George Bellows, “Men of the Docks,” 1912
Now that the University of Iowa’s Pollock has been rescued from those who wanted to sell it, could this be the start of a happy trend?
It’s taken me a while to get to this, but on Feb. 10, Liz Barry of the Lynchburg, VA, News & Advance reported:
More than two years after Randolph College sold [my link, not hers] “The Troubadour” by Rufino Tamayo for a record-breaking $7.2 million, three more paintings from Randolph’s art collection remain in storage at Christie’s auction house in New York City, waiting to be sold.
“The college still intends to sell the remaining three paintings, and we will do so when the American art market stabilizes and improves and when it is in the best financial interests of the college,” said Brenda Edson, spokeswoman for Randolph College, in an e-mail.
The three paintings in art-market limbo are George Bellows‘ “Men of the Docks,” Edward Hicks‘ “Peaceable Kingdom” and Ernest Hennings‘ “Through the Arroyo.” The Bellows was the first work purchased for Randolph’s Maier Museum, acquired directly from the artist in 1920 at the bargain price of $2,500. At that time, the professor who arranged the transaction stated that Bellows was “less concerned about the price of their pictures than…about having them in a place where they would be appreciated.” Times change.
I checked to see if the Bellows, the most important of the three works, is listed still on the Maier’s collections website. It’s not, leading me to believe that it may have been formally deaccessioned from the collection, although not yet sold.
I e-mailed some queries to Edson on Feb. 15, after one of the former protagonists in deaccession controversy sent me the News & Advance article. As usual, the university’s spokesperson didn’t respond to me. Christie’s declined to comment, referring me to Randolph College.
For one thing, I wanted to know is why it was decided not to return the paintings to display at the Maier, for the benefit of Randolph’s students, until such time as they could be sold (which the article indicated could still be years). I suppose it’s possible that Christie’s might sell them privately, if the price were right. More likely, the auction house and college administrators don’t want the students to get too attached to the paintings, perhaps trying to prevent their leaving again. The original removal was an unannounced surprise.
More importantly, I inquired about the current status of the university’s finances, wondering if the lamentable sale might no longer be necessary.
At the very least, the students should demand access to their painting until it’s put back up for sale. Perhaps they should take a page from the University of Iowa’s students’ Save the Pollock! Facebook page. If a popular uprising, organized via Facebook, worked in Cairo, it could work in Lynchburg!
Meanwhile, in Waltham, MA, Ariel Wittenberg of Brandeis University’s community newspaper, The Hoot, reports [via]:
Now, after two years of cuts, and halfway through the five-year emergency plan, Brandeis senior administrators said…that the university is on track to full financial recovery, but the curriculum is slimmer….The university is looking into rental options [my link, not hers] for the art [from the university’s Rose Museum], and while the
discussion about art being sold is not off the table, it has been
postponed.
If the university is “on track to full financial recovery,” perhaps they should keep the art on campus for the benefit of the students, instead of shipping some of the Rose’s signature works out of town.
