Everyone's talking about Randolph College, whose Maier Museum art collection, if you'll recall, is on Alice Wanton's shopping list:
In related news, the state of Tennessee ruled that Fisk University can't sell its collection to the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum when there's a better offer on the table from Crystal Bridges. However, before Fisk University can proceed with the sale to Walton, it must prove in a separate case that it did not forfeit its hold on the Stieglitz collection entirely by violating the terms of O'Keeffe's original bequest, which mandated specific guidelines for displaying and maintaining the collection. Diverse has the detailed report.
Time's Richard Lacayo writes about Alice Walton's offer to Fisk University for its Stieglitz works and asks the right questions about joint custody:
Whether it happens or not, these sharing arrangements are getting to be an ever more common proposal for cash-strapped colleges looking to turn their art collections into revenue. But the deals leave open a lot of unanswered questions. Here's just one. If Walton's offer were accepted by Fisk, would her museum be allowed to lend works from the Stieglitz bequest to other museums? Would Fisk have any say over where the works could travel? When institutions "share" collections, who makes the rules? My guess would be the partner with the checkbook.Furthermore, is Fisk allowed to travel the collection (if their future financial situation made that a possibility)? Who restores the works, if restoration is ever necessary? Insurance—who pays for that? Do students and scholars working with Fisk University have access to the works (and associated research materials) when they're off campus?
These aren't impossible questions to navigate. And money isn't a question for Crystal Bridges. But though it's a fifty-fifty split, the two interests aren't approaching it as symmetric partners.
Jonathan Marx reports in The Dickson Herald that Alice Walton "has offered to purchase a 50-percent share in Fisk University's Alfred Stieglitz Collection."
That introduces a fourth party to a table where negotiations are already in play. Previously, Fisk University earned opprobrium from both the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum and Tennessee Attorney General Robert Cooper for rushing to deaccession works from the Stieglitz collection, which contains 101 paintings and photographs. The two most notable (and valuable) works in the collection are O'Keefe's Radiator Building—Night, New York (1927) and Marsden Hartley's Painting No. 3 (1913). Time's Richard Lacayo surveys the controversy:
In 2005 the school's president, Hazel O'Leary, came up with an idea that could not only pay to renovate the frayed campus gallery where the Stieglitz Collection has languished but also pump millions of dollars into Fisk's general budget. Why not sell off just a bit of that famous art? But when the school moved to bring Radiator Building to market, it triggered what became a lawsuit by the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, N.M., which moved to block the sale on the grounds that it violated the terms of the painter's bequest. In February the museum offered Fisk a deal. It could sell Radiator Building, but only to the museum, and for $7 million, a price much below what it would go for in the current art market. If Fisk said yes, the museum promised not to block the sale of another painting from the collection, a Marsden Hartley, on the open market. Fisk said yes.That hearing is planned for September 6, and the parties will determine whether the university can move forward with the settlement agreement that is already in play (i.e., the deal between the O'Keeffe estate and Fisk). If the court rejects the O'Keeffe Museum settlement, Fisk University officials may then consider Walton's offer.That was where things stood until April 5, when Tennessee attorney general Robert Cooper, whose office has the power to approve or disapprove charitable arrangements, rejected the arranged sale because of the difference between $7 million and what Fisk could get on the open market. Now lawyers for both sides plan to sit down in a judge's chambers to see if a new deal can be worked out.
Given the chance, should they? Walton's $30-million offer for the collection is always-low-prices territory—though the institutions would be going halfsies. I have criticized repeatedly Walton's collecting practices: Crystal Bridges is bolstered by an unfair, sweetheart sales-tax exemption from the state of Arkansas that applies only to Crystal Bridges acquisitions. When the Crystal Bridges collection is finally realized, it will tell the story of bent or broken bequests and money always trumping art's best interest. Given the history, I am not moved by Walton's plea to donor intent. An excerpt from her letter published by The Tennessean:
We believe there is a creative way to honor Ms. O'Keeffe's desire to keep the collection intact and on permanent public display both in Nashville and at Crystal Bridges; and to provide significant financial support to one of the nation's most historic and important institutions of higher learning.That was not a sentiment she harbored, apparently, when she made offers to buy and remove Philly-unique Eakins paintings from the city's financially strapped art institutions.
