For background on this post, please see my previous post: Eakins’ The Gross Clinic - Held for Ransom?.
It looked as if the potentially tragic loss to Philadelphia of the Thomas Eakins materspiece by clandestine sale to Wal-Mart heiress Alice Walton, for her artificial island of culture in Arkansas, The Crystal Bridges Museum, was going to be avoided. Prompted by outrage among the local art community, city leaders and the ranks of their own students, teachers and alumni, Thomas Jefferson University’s board of directors agreed to delay their “get-capital-quick” scheme for long enough for other city institutions to cough up their ransom demands and raise $68 million to purchase the painting and keep it here in Philadelphia.
The Philadelphia Museum of Art and my old alma mater, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, where Eakins studied and taught (see my post on Thomas Eakins), sponsored a joint fund-raising campaign to allow The Gross Clinic to stay in the city and be jointly owned by the PMA and the Academy’s Museum of American Art.
Unfortunately, there is further fallout and the attempt to keep one great painting in the city has resulted the loss of another.
In order to meet the Jefferson board’s deadline, the museums arranged a loan through Wachovia bank to secure the painting. The fundraising campaign has fallen short, however, and has lost its momentum. The Academy may have stepped in a little over its head on this one, and has just announced the hasty and unfortunate sale of another great Eakins work, The Cello Player, to an unnamed private individual to help cover their share of the debt.
The Cello Player can be considered a “lesser work” than The Gross Clinic, which is one of the acknowledged masterpieces of American art, but it is a beautiful painting and is certainly the finest of the Academy’s three finished Eakins paintings. The purchaser has apparently promised to loan the painting back to the Academy for display to some degree, but there is no disclosure of who has bought the painting or where it will eventually go.
Herbert Riband, the vice chair of the board of the Academy has promised that the buyer is not Alice “I wanna buy me sum Kulture” Walton [my words, not his], but he also states the the Academy doesn’t know the identity of the purchaser and is making that statement on the word of an intermediary who is evidently brokering the sale.
For more interesting detail on the matter, see Lee Rosenbaum’s post on on the subject on her CultureGrrl blog (part of the Arts Journal site). Rosenbaum was on Radio Times with Marty Moss-Coane this morning on WHYY, the Public Radio affiliate here in Philadelphia (when you follow the link, filter for February 5, 2007, it’s in Hour 2). If you’re at all interested in the issue of the “de-acquisition” of works by museums and other public institutions, or this instance specifically, this program makes a fascinating listen. There are three guests, but Rosenbaum in particular is articulate and fascinating (makes me kind of wish she had her own radio show or podcast).
As Rosenbaum points out, this incident raises all kind of disturbing questions about who has the right to make these decisions about important works that are part of the cultural heritage of institutions and cities. Yes, museums “own” their works, except those on loan, and, barring stipulations made on gifts and bequests, can legally sell them; but these institutions exist partially on the basis of tax breaks and operating subsidies paid for with our tax dollars, (as well as our contributions) so in a real, as well as cultural sense, the public also “owns” these works.
To my mind, that’s one of the reasons we support our museums; so great paintings like The Gross Clinic and The Cello Player can be displayed in the cities where they have been a part of the cultural legacy for hundreds of years, and their fate is not left to the egotistical whims of priveledged megalomaniacs who need to make themselves feel cultured by robbing the treasures of other cities, or self-serving members of institutional boards (I’m talking about Jefferson’s board here, not the Academy’s) who treat those treasures like grist for expedient garage sales, simply because they’re too lazy to do actual work of fund raising.
I’m from “buy me sum culture northwest arkansas” and I resent the attitude. Maybe Alice Walton has helped the Philadelphia public realize what they value? If they let treasures slip away to us, we will have a beautiful museum they can visit.
Karen,
I’m sorry you interpreted my comments that way. My vitriol is aimed directly at Walton, not at Arkansas. I’m not one of those East coast snobs who feels that culture can’t exist in the central states.
Though I’ve never been to Arkansas, I lived in Texas for a while, (and liked it very much) and I know that the museums in Houston and Dallas house some great works. Nor am I a snob regarding large museums; I am, in fact a great fan of small museums, and constantly extol the virtues of the one I grew up visiting in Delaware.
My comment about “…her artificial island of culture in Arkansas…”, refers to the fact that Walton is attempting to build a cultural edifice out of thin air, rather than allowing one to grow naturally out of years of careful collecting in the more traditional manner. The reference to Arkansas was just incidental information about where her little artifice is located.
Even the intention to build a museum out of nothing is not what I object to so much, because it is theoretically possible to do that without engaging in the kind of practices that Walton is using.
What I do object to, passionately, is the attitude of Walton, and other spoiled, privileged scions of wealthy families, who think they can “get me sum Kulture” (with a capital “K”) by using corporate raider tactics to strip other institutions of their works instead of devoting the time, energy and cultured study necessary to become a true collector. It’s the brute force application of her wealth (which I consider ill-earned because of Wal-mart’s reprehensible business practices) that I object to; not the location of her museum. So please don’t think I’m denigrating Arkansas or the midwest.
On the other hand, if you in any way, shape or form admire Alice Walton or other corporate raider style art vultures, or the predatory anti-small business practices of Wal-Mart, you can feel entirely justified in being as pissed off at me as you like.
I’ve been to Arkansas a number of times, lived for 20 years in Oklahoma and am a native Texan. I took no offense in your comments because I understood exactly your objection to Alice Walton and her “corporate raider” style of Kulture gettin’.
I would simply add that this is another example of the “Wal-mart-ification” of the world: Make boatloads of money by exploiting the poor, use that money as leverage to arrange the world into your own personal idea of nirvana and take no thought as to how your actions further deprive others of their freedoms, blessings and opportunities.
The people of Philidelphia –nay– the public at large have every right to be incensed at the actions of this individual.
Interesting because we have some debats in France on similar problems.
It might be useful to remember that long before Alice Walton there were collectors like Henry Clay Frick who brought over entire rooms full of murals by European artists to fill up his Manhattan mansion. And centuries before Frick, the Archduke Leopold brought cartloads of Italian paintings to Antwerp in the early 1600s. Every generation has its super-rich who import what cultural masterpieces they can to wherever they like. Centuries later the Greeks want the Elgin marbles back and the Italians are banging at the door of the Getty. This has always gone on, Alice Walton is not some villainess born of this century and neither is she a hero preserving cultural masterpieces that would otherwise disappear. I do think that the art and museum world is in danger of succumbing to a kind of political correctness that is unwarranted. At the risk of being shouted off the web I’ll offer the opinion that even if BOTH the Cello Player and the Gross clinic left Philadelphia, the city would remain the one pilgrimage of choice for any Eakins fan, with far more masterpieces by him than anywhere else. And let’s not confuse Jefferson College with a museum. Their mission is not the same and even our greatest museums “deaccession” great works all the time just to keep going.