A Touch of Crass

Desperate times call for desperate measures.
How else to explain the Cleveland Museum of Art’s including in its press materials a glossy 12-page color brochure promoting “Baker Hostetler: Counsel to Market Leaders”—the corporate sponsor for the upcoming Barcelona and Modernity show, co-organized with the Metropolitan Museum of Art?
It used to be that corporations merely required a credit line. Then it was a one-page self-promotion, enumerating the ways in which the sponsor was as brilliantly innovative and creative in its business as Leonardo was in art.
We know it’s getting harder to attract corporate sponsors, but what’s next—a booth at the museum exhibition, to solicit new clients?