That said, Fisk doesn't have many great alternatives. I agree with Tyler Green: The best thing for the Stieglitz Collection would be a long-term loan to the Frist, where the collection has been stored since 2005 anyway. That's a decision in the best interest of the art, the academy, and the community—but it's not in Fisk's best financial interest. The arrangement that the Fisk is currently hashing out in court would split the collection, with the O'Keeffe going to the estate (for cheap), the Hartley going to market (perhaps to Walton?), and the other 99 works staying at Fisk (for now?). On the face of it, Walton's deal seems like the better offer.
As Lee Rosenbaum noted back in April, the state of Tennessee is the only institution that seems to have the public's best interest at heart. It is discouraging that the Fisk has tried to part with its best bequests at bargain-basement prices. In this case, when the community did not rally to preserve these works for Tennessee, Tennessee has at least argued that the community shouldn't get stiffed on the deal.
UPDATE: Lee Rosenbaum: "I am not one of those who have criticized Alice Walton for buying important works from the collections of cultural institutions. [ . . . ] But now, Alice has exceeded the limits of my tolerance."
Newsweek's Cathleen McGuigan phones in a report on Crystal Bridges, asking why art critics and patrons are so unnerved by Alice Walton's art-world maneuvering. Why does Walton's money scare people? Why not ask Laura Katzman—the director of museum studies at the Randolph-Macon Woman's College's Maier Museum, who resigned in protest from her tenured position after Walton's shopping-trip visit to the museum?
McGuigan writes that "locals can get jumpy", citing local news reports issued "supposedly because [Walton] was checking out the fine collection at Randolph-Macon College's Maier Museum of Art". (The story's significance expands beyond the purview of the art world. Here's the short version: Recognizing that single-sex schools don't compete in higher education today, Randolph-Macon Woman's College decides—rather quietly—to admit men. The school promises angry students and alumni that the university won't be forced to sell assets or its character with the transition. However, in the wake of an alumni backlash over the sex change and the school's secretiveness—a backlash that cost the school big time—the university starts to look to its assets for sources of income. It badly needs to replenish endowment spending, which has gotten so out of hand the school's accreditation is at risk, without alarming alumni even more. Hence, an audit recommending that the university sell its art collection; hence, a visit from Walton.)
It's not wrong that the lion prowls the savannah after the wounded antelope (as a friend likens Walton), but it's not better for these institutions—the Maier, the whole city of Philadelphia—that Walton arrives to buy art but not to support art institutions. Notes the Richmond Times Dispatch:
"One of the things that's frustrating is the continual talk of it as an asset," said junior Emily Knoble, a studio art major from Tucson, Ariz. "They're talking dollars and cents instead of creativity and inspiration and culture."Right: Critics like me and educators like Katzman get nervous because institutions start talking very institutionally when a baroness like Walton on hand, as if their decisions affected Excel spreadsheets more than their communities and constituencies.
Finally—and this gets ignored in favor of deliberations about aesthetics and acquisitions—but it should be said every time Walton makes any purchase that she benefits from a ludicrous tax giveaway written for Crystal Bridges by the Arkansas state legislature.
You know it's bad news that Alice Walton is visiting your museum when officials refuse to confirm or deny her visit. Smaller museums don't typically shuttle major collectors in through the back door under cloak of night.
After a Maier Museum of Art insider tipped her off to the trip, diligent reporter Christa Desrets checked flight records at the private-jet terminal at Lynchburg's airport. A twenty million–dollar jet flying from and later returning to Mineral Wells, Texas (Walton's home)? The Crystal Bridges logo (pictured above) couldn't make it any clearer.
What's so wrong with Walton dropping in? Nothing, per se—it's the museum who's treating her like she's poison. Perhaps they know as well as I do that it's bad museum policy to start thinking about deaccession only after a deep-pocketed baron expresses interest in something in the collection. That would be something to be ashamed about, though it's far from clear that anything of the sort is going on.
