It’s Not Over Until Deaccession Diva Sings: How the Major Spring Auctions Went Tone-Deaf for Museums

In my previous post about auction sales of artworks that museums might reasonably have hoped to receive as gifts or bequests (pegged to Sotheby’s disposals of the Macklowe Collection), I alluded to LA Times art critic Christopher Knight‘s justifiably harsh take-down of the Toledo Museum for its off-key sales of three major holdings—most notably, its harmonious Cézanne landscape:

That disposal at Sotheby’s Modern Evening auction on May 17, followed close upon the Toledo museum’s hiring of Robert Schindler as its new European art curator, with a mandate to “create a more inclusive and diverse collection.” That mandate will presumably be bankrolled by the deaccession proceeds, designated “to benefit future acquisitions.”

As reported by Sotheby’s, the Cézanne price was “the third highest price ever achieved at auction for a work by the artist.” Also sold by the Toledo Museum at Sotheby’s the same night were its Renoir, Nu s’essuyant ($2.7 million), and its Matisse, Fleurs ou Fleurs devant un portrait ($15.3 million).

Proceeds from those sales “will establish a lasting endowment that more than doubles the [Toledo] museum’s current art acquisition fund created by founding benefactors Edward Drummond and Florence Scott Libbey,” as described by Sotheby’s.

Knight did not regard that endowment-infusion as cause for celebration: “Apparently two Cézannes are one Cézanne too many,” which is “odd for a guy colloquially known as the father of Modern art,” Knight intoned. To his dirge, I would only add this grace note regarding the Toledo Museum’s collecting history: Under its late, legendary director, Otto Wittmann (who served with distinction from 1959 to 1976), the Ohio museum became a nationally respected major player in snaring important acquisitions—on a par with the Metropolitan and Cleveland museums for the value and quality of its purchases. It now appears that its current director, Adam Levine, who assumed his post in May 2020, may become known for the value and quality of Toledo’s disposals. Overriding the considered collection-building judgments of highly respected predecessors is a temptation that is best resisted.

Wittmann’s LA Times obit provided more details on his importance as a savvy museum leader and an astute acquirer:

Considered a leader of the art acquisition business, Wittmann was hired as a Getty consultant in 1978, just as the Malibu museum was coming into the billion-dollar trust left by its founder, oil baron J. Paul Getty. Wittmann was elected a [Getty] trustee in 1979 and was named acting chief curator in 1980, in effect running the museum.

In another variation on the theme of how new leaders sometimes undermine notable achievements of their predecessors, I did a doubletake when I recently learned that the Metropolitan Museum would be selling at Christie’s its Important Picasso bronze, “Tête de femme (Fernande).” That landmark work was the artist’s “first major sculpture,” according to the auction house’s lot essay, which noted that it was one of approximately 20 known casts of the work overseen by legendary French art dealer Ambroise Vollard.

Why did the Met deem this one expendable?

The Met apparently judged it to be a “duplicate,” because the museum had acquired another version, made to order between July 27, 1926, and Mar. 11, 1927 for Ambroise Vollard, the legendary French dealer. That cast was promised to the Met in 2013 by a major player—megadonor Leonard Lauder. It was accessioned by the museum in 2021. Selling duplicates is one form of deaccessioning that the Association of Art Museum Directors deems acceptable in its professional guidelines (p. 21).

Nevertheless, monetizing such a highly important work is highly problematic: Removing it from the public domain, thereby overriding the intentions of a generous donor, is not only ethically dicey; it’s strategically dangerous. Future benefactors may well have second thoughts about bestowing their most important treasures on a museum that may treat their donations cavalierly.

When I saw that the Met planned to sell the Picasso head, I asked myself a variation of the question that Knight had asked about Toledo’s Cézannes: Is having two great Picasso busts of Fernande one too many, which is “odd for a guy colloquially known as the father of Modern art” (Cézanne) or (in Picasso’s case) the father of Cubism?

I asked the Met why the Lauder head was a keeper, whereas the Schoenborn bust was deemed disposable: Did the fact that one donor was dead and the other still alive have anything to do with it? Or was it a matter of quality, condition or history?

The response I received from Met’s spokesperson was a bit of a head-scratcher:

It is less complex, per our deaccession rules, to sell works that have been in the collection for more than 25 years.

I suspect that one reason why it’s “less complex” to sell Schoenborn’s cast it that a donor who has pledged certain works but has not yet consummated all those pledges is capable of changing his mind. Lauder has been known to exercise strong (if not overbearing) control over those benefiting from his largess, as witness the condition that he had attached to his hefty, much needed $131-million contribution to the Whitney’s endowment: He famously required that the Whitney (while it was planning the construction of its new Renzo PIano-designed facility) not sell its Breuer building for an undisclosed period of time, compelling the Whitney to induce sister institutions (the Met, the Frick) to relieve the financial burden of running two buildings by renting the space.

Even a less controlling benefactor could be alienated by the Met’s demonstrated willingness to cast onto the open market a highly important work that the donor had every reason to believe would be preserved, studied and displayed for the public benefit.

