets until they are needed for the purposes of loan repayment or assessments of credit-worthiness. In fact, lenders and bondholders should be prohibited by law from accepting acquisition-specific endowments as security in any form. That would take the idea of misusing collections off the boardroom table, and would go some distance toward securing these collections for future generations.

That's good advice. But alas, it looks like not everyone got Ross's memo.

The art critic for the Los Angeles Times, Christopher Knight, usually sound on the issue of deaccession, had a momentary lapse of reason over my editorial. In a blog posting called "Bada bing: A hit job on a New Jersey art Museum?," Knight claimed that his "eyes bugged out" after reading my editorial "five or six times now."

First off, let me review the charge that my article was a "hit job." Knight claims to have "fact-checked" my story and found it "strictly circumstantial," but it seems that he did little more than pick up the telephone in California and make a long-distance call to representatives of the museum. Well, I talked to the museum representatives at length too, but I also visited the museum on several occasions, obtained the Christie's sales prospectus, and interviewed sources close to the museum both on and off the record. For example, I have it on good authority that the museum's deacessioning campaign has increased by ten times in the past six months. I also have sources knowledgeable of the museum's collection who have questioned the purported redundancy of key works in the sale (certain works even appear in the museum's published book of highlights from its collection).

This deaccession therefore did not strike me as wholly the product of a careful and deliberative process. It needs to be examined more closely under the light of day, which was the purpose (and I am happy to say, the result) of my editorial. Unlike Knight, who seems to care about little more than attacking a journalist's reputation (I notice he goes about collecting only the evidence he wants to hear), I have an affection for the Montclair Museum and the art inside it. I've done the heavy lifting to find out what's happening at the institution. Why would I take out a "hit job" on a museum I care about?

In fact, the only "hit job" is the one Knight decided to take out on me. I can't say why he did it, nor do I really care. By identifying me in his first paragraph as the managing editor of "the conservative culture magazine the New Criterion," as though this were relevant to the facts of the case, I can only assume that Knight had his feelings hurt by Hilton Kramer twenty years ago and now I'm paying for it. As long as he spells my name right, I appreciate the attention, but I am concerned that Knight's attempted rub out will distract us from the real subject at hand: the future of a small New Jersey Museum with an important permanent collection, and the implication of its actions on the stewardship of art in the public trust across the country. So let's step out of the henhouse for a moment and out of earshot of tongue-clucking bloggers like Tyler Green and review the facts of the case.

Knight says he read my article "five or six times." If he doesn't want to try a seventh, let me help him understand my editorial—I expect we are in agreement on most of the key points:

1) recent deaccessioning campaigns at several museums have betrayed the public trust. I discuss this not to reveal some "nefarious plot," but to put the Montclair story in context. In a general interest publication such as The Wall Street Journal, such a discussion is not "boilerplate," but exposition.

2) The Montclair art museum is engaging in a deaccessioning campaign. Since other campaigns at other museums haven't always gone well, let's therefore look at this case closely.

3) Well, as it turns out, this campaign is being done (in whole on in part—the ethics of the case are still the same) in order to back the museum's bonds.

4) In fact, when pressed, the Montclair museum director is upfront about this contingency. She defends her actions by claiming that the peer-reviewed organization AAMD has no problem with the sales.

5) Now this raises a greater question--if museums are forbidden from collateralizing their bonds with the art on their walls, is it appropriate that they should be able to sell the art and use the proceeds to back their bonds?

Knight writes that "opinions are nice, but they're better when built atop some reported facts." My editorial had both. Let's move on from quibbling and have a substantive discussion about the opinions I expressed and the issues I raised. Let's also help deaccession dissenters like the former Montclair trustee Cherry Provost have their day in the court of public opinion. David Ross got it right.

Another museum puts its collection on the block

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
April 15, 2009

Another Museum Puts Its Collection on the Block
by James Panero

Another day, another deaccession. On March 23, after a "strategic review of its operations and capitalizations," the Montclair Art Museum in Montclair, N.J., announced a new "financial security plan." In what has become an all-too-common practice in the art world, this plan will include the sale, or "deaccession," of 50 works from the museum's permanent collection, among them a Jackson Pollock drawing valued at $300,000 to $500,000 and several Hudson River School and American Impressionist works with estimates ranging from $25,000 to $300,000, according to a prospectus prepared by Christie's. The auction house believes the sales will generate between $2.9 million and $4.3 million for the institution, which says it will use the funds for future acquisitions. Presented as curatorial housekeeping, but in fact motivated by financial exigencies, the Montclair sales -- if allowed to proceed -- will set another sorry example of an institution cashing out on art in the public trust.

p>Opened in 1914, the small, neoclassical Montclair Art Museum has long boasted an impressive collection of American art, with a sizable selection of work by Hudson River School painter George Inness, who settled in the town at the end of the 19th century. The museum has also acquired and displayed a large collection of Native American art and mounted critically acclaimed exhibitions. A show exploring the influence of Cézanne on American art, 10 years in the making, is scheduled to open this September. An exhibition of Wyeth-family paintings is now on view.

