Wall Street Journal 08/22/08
Stripping the Walls to Cover the Bills

By ERIC GIBSON
August 22, 2008; Page W13

Among the casualties of this spring's Midwestern floods was the University of Iowa Museum of Art, which was inundated on June 6. Fortunately, most of the collection was evacuated beforehand, including the museum's most important work, Jackson Pollock's 1943 "Mural." (Objects that couldn't be taken offsite were moved out of harm's way to another part of the museum.)

Normally the story would have ended there. But on Aug. 8, two local papers, the Des Moines Register and the Iowa Press-Citizen, reported that University Regent Michael Gartner, supported by the entire board, proposed having the Pollock appraised just in case it needed to be sold to cover the cost of repairs to the arts campus (damages have been estimated at $16 million). As Mr. Gartner coyly explained to the Register: "I'm not proposing the painting be sold, but I'm proposing we look to see that if the painting were sold (how much it would bring.)"

University of Iowa Museum of Art
The University of Iowa Board of Regents may sell Jackson Pollock's "Mural" (1943) to defray the costs of flood damage.
Any museum would be happy to own a painting by Pollock, but this one is a particularly rich prize. It's a pivotal work in the artist's career, prefiguring in its size and imagery his signature "drip" paintings of a few years later. Selling it would deprive the museum of its crown jewel. Doing so would also break a cardinal rule in the museum profession -- that works of art can be sold ("deaccessioned") only to purchase other works of art and never to cover operating expenses. It would also violate the intent of the original donor of the work. "Mural" was given to the museum in 1951 by Peggy Guggenheim -- Pollock's patron and dealer and the person who commissioned the painting.

The news of a potential sale set off a firestorm of protest. Iowa Lt. Gov. Patty Judge told the Register that "selling off our assets that we probably could never purchase again would not be something I would like to see happen." The issue was quickly taken up by the blogosphere, with Tyler Green of Modern Art Notes and Lee Rosenbaum of CultureGrrl keeping it alive.
Laurie Fendrich, a columnist for the Chronicle of Higher Education, weighed in too, calling on the university to "back away from plucking the tempting apple hanging in its garden." Works of art "were never meant to be commodities," she continued, but are "placed in the trust of college and university museums for future generations to ponder." Editorials ran in the Register and Press-Citizen denouncing any sale, and the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) sent a letter to David W. Miles, president of the University of Iowa's Board of Regents, calling the idea of selling the Pollock "alarming."

That the museum directors not only took a forceful position on the debate but did so early on was particularly welcome, since when it comes to the issues of donor intent and deaccessioning, the association has in the past usually weighed in late or not at all. The most notorious example of its see-no-evil posture involves the Barnes Foundation outside Philadelphia, whose trove of Post-Impressionist and Modern masterpieces is about to be dismantled and reinstalled in downtown Philadelphia, in direct contravention of the testamentary wishes of founder Dr. Albert C. Barnes. Even though the Barnes case is the most egregious violation of this kind and an officer of a member institution, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is aiding and abetting in this action, the association has still not been heard from.

There is also a certain irony in the association's intervention now. Mr. Gartner and his fellow Iowa regents are not art professionals, so where could they have gotten the idea that the solution to a museum's cash crunch is to sell off parts of its collection? Perhaps by watching the members of the Association of Art Museum Directors. In the past several years, the nation's museums have been strip-mining their collections to raise funds that, by rights, they should be soliciting from donors. To be sure, they have been selling art to buy art. But in most cases (as with Buffalo's Albright-Knox Gallery last year) they have been selling of precious masterpieces to purchase contemporary works whose long-term significance is, at best, unknown.

The point is, museum officials have come to regard the objects under their care as financial instruments and are finding ever-more-innovative ways to milk their equity. The latest approach to creative financing was rolled out in April by the Denver Art Museum. To purchase a painting by Thomas Eakins, the museum accepted a donation from collector Philip Anschutz, and, in exchange, it gave him a 50% ownership stake in that work and as well as in a major work already in the collection.

With luck, the chorus of condemnation will forestall any Pollock sale by the University of Iowa. But the larger question remains: How can we turn back the tide of reckless capitalization of museum collections? A sentence buried in the Association of Art Museum Directors' letter to the president of the Board of Regents suggested a possible solution. It warned that the museum's "competitive edge in winning grant awards in the field of visual arts" could be harmed by deaccessioning the Pollock. It was unclear from that passage whether the association was threatening the University of Iowa with sanctions, but the idea has a certain appeal.

Perhaps the time has come for both the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities to start enforcing professional standards as well as making grants. They can have a powerful effect not only because of the money they dispense but also because other sources of funding follow their lead. Let the NEA and NEH start withholding support from museums that are so cavalier about their trusteeship responsibilities. If you can raise money by selling what's on your walls, why do you need a handout from Uncle Sam?
Mr. Gibson is the Journal's Leisure & Arts features editor.