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Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind Laurie Fendrich

Sell the Pollock?

In his last couple of posts on his blog, Modern Art Notes, Tyler Green has been following the story prompted by the suggestion, made by some regents at the University of Iowa, that the university sell Mural, its 1943 Jackson Pollock masterpiece. The painting, given to the University of Iowa’s Museum of Art by Peggy Guggenheim in 1959, defines the collection of UIMA. It’s an iconic work of art, marking the pivotal moment in Pollock’s career when he invented a radical new kind of pictorial space — the “all-over” painting.

With UI facing repairs for the damage to its campus caused by the June floods, estimated to cost well over $200-million, a painting like the Pollock must be an awfully tempting goodie. UI regent (and former NBC News president) Michael Gartner’s words were ominously simple, however. He said he wanted to know the value of the painting, adding that he wasn’t “proposing the painting be sold, but that it would be good for the regents and the university to be aware of what options are out there as UI faces major expenses in flood recovery.”

Huh? What’s the point in finding out the value if not to sell it? The museum already knows its insurance value ($100-million). Obviously the question was aimed at finding out what it would bring at auction, and was greeted with outrage by the museum and its supporters.

Many students and faculty members don’t even know whether or not their college or university has an art museum. But for anyone the least bit interested in art, a college art museum offers the chance to fall in love with a painting in between classes, or study original works of art, in the flesh, while taking art courses. Some colleges and universities possess astonishing collections — Smith, Williams, Harvard and Yale, for example. Iowa’s collection, though not on this level, is solid. More to the point, its Pollock is a single, incalculably great treasure.

Perhaps UI will back away from plucking the tempting apple hanging in its garden. It should remind itself that its museum is a member of the AAM (American Association of Museums), and must abide by the rules regarding deaccessioning a work of art from a collection. The AAM permits deaccessioning only under the strictest guidelines, and requires any money earned from a deaccessioned work to be applied only to the acquisition of new works of art.

The university should take a long, hard look at what their mission is, in the long run, even as they face the terrible problems caused by the floods. Works of art in college and university museums were never meant to be commodities. Instead, they are objects testifying to the meaning of our culture that were placed in the trust of college and university museums for future generations to ponder. It’s imperative that they never break that trust.

Posted at 11:17:51 AM on August 12, 2008 | All postings by Laurie Fendrich

Comments

  1. As I mentioned a few days ago, tossing a controversial idea to the panting media is a common tactic of public officials, one that a long-time newspaperman like Michael Gartner knows well. He either wants to frighten people into contributing funds for rebuilding, or he wants to see just how much outrage selling Mural would create. The second alternative is possible, but not likely, given the importance of the painting and the certain disapproval of his fancy New York friends.

    On a personal note, I survived another natural disaster — Hurricane Andrew — and can tell you, Laurie, that your lovely defense of art would have been even more powerful if you had asked readers to join you and me and many other Americans in contributing money or time to the recovery efforts. Interested parties might want to visit Save Iowa.

    — S. Britchky · Aug 12, 06:11 PM · #

  2. Have any of the regents suggested anything constructive, like, I don’t know, maybe selling the football stadium?

    — Just wondering · Aug 12, 06:50 PM · #

  3. “Just wondering”…while i see your point, let’s not fool ourselves. The Pollock does not produce nearly the ROI that the football program does. Yes, they spend lots of money on the football program, and yes the stadium just had a renovation that cost alot. But, the football program generates more money in a year for the school than the Pollack is worth. Whether anyone likes it or not, there is logic in this decision.

    Plus…Kinnick is older than the Pollack and is worth more to the state in terms of historic and sentimental value. Don’t let personal opinion cloud your judgement on the regents decision. It’s not like they are burning the Pollack for fuel…they are simply finding it a new home.

