The Smithsonian’s Cosby Debacle: Take Down that Exhibition, Dr. Skorton?

Should the Smithsonian’s new Secretary, former Cornell University President David Skorton, who has barely had time to sit down at his desk (let alone make new policy), cancel or drastically modify the National Museum of African Art’s embarrassing situation comedy, The Cosby Show?

To inform your consideration of this question, here’s the latest family-friendly episode in this ongoing saga—a new visitor-advisory message that now introduces the exhibition:

We can only hope that Skorton will read and ponder the comments solicited at the end of the above message (which are to be emailed not to him, but to the museum’s press officer).

I see merit in the NMAA’s argument for the artistic worth (notwithstanding the lender’s tarnished reputation) of a show that includes Cosby-owned work by Romare Bearden, Elizabeth Catlett, Beauford Delaney, Jacob Lawrence, Faith Ringgold, Henry Ossawa Tanner and Alma Thomas, among many others who are undeniably worthy of our attention.

But I am also deeply troubled by the exhibition’s fatal flaw, which Philip Kennicott devastatingly delineated in his Washington Post appraisal—that the Smithsonian is “hosting an exhibition that celebrates the family life and character—‘the personal importance of family to the collectors cannot be overstated,’ reads one exhibition text—of a married man who by his own admission acquired quaaludes to give to women he wanted to have sex with.”

At the very least, I think the show should expunge any sycophantic text (such as that quoted by Kennicott), and banish this treacly portrait:

Then again, any changes to the show would likely require some delicate negotiations with the funder-lenders.

Whether or not all the Cosby content should come down, one thing is certain: As I suggested in yesterday’s post, this show should never been mounted in the first place, because it was pay-to-play: The Cosbys bankrolled their own exhibition, to the tune of $716,000.

My guess is that if they hadn’t paid for this show, it wouldn’t have happened. Without the Cosby subsidy, the museum might well have mounted a display of “Conversations” (the show’s title) between 109 African works from its collection and outside loans of African American art, but those loans would have been drawn (as they should have been) from a wide variety of sources. Instead, the NMAA’s director and staff abdicated curatorial responsibility by taking a financially attractive package of 62 works from the comedian’s collection.

What’s more, the conflict-of-interest inherent in a museum’s valorizing the collection of one of its own board members (Camille Cosby) is ethically unacceptable, whether or not it violates written professional guidelines, unless those works are promised gifts to the museum.

When I asked Linda St. Thomas, the Smithsonian’s veteran chief spokesperson, whether the works in the exhibition had been promised to the NMAA, she obliquely replied that the guidelines of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) “do not require that all loans become gifts.”

What AAMD does say in its 2007 statement on Art Museums, Private Collectors and the Public Benefit is that museums should consider the following in deciding whether to accept loans or gifts from private collectors [emphasis added]:

—Is the collector an individual with a reputation of integrity whose involvement enhances the museum’s program?

—Are there legal or ethical issues associated with the gift or loan that can be anticipated by the museum?

In its usual namby-pamby fashion, AAMD doesn’t say what should be done about potential red flags; it only suggests that museums should “weigh the…questions.” St. Thomas, in her replies to my queries yesterday, repeatedly invoked AAMD’s flimsy guidelines as implicitly countenancing the NMAA/Cosby connection.

AAMD dropped the ball in 2010, after the New Museum’s Dakis Fracas became a hot issue: It then tweeted that “clear protocols and guidelines [are] needed” for the “exhibition of private collections in museums.” If such “clear protocols and guidelines” were subsequently formulated, they haven’t been publicly promulgated. Unlike the Cosby Show, the highly controversial Jeff Koons-curated display of works from the private collection of New Museum trustee Dakis Joannou did not involve any financial subsidy from him for the show, according to the museum.

I asked St. Thomas if the Smithsonian had any prohibitions in its agreements with lenders (including, specifically, the Cosbys) against their selling exhibited works from their collections soon after the close of an exhibition they funded. She indicated that there were no such prohibitions and added that she didn’t “believe any museum does that.”

Here’s a reality check, in the form of a NY Times article (see P. 2), published at the time of the Dakis Fracas: It named several museums with policies requiring promised gifts in connection with private-collector shows—the Museum of Modern Art (which at least once, however, ignored that policy), the Whitney Museum and the Indianapolis Museum of Art (when it was directed by Max Anderson).

After getting famously burned in 1973 by another art-collecting TV personality, Allen Funt, the Metropolitan Museum had also instituted a promised-gift requirement for privately owned collections on its walls, but that seems to have been relaxed in recent years.

As ironic fate would have it, the director of the NMAA, Johnnetta Cole, recently became president of AAMD.

She should use her new bully pulpit to restore both her museum’s stature and her own professional reputation by completing AAMD’s unfinished business—drafting and disseminating clear, comprehensive standards for museum exhibitions of private collections, based on lessons learned from the Cosby debacle.

And the Smithsonian, of course, needs to formulate its own stringent standards for such shows.

What should those standards include? My list of seven recommended guidelines, published on this blog in reaction to the Dakis Fracas, could be a good starting point for discussion.