Museums Face Financial Ruin & Collection Loss
Imaginative Funding Strategies are Required from Galleries
Oct 5, 2009
Most museums would be over-the-moon to have items in their collections that the National Academy Museum in New York was forced to auction off in December of 2008, a move which has kept its collections financially solvent and provoked New York State to tighten legislation in August, 2009, in order to prevent important works from being lost to public access forever. According to Stephanie Baum's report "New York museums set for ban on art auctions" [Wealth Bulletin, March 20, 2009] the sale of Sanford Robinson Gifford's "Mount Mansfield, Vermont, 1859," and Frederic Edwin Church’s “Scene on the Magdalene” from 1854 from the Hudson River School brought in $13.5m (€10m) for the National Academy's income-raising fund.
"The net result can’t be a transfer of the cultural heritage of this country from public to private hands at rock bottom prices,” complained New York State Senator Richard Brodsky, when he first co-sponsored the legislation. The auction drew attention to the new financial decimation which public-run galleries, museums and all fine arts institutions are facing during difficult economic times. Government grants and corporate sponsorships have been dropped. Public endowment funds and philanthropic trusts which receive money from investments have noticed a steep decline. Individuals have no extra money to spare for admissions or sponsorships.
Desparate Times Provoke Fire Sales of Art and Artifacts
Nor was the National Academy Museum's loss an isolated example. Sothebys Auction House in Hong Kong is slated to auction off a substantial number of Modern and Contemporary Asian Art pieces in three separate sales: 20th-Century Chinese Art, Modern and Contemporary Southeast Asian Paintings and Contemporary Asian Art, tomorrow (October 6, 2009.)
According to Tom Johansmeyer, "More than 380 works by Asian artists will come to auction, and the house expects close to $25 million in sales." ["Hong Kong Art Auction: A Year after the Crash", Luxist.com, Oct 3rd, 2009.]
Christies has planned similar auctions for November. The Wall Street Journal reported in March that a long-term loan was secured in March of 2009 by the Metropolitan Opera House on the basis of its Marc Chagall murals "The Triumph of Music" and "The Sources of Music."
Canadian and many European collections are protected by government customs regulations and agencies like Canada's Cultural Properties Import and Export Review Board, which were enacted by various Parliaments many years ago to protect national culture, often to outrage by proponents of free trade. In some famous cases, such as with the British Museum's continued appropriation of Greece's Elgin Marbles, or the Canadian Review Board's decision in the early 1980s to prevent the sale of a Charles Rennie MacKintosh chair to an American buyer, the rulings seem arbitrary and stacked in favour of the custom agency's nation. If they seem so, it may be because they are. That is the purpose of their existance.
This begs the question: if public galleries and museums are not permitted to divest themselves of items in their collections, how are they to raise money for operations and maintenance?
Fine Arts, the Political Football
Cutbacks and poorly chosen verbal blowback at artists and public funding cost the Conservative government a majority during the 2007 Canadian elections. The seats they had hoped to take from Liberal Stéphan Dion in Québec evaporated when voters realized that Harper planned to cut funding for their festivals, museums, historic sites and galleries. In British Columbia, the arts community has been devastated by 90 per cent cuts in funding to longstanding institutions, a move which inspired Heritage Minister, James Moore to say, "May not be recoverable."
Charles Campbell also reported that "Core B.C. provincial arts funding is slated to fall by more than 88 per cent over two years, from $19.5 million in 2008-'09 down to $2.25 million in 2010-'11, according to the Ministry of Tourism, Arts and Culture service plan." — "BC Arts Cuts 'Devastating' Says Tory Minister: Arts funding a key form of economic stimulus." The Tyee.ca, 28 September, 2009. The same article mentioned that 85% of Parliament's allocations to the Arts are dispersed throughout Québec, Ontario and Alberta. Also, "Moore said the cultural sector employs 650,000 people in Canada, twice the number employed in either forestry or agriculture, and he declared that infrastructure without the kind of activity that artists provide is "culturally and economically soulless."
It is pretty clear that British Columbian artists and arts groups are in serious peril.
The difficulty with arguments that reduce the Fine Arts to economic viability and value to the infrastructure is that these are not the point. Opponents who call artists 'elitist' as Harper did during the election bear down on one of the most vulnerable segments of society. Most artists function well below the poverty line. Either it is understood that the arts make a vital contribution to a society, and artists and their institutions are supported for their nonmonetary contributions to life—the inner life of individuals as well as the external liveliness of a place where people interact—or they will disappear.
Read more about how public gallery and museum curators have responded with innovation and change to social forces which are pulling away their audiences in Simone Keiran's article, Museum Business: Cultural & Historical Relevance; Curators Must Rethink Exhibition & Interpretation Programs.
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