    — Just Answering... · Aug 13, 07:14 PM · #

  4. If we must use football analogies:

    The players on a college football team are an everchanging crew, each graduating after4 years (at least in theory). The team’s supporters know this. Their monetary support goes to help support the coach—to give him an attractive salary, to allow him to recruit the best players, and to allow the team to have trainers, facilities, and accomodations while their travelling, and tutors for the players so that they maintain the GPA required for eligiblity.
    The works of art in a university museum are its team. It only changes because of growth. The works are expected to “play” in perpetuity, i.e. FOREVER. This is the expectation of donors. It is the expectation of patrons—who include alumni, faculty and staff, members of the surrounding community, and an assortment of others whose connection is not to the univeristy nor to the community it is in but to the art in the collection.

    Selling off the stars of the collection to earn cash for the university as a larger entity is attractive at first blush, but ultimately breaks faith with all supporters of that larger entity. The scholarship endowment, the funds for a named professorship, the name on the building, the botanical garden, the work of art: all become subject to the institution’s immediate needs for cash, whether it is in order help recover from a natural disaster, to fund the football program, or to bring student housing up to code.

    The trustees/regents must balance the various demands for money against the overall instutitional mission. If they break faith with any donor, it should be only because there is no other alternative.

    The university can only sell a work of art once. Thus, the cash generated by the sale MUST benefit the institution immeasurably and into perpetuity. Otherwise, in terms of the university, an irreplaceable resource has been squandered, the same as if it had been burned.

    — Prz' · Aug 14, 09:02 AM · #

  5. To my mind, both football and Pollocks demonstrate how far institutions of higher education have strayed from their missions. I would sell the Pollock in a minute to replace classrooms or laboratories. I’d cut off one of my toes before a college football coach received millions in salary and bonuses. Both are unnecessary fetishized luxuries in an environment that—in theory—finds sustenance in the activity of learning.

    — vl · Aug 14, 09:51 AM · #

  6. a) The University of Iowa chooses to have an art museum, and that art museum—with good-to-great works of art from multiple historical periods and cultures—is an undoubted educational asset. Isn’t it? b) The museum contains some works of art that were gifts, e.g., the Pollock “Mural,” where the donor assumed giving the work to a museum open to the public would mean the work would be on public view for the indefinite future. (Things were simpler in 1959. Peggy Guggenheim probably got nothing more than a handshake guaranteeing the future of her Pollock.) c) The University of Iowa’s art museum is a real art museum, and a member of the AAM, by whose standards it agrees to abide. Primary among those standards is a prohibition against using the proceeds from the sale of art in the collection for anything other than buying art. That is, the collection can change (e.g., redundancies cured in favor of needed variety, etc.), but it can’t be used as a capital asset. d) For the UIAM to sell its Pollock to get funds to repair flood damage is the equivalent of the library selling off some original manuscripts or rare books to do the same thing. It’s not allowed (unless the University wants to abandon having a real art museum—which is, of course, a choice) and it’s likely a bad decision in the long run (in, say, ten years the flood damage will have been repaired and the UIAM will be without its most famous work). e) If vl’s “unnecessary fetishized luxuries” are to be gotten rid of in order to raise funds for flood damage repair, the opportunities around the campus are endless: cut poetry classes; disband the cheerleading squads; spend zero for a few years on visiting lecturers, concerts, plays, etc.; cancel commencement ceremonies and simply mail the diplomas; cut all non-revenue sports; sell off parts of the campus to commercial developers; and so on and so on.

    What’s more stunning, though, than vl’s being in favor of selling the Pollock, and even more than her calling the Pollock—and, actually, the UIAM itself—an “unnecessary fetishized luxur[y],” is his/her contention that a university art museum represents “how far institutions of higher education have strayed from their missions.” An art museum in a major university with a college of liberal arts an “unnecessary fetishized luxur[y]?” Talk about philistinism.

    — Just Passing Through · Aug 14, 10:37 AM · #

  7. Color me Philistine but after doing a couple of hundred rooms, the cloth my house painter uses to protect the floors bears a surprising similarity to some of Pollack’s multi $mil works.
    I’m sure we could could get a few very obscure but erudite analyses from art critics. I am mildly amused at the comments associated with various works in some museums in Boston and Baltimore that I very recently visited.
    For example: This huge glob of varying hues “Evokes a nostalgia for a fantasmagoric 5th dimensional existence which both embraces yet eschews the banal. The artist clearly expresses his yearning to merge, blend and assimilate yet remain at large to pursue creation of furture expressions
    of cynical enthusiasm.”
    This has got to be great, says the viewing public, since the museum spent substantial resources to install this thing which takes up half a gallery.

