Blogger Swarm: The Buzz on “The Cello Player”

Michael J. Lewis says in Contentions, the blog of Commentary magazine:
Museums that think boldly attract bold donors; and museums that think cautiously do not. When the original purchase [of “The Gross Clinic”] was announced it seemed like a brilliant but risky chess gambit; in the light of this sale [of “The Cello Player”], it looks considerably less spectacular, like the sacrifice of a rook for a queen. If more works are sacrificed in the coming months, however, this daring gambit might begin to look like an ill-considered blunder.
David Packwood comments in the British-based Art History Today:
Even in reproductions it [“The Cello Player”] comes across as a handsome oil painting, for some the epitome of American realism. I can’t help agreeing with Lee Rosenbaum that this is a Pyrrhic victory, if ever there was one….Removal of a work of art from a public permanent collection deprives those who have grown familiar with the art in that situation.
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Charley Parker, an alumnus of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, says in Lines and Colors:
“The Cello Player” can be considered a “lesser work” than “The Gross Clinic,” which is one of the acknowledged masterpieces of American art, but it is a beautiful painting and is certainly the finest of the Academy’s three finished Eakins paintings….
As Rosenbaum points out [in yesterday’s Philadelphia public radio broadcast], this incident raises all kind of disturbing questions about who has the right to make these decisions about important works that are part of the cultural heritage of institutions and cities.
Yes, museums “own” their works, except those on loan, and, barring stipulations made on gifts and bequests, can legally sell them; but these institutions exist partially on the basis of tax breaks and operating subsidies paid for with our tax dollars (as well as our contributions), so in a real, as well as cultural sense, the public also “owns” these works.
I couldn’t have put it better, Charley, even if I DID (as you wish) have my own radio broadcast!
UPDATE: Donn Zaretsky, in The Art Law Blog (scroll down to Feb. 5), disagrees with me and agrees with Stephen Urice. These lawyers always stick together!