Pay-to-Play: Cosbys Bankrolled Their Show at Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art CORRECTED

Notwithstanding the latest tawdry Cosby revelations, let’s elude the quaalude story and keep our eyes on the latest museum-related disclosures:

Brett Zongker of Associated Press reports that Bill and Camille Cosby funded the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art’s current 50th anniversary exhibition, Conversations: African and African American Artworks in Dialogue to the tune of $716,000, “which virtually covers the entire cost” of the show. A spokesperson for the museum confirmed those details to me today. Some 62 of the 171 works in the show came from the Cosbys’ private collection.

[CORRECTION: A previous version of this post erroneously stated that there was a total of 109 works in the show. That’s the number of works that came from the museum’s own collection.]

This gives me traumatic flashbacks to what I once termed the “Dakis Fracas”—the 2010 controversy over the New Museum’s Jeff Koons-curated show of works from the private collection of Greek tycoon Dakis Joannou. Dakis, like Camille, was a board member of the borrowing museum.

Like the Cosby display, the Joannou offerings (titled Skin Fruit) included a portrait of the lender (albeit a less flattering one than the idealized Cosby rendering):

After my repeated inquiries, the New Museum had told me back in 2010 that Joannou had not provided any financial support for the show. Nevertheless, his conflict of interest as a trustee made this a highly problematic exercise, even though the art itself was well worth seeing.

My takeaway from the “Dakis Fracas” seems even more applicable to the Smithsonian Situation, given its financials. Here’s what I then wrote:

Clear guidelines are needed to preclude collectors from paying museums to mount shows of their private troves, to prevent museum displays from morphing into presale exhibitions, and to guard against the conflicts of interest inherent in shows that are drawn entirely from the collection of a trustee of the exhibiting institution. In the latter case, I believe that no such show should be mounted unless the works on display are promised to the museum [emphasis added].

The Smithsonian’s own Ethics Guidelines have this to say about exhibitions of works personally owned by its Smithsonian Board of Regents members. (Camille is on the Museum of African Art’s Advisory Board, not the Board of Regents, but the principle should be the same.):

A sale or loan to the Smithsonian of any object owned by a Regent or family member shall be given special scrutiny [emphasis added] to ensure that the Regent receives no improper advantage from the arrangement.

That “scrutiny” should be even more “special” for a show funded by a museum board member and consisting, in large measure, of his or her private holdings.

I have more queries pending with the Smithsonian and will update the blog if and when I receive answers.

For now, here’s the statement that the National Museum of African Art issued last week in response to the latest Cosby-related allegations:

The National Museum of African Art is aware of the recent revelations about Bill Cosby’s behavior. The museum in no way condones this behavior. Our current “Conversations” exhibition, which includes works of African art from our permanent collection and African American art from the collection of Camille and Bill Cosby, is fundamentally about the artworks and the artists who created them, not the owners of the collections.

The artworks from the Cosbys’ collection are being seen by the public for the first time. The exhibition brings the public’s attention to African American artists whose works have long been omitted from the study and appreciation of American art.

Fair enough (although others will heatedly disagree). But I doubt the museum would have committed itself to this show if it knew then what it knows now. And some of the mud now being slung will be on the Smithsonian’s face if the Cosbys ever decide to monetize some of the art that has been given a federal museum’s imprimatur.

On that score, Richard Kurin, the Smithsonian’s undersecretary for art, history and culture, told the AP that the Smithsonian’s lawyers had determined that the Cosbys didn’t intend to sell the art.

Sounds good. But was that “intention” memorialized in a written agreement?