In the stewardship of its permanent collection, however, Montclair has left a more questionable legacy. The museum has often treated its record of local philanthropy as trade-in art. Nobody knows this better than Cherry Provost, a former trustee who grew up in the shadow of this suburban museum and still serves on the art committee.

"I've said it repeatedly: A museum is not a private collection," she maintains. Over the years, her words fell on deaf ears as the museum sold off one part of its collection after another. "We had a snuff bottle collection of the first order," Mrs. Provost says. "I tried to save it. We also had a fabulous collection of early American and English silver -- to die for! And we had some lovely sideboards. Really good American antiques. And it was wonderful to have a sideboard. Well, the sideboard went."

That wasn't all. This past January, the museum shipped off its 6,000-volume art library as a gift to a local college, Montclair State University -- one of its many emergency actions, which include layoffs and reduced business hours, designed to shore up expenses. The museum says it also plans to sell its costume and rug collections and is determining what to do with its sizable Native American holdings.

By narrowing or "refining" a collection through deaccession, a museum can perform a valuable function. It can free up from storage work that may be second-rate or repetitive and return it to the marketplace, there to be purchased by an individual or institution that could make better use of it. A museum can furthermore raise money in a restricted endowment from the sale, to be used for the purchase of art that might better serve its mission. Peer-review organizations such as the Association of Art Museum Directors issue guidelines that define such acceptable practices. The AAMD also forbids museums from using the sale of art in their permanent collections to pay for general operating expenses or to underwrite loans with the art on the walls. Such rules are designed to prevent museums from treating their art collections as ATM machines, sources for fast money that should have been raised and managed in other ways.

Even before the economic downturn, however, museums had been finding ways around AAMD in a power struggle between directors and trustees, who want to unlock the value of their collections, and the museum-going public, which feels betrayed by the institutions that are designed to preserve and honor donations.

Museums have claimed, for example, that the art in their permanent collections suddenly does not fit their mission statements, even if the work has been on display for generations. Museums have decided that certain works of art are of secondary importance because they are rarely shown, although this record of exhibition may merely reflect the taste of the curators. Museums have also declared themselves to be schools or libraries, not bound by the rules of AAMD. As permanent collections have been put up for sale, the auction houses, of course, have only profited from the row.

In 2006 the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, N.Y., sold $68 million of its collection of older art in order to raise its endowment for contemporary work, claiming the older art did not fit its mission statement. In December the National Academy Museum in New York sold two valuable Hudson River School paintings to fill a budget gap, proclaiming its primary status as an art school. In a case earlier this year that attracted national attention, the trustees of Brandeis University in Waltham, Mass., announced plans to shut down the school's Rose Art Museum and sell off the entire collection to raise general revenue. Legislation now under consideration in New York state would codify AAMD's most basic recommendations into law, allowing for the possibility of greater enforcement.

On Nov. 20, 2008, the Association of American Museums issued a statement designed to protect our nation's permanent collections in times of crisis: "There is increasing pressure on museums to capitalize their collections and to use them as collateral for financial loans to the museum. The AAM Code of Ethics for Museums requires that collections be 'unencumbered,' which means that the collections cannot be used as collateral for a loan."

Yet while museums are forbidden from "capitalizing" their collections, or using the value of their art as collateral for a loan, nothing in the AAM or AAMD rules explicitly prevents museums from selling their art along certain subjective guidelines, earmarking that revenue for future acquisitions, and then using the endowment money raised from the sales to back their loans. In both cases, art in the permanent collection has been capitalized. By taking the extra step of selling the art first, however, museums avoid the censure of AAMD while still underwriting loans that may go to general operating expenses or the next vanity expansion project.

This dangerous gap in the guidelines -- one that puts our nation's permanent collections at risk -- the Montclair Art Museum now plans to exploit. In 2001, the museum undertook a massive $14.5 million expansion that more than doubled its size and saddled it with debt. Now, as its overall endowment has dipped 25%, to $6 million from $8 million, the museum risks not having enough cash on hand to back its loans. That's where this deaccession comes in -- to raise cash to satisfy the requirements of its bank bonds. What's most troubling is that nothing on the books is designed to stop it, even though Montclair is liquidating art in its permanent collection to raise the aggregate collateral for its loans -- precisely what AAMD claims to oppose.

