Speaking of museums (as, strangely, we have been all morning), Renzo Piano, and trying to weather the economic storm, we now fly back here to Chicago, where the starchitects $238 million dollar new Modern Wing is set to open…
And now on to Boston, where we read about yet another museum facing cutbacks and tightening of belts, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, which was recently forced to lay off almost ten percent of its staff and has before…
Well start in Seattle this morning on our daily trip around the world, following up with the Seattle Art Museum, who youll remember has been on something of a roller coaster since the economy went south, first in seeing their…
When we reported back in February about the closing of the Sports Museum (the one in New York, not the other one in Los Angeles, which closed just a month later), the whole story basically boiled down to what usually kills a business, educational or otherwise: they weren’t getting enough visitors and their money had run out. Interesting and newsworthy, sure, but not really the most thrilling story we’ve ever talked about. But now that the museum has entered into bankruptcy and are in the process of liquidating, things have taken a turn for the bizarre. The NY Times reports that the creditors have asked that the people who gave the museum its artifacts, such as the Heisman Trophy, should now pay a fee to have their items stored and ultimately returned, to the tune of around $250 per object. They claim it’s a legitimate fee that comes with things like storage and insurance, but of course, this isn’t sitting so well with the people who gave their goods and now want them back:
“To think that these athletes, who, out of the goodness of their hearts, loaned at no cost to the museum their precious artifacts, and to expect them to pay to get them back, is outrageous,” said Marj Snyder, the chief program and planning officer of the Women’s Sports Foundation.
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Early last year, this writer was something of a jerk picking on the museums of Sau Paulo, Brazil after a string of museum robberies. We felt a little bad about it then and we feel even worse now because at least when Brazilian art thieves break into a museum, they go after the valuable stuff like Picassos and Portinaris. Here in the US, we are apparently not as blessed with criminals of such mental development, as we read this from San Diego:
San Diego police are looking for burglars who tore the door from a museum and stole an automatic teller machine.
Sgt. Ray Battrick says a burglar alarm at 5:12 a.m. Tuesday brought officers to the Air & Space Museum in Balboa Park.
He says thieves apparently tore off the door frame and damaged a security gate then used a cable to pull out the ATM.
Granted, it’s the Air & Space Museum, so there probably aren’t a ton of Monets hanging on the walls, but still guys, lay off the museums unless you’re serious burglars, okay? Unless maybe they were artists themselves and they wanted to symbolize what a mess the art market is? Hey, weirder things have happened.
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While we were out in San Francisco last week, we really wanted to get a chance to get out to the Presidio to check out where Don Fisher wants to put his museum. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to make it out to see much of anything in the city other than the back of cab drivers’ heads. But once again, even though we weren’t able to thank the still-fictitious museum in person, Fisher’s museum is the gift that keeps giving to newshounds like ourselves. Case in point: after all the controversy last year, Fisher and his architectural team had finally turned in what looked like revised plans that would make everyone happy. But then a new complaint: no parking. And now another: the National Park Service still hates the idea. So while we had something like a month there where Fisher could breath easier, here we are again, in potential nowheresville for this project or at the very least, the start of another endless round of debate. Oh sweet Presidio Museum, how we love you so.
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We started seeing the flood of museum closures almost immediately upon the collapse of the economy and all of those were functioning museums who, no matter the time their doors had been open (some were remarkably short), at least had seen some visitors come through in their days. But now we come to organizations like the Children’s Museum of Los Angeles, a $52 million dollar, almost 60,000 square foot project, which has officially come to an end even before they were ever able to open. The problem? An absent central investor not delivering on his promises (and being investigated by the feds) and that nasty decline in fundraising most all museums are suffering from at the moment. Now the museum sits unfinished and in bankruptcy, waiting to find what will become of it once it likely becomes a ward of the government.
To open by 2010, the museum needed $22 million for exhibits and operating expenses. Nearly half of that was pledged by the charity run by [investor Bruce Friedman], who was recently sued by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly stealing $17 million from investors. A judge has frozen his company’s assets.
Faced with the threat of having to return the Friedman gift, the museum board announced earlier this month that it would declare Chapter 7 bankruptcy and liquidate its assets.
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The former director of both the Whitney Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, David Ross, has filed his own public letter, his in the Wall Street Journal and concerning the much-recently debated topic of museums selling pieces of their collections to keep their doors open. Ross is tossing his hat onto the side that is totally against it in this regard, claiming that selling causes museums to “lose the public trust” and should only “be done to enhance the collection — not to satisfy bondholders or bank lenders.” His complaint serves as a nice counter-point to the piece we posted last month with the LA Times Christopher Knight‘s defense of art sales. Also provides for some good additional thought on what could be the final chapter in the Rose Art Museum debacle, wherein Brandeis University has announced that they are no longer planning on selling the museum’s collection, nor do they intend to close its doors (other than to do some temporary re-hanging and dusting up after the big dust up).
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The former director of both the Whitney Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, David Ross, has filed his own public letter, his in the Wall Street Journal and concerning the much-recently debated topic of museums selling pieces of their collections to keep their doors open. Ross is tossing his hat onto the side that is totally against it in this regard, claiming that selling causes museums to “lose the public trust” and should only “be done to enhance the collection — not to satisfy bondholders or bank lenders.” His complaint serves as a nice counter-point to the piece we posted last month with the LA Times Christopher Knight‘s defense of art sales.
New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media
The former director of both the Whitney Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, David Ross, has filed his own public letter, his in the Wall Street Journal and concerning the much-recently debated topic of museums selling pieces of their collections to keep their doors open. Ross is tossing his hat onto the side that is totally against it in this regard, claiming that selling causes museums to “lose the public trust” and should only “be done to enhance the collection — not to satisfy bondholders or bank lenders.” His complaint serves as a nice counter-point to the piece we posted last month with the LA Times Christopher Knight‘s defense of art sales. Also provides for some good additional thought on the latest chapter in the Rose Art Museum debacle, wherein Brandeis University has announced that they will not be selling the museum’s collection “in the immediate future”, due to the lousy art market at the moment, but plan to once the economy picks up again and people start buying art at more stable prices. More info here about the developments, directly from the Rose.
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