    — AW · Aug 14, 04:32 PM · #

  8. It’s “Pollock,” as spelled repeatedly in the blog and the preceding comments. The hyperbolic label is not the work of art. The “viewing public” thinks a lot of different things.

    Consider yourself colored.

    — Just Passing Through · Aug 14, 08:40 PM · #

  9. If you agree with “vl” that a univeresity art museum is an “unnecessary fetishized luxury,” then so are laboratories.

    A museum is to the visual arts what a lab is to the sciences. You put things together there to see what happens.

    Seeing the actual work of art, not just a reproduction, provides an experience and information that a reproduction cannot, just as a photograph of your mother (that is, a reproduction), can only barely hint at her sense of humor, how she smelled, the sound of her voice. In order to really study art, one must have actual art objects to study, not just the ghost in a reproduction.

    — Prz' · Aug 15, 07:38 AM · #

  10. sorry prz, but your analogy of labs to museums doesn’t hold water for me. i’d say digital darkrooms and painting studios are where art is made and artistic research conducted in college campuses. And as far as being a philistine, maybe so, but it’s going to take more than name calling to convince me that preserving cultural artifacts is part of every college’s mission. Which also means that I completely support poetry classes, unless teaching them requires a college to buy an original copy of a William Blake book to do so. Preserving culture is the mission of museums, where students can find both Blake and Pollock.

    — vl · Aug 15, 12:23 PM · #

  11. “Color me Philistine…”—vl, #7. So much for “name calling.”

    And oh, the thing about art is that it’s best—by a wide margin—seen in the original. Pollock’s “Mural,” seen on the wall in a museum, is much more central to appreciating art than a handwritten William Blake manuscript is to poetry, which is pretty much an art form which can be almost totally appreciated in reproduction, i.e., on a printed page in editions of whatever amount.

    “Preserving culture,” i.e., passing on, in Matthew Arnold’s words, “the best that’s been thought or said,” is part of a university’s business. That’s a lot of what art, music, history, and literature courses do. Sometimes “said” is in words, sometimes in music, sometimes in paint, sometimes in clay, sometimes in dance, etc. That’s why a lot of colleges have, in addition to auditoriums and recital halls, art galleries and museums.

    The gallery or museum can be a “lab,” with the curator doing the experimenting. In fact, most anthology exhibitions in contemporary art museums fancy themselves experiments or, at the very least, tentative hypotheses.

    — Just Passing Through · Aug 15, 01:11 PM · #

  12. first of all, passing through, please don’t confuse an art gallery with a museum. A museum, even though exhibiting contemporary art, preserves cultural artifacts through it permanent collection. Galleries do not support permanent collections, instead they trawl for the new, they exhibit artists for the first time or the fiftieth time, and if an artist is lucky, a museum will purchase work. Galleries provide a showcase for contemporary work of (mostly) living artists. I actually believe that a GALLERY would be important for the University of Iowa, for exactly the reasons you suggest: that its art majors could show work and that curators could bring work to the University.

    As far as “art in the original” goes, no disagreements. But the real question here is where does that happen? Does the University of Iowa need a Rembrandt? a Fra Angelico? a wall from a prehistoric cave? So what are you saying? that it’s important to see a Pollock painting but not a Durer painting? How much does the University of Iowa spend to create a collection that reflects the entire history of art in originals? How does it make choices as to what to buy and what to pass on? cost? relative cultural importance? seems tricky.

    My guess is that you know as well as I do that this isn’t about teaching or learning but about treasure. I repeat: I do not believe amassing cultural treasure is the mission of a university.

    ps: I’ve seen amazing facsimiles of Blake books: none has ever matched the communicational power of an original I was lucky enough to read. Originals are originals.

    — vl · Aug 17, 03:18 PM · #

  13. The difference between a college “museum” and a college “gallery” is that the former collects and the latter doesn’t. (A college gallery is not the same as a commercial gallery, which is in business to sell art.)