In an interview, Lora Urbanelli, the new director of the Montclair Museum and a member of AAMD, is upfront about the exigencies of her deaccession: "We took out tax exempt bonds at a certain time in our history. And when you do that -- we are diligently paying them off -- but whenever you do that, as part of the agreement, you agree to have a certain amount on hand in an endowment fund. At times when our endowment is flagging, we go below that line. So this is a creative way to keep the endowment full and to stay above the water line to grow our endowment for acquisitions -- just so we are in the good graces with the bond covenants. All the bank wants to know is that the endowment is a healthy one for the size of the institution. There's nothing untoward. There is nothing to hide. The deaccessioning that we're about to do has been more or less in the works for years. What we're doing now is considering an acceleration of a process. . . . The AAMD sees no problem with the way we are handling this situation."

Ms. Urbanelli presents her deaccession as a convenient way to solve her museum's financial problems. AAMD may never have anticipated this particular case of cash for art, but Montclair is nevertheless overstepping a more basic tenet of ethical conduct. The "decision to deaccession a work of art," according to AAMD, "should not be made in reaction to the exigencies of a particular moment."

The exigencies in the Montclair care are reason alone to question the sales, not to "accelerate the process," as Ms. Urbanelli maintains. If allowed to proceed, a museum will have found another way to monetize its collection without consequence, exposing another failure in the way our arts institutions police themselves. "I'm not saying every one of those paintings is a masterpiece," Mrs. Provost, the former Montclair trustee, notes of the auction, "but I've been involved with voting a lot of those paintings in. And there's a reason for every painting." As one museum after another announces deaccession plans as done deals -- "accelerations of a process" that take advantage of lax regulations -- patrons such as Mrs. Provost are right to become concerned. Montclair gives us another reason to worry about a future of art in the public mistrust.

Unsentimental Education

ART & ANTIQUES
April 2009

Unsentimental Education
by James Panero

Brandeis University’s plan to deaccession its entire art museum causes a furor.

Brandeis The students of Brandeis University, in Waltham, Mass., have been enrolled in a crash course in museum ethics and the realities of the art market. On Jan. 26 the trustees voted unanimously to sell the permanent collection of the school's 48-year-old Rose Art Museum, which houses one of the finest collections of modern and contemporary art in New England, valued in 2006 at about $350 million.

Brandeis is facing financial difficulties—its endowment dropped from $712 million to $540 million in six months and several of the university's top supporters were victims of Bernard Madoff. Against the wishes of the museum's director, Michael Rush, and his board of advisers, the trustees identified what they thought would be a valuable and easily liquidated asset that was not essential to the university's core mission of education. "We don't want to be in the public museum business," explained president Jehuda Reinharz to The Boston Globe.

Since the Rose has functioned for nearly five decades as a teaching museum deeply integrated into the school's curriculum, Reinharz's critics have wondered out loud whether Brandeis intends to remain in the education business at all. "If Brandeis stands by its mission statement... then the Rose Art Museum is as important to the school as its library," wrote three high-profile curators who are Brandeis alums--the Nasher Museum's Kimberly Rorschach, the Metropolitan Museum's Gary Tinterow and the Whitney's Adam Weinberg--in an open letter to the university.

"Art cannot be treated as a liquid asset," says Rush. "History will record this as a desperate action that flies in the face of all intellectual and ethical standards." It would also be another alarming reminder to donors and patrons that museums can no longer be trusted as stewards of their own permanent collections.

Reinharz has attempted to weather the massive public relations backlash by admitting that he mishandled the announcement and by assuring his faculty and student body that there is no time-table for the sale of the art.

In the current economic climate, many observers have wondered if the proposed sale even makes economic sense, especially considering that most of the works are postwar and contemporary. At the top of the market, a few of the Rose's prime pieces--Andy Warhol's 1964 Saturday Disaster, Roy Lichtenstein's 1962 Forget It! Forget Me! and Robert Rauschenberg's 1961 Second Time--could have fetched tens of millions each.

Would a Rose sale realize much less than the 2006 valuation and adversely affect established price benchmarks? Not necessarily, says dealer Richard Feigen. "If the quality is what I think it is, particularly with that provenance, then it won't adversely affect the market. The whole art market hasn't turned down just for certain trendy contemporary art," he says. "Prices are still very high for things that are fresh to the market, like the Brandeis collection would be. There's money out there looking for a place to park and doesn't know where to go."

Yet even if Brandeis manages to cash in on its permanent collection, Feigen cautions, the damage to the institution would be just as permanent. "Were I a trustee I would be opposed to this. The museum is part of the character of the university and the fabric of patronage in this country. The paintings won't be recoverable, nor will Brandeis be able to recover its reputation."