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Category: Albert Bierstadt

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$2 billion in art distributed for free

The Corcoran’s demise is a sad reminder that many cultural institutions in America skitter on the brink of insolvency.

Simplon Pass, 1911, John Singer Sargent, has gone to the National Gallery.

In 2014, the board of trustees for the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, announced that they were closing that venerable institution and offering its assets—for free—to other agencies to manage. That meant its school, its Beaux Arts building, and its collection would all be given away. The assets were staggering, somewhere around $2 billion, and somehow the money machine would be kept out of the process.
This week the deal became final, with the Corcoran board announcingthe dispensation of the final 11,000 artworks. (The National Gallery had first dibs and took about 40% of the collection.) The art school, the building, and about 800 works go to George Washington University. Much of the rest of the collection is headed to the American University Museum, with the Smithsonian American Art Museum and other institutions rounding out the list. The art will stay in Washington, in the public view.
Niagara, 1857, by Frederic Edwin Church, has gone to the National Gallery.
The Corcoran was one of America’s oldest art museums, founded to house the private collection of a 19th century financier, William Wilson Corcoran. Doing nothing by half-measures, Corcoran hired James Renwick, designer of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York and the Smithsonian ‘Castle’ in Washington, to build his museum.
Corcoran made his fortune on war bonds and retired to a life of philanthropy by 1854. His good works were legion. They included the land and chapel for Oak Hill Cemetery, a benevolent fund for the poor of Georgetown, innumerable gifts to universities, and securing Mount Vernonfor the nation. He was also a southern sympathizer who left for Paris at the outbreak of war.
Forty-two Kids, 1907, George Bellows, has gone to the National Gallery.
Corcoran was also an early patron of American art. He counted painters Albert Bierstadt, Frederic Edwin Church, Thomas Doughty, and George Innessamong his friends. The Corcoran was established in 1869. Its School of Art was founded in 1878.
Fast forward a century and Corcoran’s vision was showing signs of financial strain. “When news broke that Board was considering selling the building, it felt like every conversation I had placed the beginning of the Museum’s decline to an earlier and earlier point,” wrote Blair Murphy. “One D.C. artist I spoke with argued that the Museum had never recovered from declining to purchase the collection of the shuttered Washington Gallery of Modern Art. That was in 1968.”
Ground swell, 1939, Edward Hopper, has gone to the National Gallery.
In 1989, the gallery agreed to host Robert Mapplethorpe’s The Perfect Moment. Worse, it cancelled the show when trustees and supporters voiced opposition. A change in leadership staved off bankruptcy temporarily. But history conspired against the institution. Rerouted traffic after 9/11 made it harder to get to. In 2005, the museum was unable to raise funds for a highly-touted addition by Frank Gehry. The financial crisis of 2008 hit cultural institutions hard. Giving to the Corcoran fell off sharply.
The Last of the Buffalo, 1888, Albert Bierstadt, has gone to the National Gallery.
Washington is a city of free, government-subsidized museums. The Corcoran was neither. By the end, in 2014, the admission fee was $10. Why pay that when there are so many other options that cost nothing?
The Corcoran’s demise is a sad reminder that many cultural institutions in America skitter on the brink of insolvency. What do we do about that?
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Dedicated followers of fashion

Selling two Norman Rockwell paintings isn’t going to fix the Berkshire Museum’s woes.
Shuffleton’s Barbershop, 1950, by Norman Rockwell, is expected to net $20-30 million.
Growing up in the Rust Belt, I’ve seen the sad effect of poverty on cultural institutions. The Milestones of Science was a collection of rare manuscripts by American scientists, assembled by the Buffalo Museum of Sciencein the 1930s. By 1994, the museum was skint. A trade was devised with the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library. The library would get The Milestonesin exchange for a Birds of America folio by John James Audubon. That would then be sold.
The resulting uproar wasn’t just about the Audubon leaving Buffalo; it was about the inevitable fate of those folios when they leave museums: they get separated and sold plate-by-plate to rich collectors.
In 2013, Detroit tried to sell works from the Detroit Institute of Art to pull the city out of debt. The Attorney General stopped the sale.
To choose between essential city services and one’s art museum, or between branch libraries and a rare book, is not easy. I have great sympathy for the people forced into these situations.
Giant Redwood Trees of California, 1874, by Albert Bierstadt, is expected to net $1.5-2.5 million.
But there’s another situation in which museums sell art. That’s when the trustees are jonesing for expansion or change. In 2007, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery sent more than 100 antiquities to Sotheby’s for auction. These were works of Chinese, African, Indian, South American and ancient Roman provenance, and the trustees needed the money to buy more contemporary art. It happened in 2014, when the Delaware Art Museum flogged paintings by Winslow Homer and Andrew Wyeth to get out of the hole from its 2005 expansion.
The latest museum to propose this is the Berkshire Museum in Pittsfield, MA. It plans to auction off twenty pieces, including works by Norman Rockwell, Alexander Calder, Albert Bierstadt, and George Henry Durrie. Their $60 million “reinvention plan” involves “the creation of an exciting new interdisciplinary Museum, with a heightened emphasis on science and history,” as well as “a bold financial strategy” to shore up the museum’s tottering finances.
First, someone shoot that copywriter.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like they want to make a miniature version of Rochester’s Strong Museum of Play or the Ontario Science Centre. These started as museums but are now kiddie entertainment centers.
“Two of the works the Museum is currently planning to sell are important paintings by Norman Rockwell, given by the artist to the people of Pittsfield. These works were entrusted by Rockwell to the Museum for safe-keeping and to share with the public. The other works proposed for sale are by many noted artists from America and around the world. If these works are indeed sold, it would be an irredeemable loss for the present and for generations to come,” wrote the American Alliance of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors.
Blacksmith’s Boy—Heel and Toe, 1970, by Norman Rockwell, is expected to fetch $7-10 million. 
The Rockwell family has noted that Shuffleton’s Barbershipwas received by the museum in 1958 as a gift from the artist for their “permanent collection.”
Sometimes it seems like the custodians of our cultural treasures have a pessimistic view of the public they serve. We’re not all fixated on entertainment. A failing museum may blame changing public tastes, but that probably isn’t their problem. It might be terrible lighting, a lack of good programming, bad ventilation, lousy interpretation, or any of a whole host of things that can mar the museum experience. These don’t require reinvention, and they don’t cost a fortune to fix.
The Berkshire Museum is located in a region of fine museums, including MASS MoCA, the Clark Art Institute, and the Norman Rockwell Museum. They ought to be able to draw visitors from a wide regional pool. If they’re not, the problem isn’t the founders’ vision, it’s the current management.