March 15, 2009
The Art Of Survival
Can A Struggling Cultural Institution Sell Its Artwork To Balance Its Books? Some Say No
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Paintings in storage at the National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts include this self-portrait by Thomas Eakins. Sorry, it's not for sale. (CBS)
Sunday Morning presents stories with currency about the financial state of our world.
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- Jump-Starting The Electric Car Dream
- Millionaires-In-Chief
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- Suze Orman: What To Do Now
- And Who Was Ponzi?
Editor's Note: Due to a error in transcription, a misattribution about Brandeis President Yehuda Reinharz's decision to sell items from the Rose Art Museum was made in the original posting of the video report's transcript. CBSNews.com regrets the error.
The good news is that Brandeis University's collection of contemporary art is considered one of the best in New England.
"We have at least twenty works of art that are worth tens and tens of millions of dollars," said Michael Rush, director of the university's Rose Art Museum.
That could also be the bad news, with the university facing a $10 million operating deficit, and its endowment worth 25 percent less than a year ago.
"Let's say you could sell it all tomorrow," Martha Teichner asked. "What would you get for it?"
"$175 million, probably more," Rush said.
"Sell it" was exactly what Brandeis President Yehuda Reinharz said he intended to do in order to plug its financial hole. He announced the move January 26.
"This is probably the most difficult decision I've made in 15 years," he said.
The response: A flood of criticism, an emotional town hall meeting, and campus protests that are still ongoing.
"I think that art should be treated greater than a commodity," said student organizer Brian Friedberg.
So is it right or wrong to sell the art to survive, especially given the current financial landscape?
"We just don't believe that selling the picture is the answer," said William Eiland, ethics enforcer for the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), a powerful, art-world watchdog group.
"That's why our policy was made for just these times, when we have this kind of economy, and it is to shore us up in our resolve to protect those collections."
Their position: The only legitimate reason to sell is to buy more art.
"That is just an absolute," Eiland said. "It is an unambiguous policy."
The AAMD can punish members for breaches of its standards, as the National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts in New York City found out the hard way …
Carmine Branagan, director of the National Academy, said, "It puts any institution in a very, very, very difficult situation."
"So, you're utterly isolated?" Teichner asked.
"Utterly isolated. Not only can we not receive loans, we cannot send out loans."
Tucked away in an elegant old mansion, the National Academy was founded 184 years ago by artists. To be selected for membership has always been a huge honor.
"So over the last 184 years, as members have been voted in, they give a piece of their work," Branagan said, "thus creating a living historic document of the history of American Art."
And some of that legacy sits in storage, as Branagan showed Teichner a Thomas Eakins self-portrait. "So, all of this work here will remain here and will not be available to the public at all unless we put it out."
"So, it's here in storage, or on your walls or … nothing?" Teichner asked.
"Yes, that's correct," Branagan said.
But facing nearly two and a half million dollars in debts, late last year the Academy decided to do what it's done twice before to bail itself out: sell works from its collection. Its artist members … yes, artists themselves … voted to sell two paintings to cover operating costs.
"It really, in your opinion, came down to, we will close the doors if we don't sell these paintings," Tecihner said.
"Yes."
"And how much was raised by the sale?"
"$13.5 million," said Branagan.
Last Wednesday, it was announced the Academy had agreed to meet AAMD demands. The planned sale of two additional paintings was off.
"No grey area in a bad economy?" Teichner asked.
"No, no," Eiland said. "Once you begin using the collection, of collateralizing the collection, of making it a fungible asset, then it's a slope that is so slippery that you don't wanna go down it."
Which brings us back to Brandeis, where President Jehuda Reinharz is now backtracking, sort of.
The Rose, he says, will remain open, but here's the catch: probably as a student gallery and classroom space, not a museum. The university still says it might have "to sell some artworks."
"Well, it's all about priorities, isn't it? It's, what do you value most?" said prominent Boston attorney Ralph Martin, who graduated from Brandeis, taught there and has been on the Board of Trustees.
"We've frozen salaries, we have a hiring freeze, we've cut expenses. If one of the compromises you're prepared to make is we may have to sell some select works of art, I think most of the community, I think they'll understand that."
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- Art has been becoming a commodity for many years now. When organized crime syndicates use stolen art as collateral for their business deals, what else can you call it. In hard economic times, that's what it becomes to people in financial straights. This isn't anything new. The art market is full of speculators, who buy art just to turn around and sell it for profit. After all, isn't that how dealers run their businesses? To think art is strictly for cultural appreciation is unfortunately very naive. I'm not saying it's right, but that's the reality, and has been for years. If there wasn't money to be made, there would be no black market in plundered cultural materials from nations around the world. Most museums use the term deaccessioning these days when they want to make money by selling off pieces. It's a nice term, but it means selling for financial gain. I see this trend as accelerating in this economic climate. Let's just hope the art doesn't disappear into a private collection, never to be seen by the public again. I think that's the best you can hope for.
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- There's a late-breaking development in the Rose Art Museum saga---the eponymous Rose Family's united condemnation of any weakening of the museum through art sales or mission changes---as reported today on my CultureGrrl blog: http://www.artsjournal.com/culturegrrl/2009/03/more_than_50_rose_family_membe.html
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- Your story reveals that, if one wanted to understand why the President of Brandeis and its Board of Trustees see the art that has been donated to them as a cash cow rather than a precious cultural heritage to be preserved, one need look no further than the present director of the Rose Art Museum, Michael Rush. When asked to explain the significance of the modern works in the Rose's collection, Rush's sole and only answer was that they are worth tens of millions of dollars. Absent entirely from his statement--and, it seems, from his consciousness--is any sense of their cultural importance, their place in modernism, how they advance our understanding of art in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and what it will mean to future scholars and art lovers to have that collection preserved. Similarly, the one Brandeis trustee who was interviewed--Ralph Martin--who has rightly gained wide respect for his endeavors in other areas, showed no understanding of what this art means beyond, again, its cash aspect. When one thinks of the high ideals to which Brandeis was dedicated and those who have gone before, it is truly a shame that at this time those in charge seem focused entirely on the cash nexus and nothing else.
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