As I wrote in my 2005 NY Times Op-Ed piece, For Sale: Our Permanent Collection:

If an institution really has no use for certain works that are worthy of public display, it should give or lend them to other public institutions that would gladly show them. Museums’ permanent collections belong to all of us. The public has, in most instances, paid for these works through the tax deductions given to private donors. And those donors bestow such works on the public expecting them to be valued for their aesthetic, not financial, worth. If a museum doesn’t regard a particular gift as worthy of display or study, it shouldn’t accept the gift in the first place.

Similarly, Steven Miller, executive director emeritus of the Morris Museum (Morristown, NJ) and author of Deaccessioning Today: Theory and Practice, wrote this in his December 2018 article for The New Criterion about The Ethics of Deaccessioning:

Controversy about commercial deaccessioning sidesteps the fact that, unless the purchase is made by another museum, objects will probably be lost to the public forever. How does this practice align with the preservation imperative museums repeatedly embrace in all their actions and indeed by their very definition? Put simply: it does not….

Just about every museum of any size, location, content, and governance structure could establish a policy to deaccession items only to other museums. Such a policy would accrue to the betterment of a collection object, the institution removing it, the receiving organization, the museum field, and those the field serves in general….

One museum’s loss can always be another’s gain.

As it happened, I had admired another “duplicate” of “Fernande” in 2009, when I covered for the Wall Street Journal the opening of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing. The example below, which the AIC had accessioned in 1949, is “one of a small edition” produced by Vollard in 1910, according to the museum’s label. “It sold in 1912 to photographer and dealer Alfred Stieglitz, who loaned it to the New York presentation of…the Armory Show.” It went on display at the AIC in 1913.

Now this is the casting one would wish to have!

But back to the Met and its seeming breach of faith with Florene Schoenborn, who bequeathed to it 15 paintings and three sculptures (including the Picasso) by modern masters. In light of recent expiration (on Apr. 10) of the two-year loosening of the Association of Art Museum Directors’ strictures regarding use of deaccession proceeds, I asked the Met whether the windfall from the sale of “Fernande” would be “used solely for acquisitions, not for collection care.” (The latter was permitted under the temporarily loosened rules.) The museum’s spokesperson assured me that the sale proceeds would be used solely for acquisitions. 

And in response to my query as to whether the money would be used to purchase other works of modern art, or might be applied more generally, the spokesperson replied that the sale proceeds would be applied to purchases of “suitable works of art, certainly in the Modern area and possibly also in other areas.”  

That still leaves the more troubling ethical concerns raised by auctioning off a major work entrusted to the Met by a highly important donor, who almost certainly would have bestowed it elsewhere if she knew it might be jettisoned. (The Museum of Modern Art was another major beneficiary of Florene Schoenborn’s bequests, but it already had its own “Fernande” bronze by Picasso, now on view.)

The Met trumpeted its inaugural exhibition of the Schoenborn trove in its celebratory 1997 press release:

The Schoenborn bequest…was heralded as one of the most important gifts of art to be made to a major museum in recent history.

“This exhibition is a visible manifestation of remarkable generosity,” said Philippe de Montebello, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Mrs. Schoenborn was an erudite collector and devoted museum patron whose legacy will long be treasured [emphasis added] both for its significant contribution to our 20th-century collection and for the enjoyment it will bring to millions of visitors in the years to come”…

…but, in at least one case, maybe not.

Which raises another question: What does Philippe think? I could try to ask him, but he’s usually discreet about second-guessing judgments made by his successors.

Speaking of which: Why has the Met taken this bronze bust off display?

And lastly, in another unfortunate loss to museums, Emanuel Leutze‘s semi-important “Washington Crossing the Delaware” was sold at Christie’s for $45.05 million, against a hammer estimate of only $15-20 million. Did its buyer mistakenly believe that the Christie’s painting had a status comparable to that of the Metropolitan Museum’s monumental visitor-magnet?

As I explained here, the recent offering at Christie’s, which was strategically (but incongruously) inserted into the auction house’s May 12 sale of 20th-Century art, is a much smaller, less powerful version of the famous Revolutionary War subject. As indicated by the provenance listing in Christie’s catalogue, Lot 30C had previously been on long-term loan to the White House from the collection of mega-collector Richard Manoogian, changed hands in 2014 and was loaned for seven years (until two months ago) to a modest institution that may have hoped for it to remain there—the Minnesota Marine Art Museum.

In Tuesday’s NY Times, Jason Farago cast a critical eye on other offerings in the spring auctions that had made a mockery of their presale estimates—recent works by “untested, unheralded painters” with “little museum credibility or public esteem” that sold for outlandish multiples of their presale estimates.

Here’s one that I previously posted about. (These figures are not a misprint.)

In his Times article, Jason revealed his birth-year, which puts him at about the same age as my two children. I mention that not to belittle him, but to explain why the phenomenon that he describes, while unsettling, doesn’t shock me as an elder of the scribe tribe. Trend-chasing (aka FOMO) springs eternal.

What would be surprising is if all those recent paintings with inflated prices stood the test of time. He’ll still be around to find out.

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