Chris Crosman, Crystal Bridges Museum’s founding chief curator, took up my challenge to my readers to “share your views” on the secrecy surrounding the rollout of news on the museum’s stellar new acquisitions.
Photo by Lee Rosenbaum
Here’s what Crosman fired off in the “comments” section below the museum’s bungled blog post yesterday, in which it attempted to explain its misconceived policy on Announcing New Acquisitions:
The practice of not disclosing recent acquisitions predates the opening of the museum. It had much to do with the unusually high volume and rate of acquisitions and a small (less than half a dozen) staff charged with managing and processing the collection.
However, there is almost no justification for not announcing major acquisitions once all the paperwork is in place and the object is physically in possession of the museum or its designated agents. CultureGrrl is right on this one–transparency is essential–and the policy should be reviewed in light of drastically changed circumstances. Just an opinion from the founding chief curator of the museum.
Here’s the response to Crosman from Diane Carroll, Crystal Bridges’ director of communications and author of yesterday’s blog post:
Thank you Chris. We value your opinion, especially as the founding chief curator of the museum, and also value the opportunity to have this discussion via comments on our blog….As we clearly announce major acquisitions, evidenced by the links to announcements included above as well as many others on our website, the question here is a matter of timing.
You note some of the logistics [emphasis added] that need to take place in that process–all good points that have figured into our timing for each release of acquisition news.
The “logistics” that Chris had referred to concerned practices that occurred before the museum had opened to the public. Now up and running for three years, the museum has advanced no convincing reason for keeping major acquisitions secret.
My guess (and it’s only a guess) is that the works bought at last November’s auctions have not yet been accessioned and may, for now, be privately owned by Alice Walton, who will (at some point in the near future) either give them to the museum or place them there on long-term loan. Even though the museum’s executive director, Rod Bigelow, recently referred in a radio interview to “fantastic new acquisitions” (to be displayed in an upcoming reinstallation of the collection), they may not yet have been formally acquired.
If so, why not just come out and say that, now that the O’Keeffe/Johns cat is out of the bag, instead of concocting a muddled explanation? This may be a case where the museum’s public responsibilities are at odds with its chief donor’s interest in privacy.
Here’s how the museum’s mishandling of this situation played out on Twitter:
Yes, Crystal Bridges’ explanation for keeping its acquisitions secret is nonsensical http://t.co/ePKNj1Syht
— Christopher Knight (@KnightLAT) February 13, 2015
A more prudent approach is to treat information in collection records as open to the public—@CultureGrrl cites Malaro http://t.co/YlbgL7XnPa — Steven Lubar (@lubar) February 13, 2015
Christopher Knight is the LA Times‘ art critic; Steven Lubar is a professor in the Department of American Studies at Brown University.