    Some colleges have museums (Oberlin, Brandeis, the University of Texas [a couple, maybe three], the University of Nebraska, to name a few of many examples), some don’t. In most cases, the core of the collection came first, i.e., donors gave works of art to the college, and the museum followed in order to care properly for the collection. Once the museum was in existence, other donors gave more art, and so on. Most college museums have miniscule budgets for the purchase of art, and at state institutions it’s hardly ever the case that public funds are used to purchase art. (Taxpayers pay for the operation and maintainence of the museum, just like they pay for the operation and maintainence of the college’s theatre and recital halls.) Donors give works of art to college museums for a variety of reasons, but a prominent reason is pride in, or gratitude toward, the college—the same reason that donors give to building funds or to the athletic department. Frequently, the donors are alumni and they want their Pollock or Rembrandt or Joe Jones (a real artist, a “regional” painter from the ’20s and ’30s) to go to their alma mater.

    Actually, a permanent collection in a college museum is generally regarded as a better pedagogical tool than temporary exhibitions because a) a studio or art history faculty member can take a class into the museum to see, in the flesh, a work of art relevant to what’s being taught in the class—if, of course, the museum owns such a work, and b) because the professor knows it’s available, semester in and semester out. “I’ve seen amazing facsimilies of Blake books: none has ever matched the communicational [sic] power of an original I was lucky enough to read” proves the point. If an original of a literary work is so superior to a reproduction, the superiority applies a hundredfold to a work of art. And the work of art doesn’t have to be an absolute masterpiece in every case; a pretty good, representative one will do.

    If the UIAM, or any other college museum, decides it needs a Rembrandt or a Fra Angelico (a wall from a prehistoric cave being unattainable for obvious reasons), it will try to get somebody to donate the work. It will not go out and purchase it, especially at today’s prices.

    The choice between it being “important to see a Pollock painting but not a Durer painting” is a false dichotomy. The UIAM has a Pollock painting, and an art historically important one. That’s the painting whose possible sale is up for discussion, not a hypothetical Durer painting. If the UIAM had one, or a Rembrandt, or a Joe Jones, the same arguments against their being sold would apply.

    All museum collections, even the Metropolitan’s and the Louvre’s, are uneven and have gaps. (The same goes for libraries, even the Library of Congress.) Most “encyclopedic” museums—that is, museums not specifically dedicated to one aspect of art—try to have one at least pretty good from each major period of Western art and each major non-Western culture. (Before the cry of cultural chauvinism is raised, be it stipulated that the US is, culturally, a Western country. Its college art museums reasonably foreground Western art. A university art museum in India would likely similarly foreground Indian and South Asian art.) Obviously, however, a college museum is not going to be able to “create a collection that reflects the entire history of art in originals,” nor would it have the space to display and store such a collection. But, as the saying goes, “The perfect should not be the enemy of the good.” A good collection with gaps is not as good as a perfect collection, but it is far better than no collection at all. Practically any faculty member in the humanities at the University of Iowa would likely agree that it’s a good thing for a university to have an art museum.

    Colleges which don’t have museums are under no requirement to create them. But those that have them are under a requirement not to abolish them and sell of the collections. If there were no such perceived requirement, there’d be hardly any discussion about selling the Pollock, especially by the people who favor selling it.

    Yes, the decision about what to acquire (again, usually through accepting gifts, not making purchases) and what to pass on is “tricky.” That’s why scholars with Ph.D.‘s in art history and curators familiar with museology and boards of trustees and advisory committees usually all have a hand in it. (If a university can’t deal with “tricky” decisions, who can?)

    I do not “know as well as [vl does] that this isn’t about teaching or learning but about treasure” (as if, somehow, the two are mutually exclusive). It’s about the University of Iowa’s community and the general public learning from—and, yes, enjoying—works of art ranging from many periods and cultures and ranging from pretty good to great. If that means “amassing cultural treasure” (again, almost exclusively through donations such as Peggy Guggenheim’s), then that is part of the mission of a university.

    — Just Passing Through · Aug 17, 07:37 PM · #

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