Museum Directors Narrowly Reject "Collection Monetization"
Tyler Green is reporting that the Association of Art Museum Directors has narrowly rejected a motion to make permanent a pandemic rule allowing museums to sell art in order to raise funds for "expenses associated with the direct care of the collections." This vaguely worded rule, set to expire Apr. 2022, has been generally condemned, except by the museum directors invoking it.
The vote was narrow, 91 to 88, with 44 not voting. Writes Green: "88 art museum directors voted to monetize collections across the entire sector. They lost by only 3 votes. Expect them to come back - and expect significant sales from art museum collections between now and April 2022."
Shown: Helen Frankenthaler's Carousel (1979), the high point of the Palm Springs Art Museum's painting collection until it was sold last year under the AAMD rule.
Comments
Let them eat cake.
You too, LACMA board of trustees.
Then, they took umbrage at being cut out of the process because they were uncivil.
Crazy!!!
Film at eleven.
That's $650 million more than the penniless Save-LACMA mob had to spend on its campaign to stop the Zumthor building.
No film at eleven because no one cares.
Our relationship is worth way more than $650 million.
Who do you think I am? Just another cheap tramp from Switzerland?
If you don't fork over way more, I'm going back home to mother.
Let the man be. We have learned this year a lot of hate can go a long way for nothing—there is only one mob worth the title—so just a little bit of disgust from bewilderment at how an institution can fall on its face twice in sixty years is probably not a bad sign. Yes, you are no doubt resolved to the whale in the sky gallery and a director whose heartfelt concern about too many stairs seems genuine. The radical arsonist with a regard for every exhausted paying customer is an attractive resume builder but not everyone is buying it.
From 60s reactionary ‘I know better’ trustees to the new and improved asleep at the wheel rubber stampers clearly there is no progress for some county institutions, though movie stars as salesmen was a wise move and, extra bonus, it made the board of supervisors happy. Perhaps more disingenuous than one would like to see in a director (after all he’s not a governor), the muddled distractions and stretching of the facts (‘it’s just like the convention center’) almost reminds one of other headstrong fearless leaders and makes our patient even less sure of himself.
So yes, you are right, it’s coming. We can already see the billboards: ‘You’ll feel just like Ruskin climbing Mt Blanc enjoying panoramic views of the city and a vision so visionary even New York critics are ecstatic. And with only the best art horizontally organized with every work contextualized inside concrete boxes by a leaner, harder working curatorial staff dedicated to the longest encyclopedia ever. Come see and learn.’ Most likely more like Frankenstein if you have to take the stairs. Pardon our chuckles when after years of ‘intensive study’ it is all too expensive and the architect is Utzon-ed out—the love affair will finally evaporate—for not working hard enough low these dozen or so past years. On that one the director will be a man of his word.
All the while, in perhaps half the time, Houston opened up their very own MoMA across from the MFA by Mies himself—LA having missed out Irving way back when—both across from Moneo’s anchor building...and a building, not a basement, for art restoration...and a refurbished Noguchi sculpture garden (not under any building)...and an addition to the art school next door. And down the street, the Menil campus, home to the finest American art collection of the second half of the twentieth century recently added a fine new building for their drawing collection by LA’s own Johnston Marklee, next to Piano’s Twomblyland. Even those folks on the west side mountain top cannot manage their own building for drawings.
And yet you are surprised our man is distressed, distraught and wonders why these bizarre museum horror stories keep repeating themselves in his backyard. It’s got to be a dream...maybe yours, not ours. He promises to take his medicine and maybe even go forward all Jonah like if you all will please, please lighten up and just try to imagine that success does not always follow from the Tom Krens school of museum facilities management, where our fair boy diligently learned his ABCs, and where students are taught only the next most outrageous idea is worth pursuing. Such as insisting, even with the best of do-goodism intentions, that your building be configured such that it will not fit on your site. Now that is conceptual architecture.