Hasta La Ideas

As the museum world continues to struggle to keep afloat with lower attendance and much fewer endowments, we’ve seen the idea of selling pieces from collections become a more appealing idea within museum administrations, much to the disdain of many. But sometimes the whole thing happens much more quickly than just flirting with the idea or selling off a piece here and there for a little extra working capital. Such is the case at Brandeis University‘s Rose Art Museum who surprised nearly everyone by suddenly deciding to close their doors and sell off their entire collection immediately. The university’s president and its trustees were the only ones who knew about the closure and sale, which shocked the museum’s board, its director, and the staff, who are all now furious about the decision. And now, due to outcry and the unprecedented action taken by the university’s leadership, the Massachusetts attorney general’s office has decided to investigate:

Emily LaGrassa, director of communications for the state attorney general, Martha Coakley, said that Brandeis had informed the office on Monday of its decision, but had not consulted with the attorney general in advance. The attorney general has approval powers over certain actions of nonprofit institutions in the state.

Ms. LaGrassa said that in the case of Brandeis, the attorney general would review wills and agreements made between the museum and the estates of donors to determine if selling artworks violated the terms of donations. “We have not yet offered any opinion on any aspect of the proposed sales,” she said, adding, “We do expect this to be a lengthy process.”

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As predicted back in October, the Seattle Art Museum had good reason to be concerned about the financial crisis, particularly after Washington Mutual, who was renting several floors of the museum’s new Brad Cloepfil-designed building, went belly up. It’s now being reported that the former bank’s new owners, JP Morgan Chase, have decided that it won’t be needing the more than 200,000 square feet anymore and will be pulling out of the lease. While they’re giving the museum $10 million in grant money, that still leaves the museum in the lurch by almost $60 million for the amount they still owe on the new building. Now they’re hoping, we’d think rather desperately, to find someone new to move in to the space. Here’s a bit:

WaMu will end its lease in March, at the same time it’s pulling out of leases at several other downtown office buildings.

Cara Egan, a spokeswoman for SAM, said the space has not been listed. She is hopeful that the museum will find a new tenant despite a weakened commercial leasing market.

“The space is in a great location and it’s priced competitively,” said Egan.

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This week has been something of a roller coaster, what with the joy of the inauguration and the quick dip back to the reality of our economic affairs. So we thought we’d try to pick you back up, even if just temporarily, but offering this fun piece from Life Without Buildings. The post talks about how, in all this hubbub about if the people of San Francisco should or shouldn’t give Don Fisher the okay to build his museum in the Presidio, we’ve all lost our ability to see what’s ahead, namely that Star Trek has already shown us the Presidio of the future and it’s completely different, being the “headquarters for both Starfleet and Starfleet Academy” as it is. So, of course, it’s a valuable piece of reading for anyone concerned with Fisher’s ongoing controversial project, to enlighten both sides about our space-age future and how we are helpless to resist it. Here’s a bit:

It seems that at some point in this alternate history, San Francisco’s preservationists eventually conceded defeat. An “air tram station” boldly looks out over the Golden Gate Bridge and SF Bay. A softer mix of Brutalism and basic curvy sci-fi movie architecture. Ideal? No. But definitely an improvement over the current faux-historic designs mandated by overly-vocal and underly-visionary individuals, committees and trusts. And then there’s Starfleet Headquarters — vaguely Niemeyer-esque modernism in a Japanese tea garden. While I don’t think I’d like to see this building dominating the park, I do hope we don’t have to wait until the 22nd century for something to get built that’s truly of its time.

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While all eyes were on the bailout of Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art, the Los Angeles Country Museum of Art was gearing up to sneak around and raise some survival money of their own by “deaccessioning” some of their collection. That word, of course, is just a fancy way of say “selling off” really, something they’ve done every once in a while for the past few years to help raise some extra money, all the while courting plenty of controversy. This time around, the museum’s director, Michael Govan, has followed the standard dialogue, saying what they’re doing is perfectly pure:

“LACMA doesn’t usually trade one thing for another,” Govan said. “So no, we’re not deaccessioning because we have to pay some bill on another painting. The bottom line is: If you’ve noticed what we’ve been buying, we’ve been buying very aggressively. We’ve been planning to re-do our European collection galleries, and we’re slated at the end of this year to do that.”

Elsewhere, Govan spoke with the LA Times about the museum, careful not to create any extra worry about their finances. All are worth reading as a package to help piece together your ideas about the situation in your own head.

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We were on the fence about going to the endless sea of humanity that will be the inauguration celebrations next week in Washington D.C., but we a) waited too long to get a flight booked, b) remembered that D.C. gets cold too and frankly we’re sick of cold, and c) this writer lives in Chicago, so he figures it’s probably best to let the non-locals get a peek at Barack Obama for a couple of minutes. But for those of you who are braving the crowds and paying $55 for a bottle of water or a $150 commemorative t-shirt, our friends at Art Info have come up with a whole slew of more museum and art-based things to do while in D.C. As we’d reported on earlier, the town is dusting off all the exhibits and straightening out the rugs in preparation for the coming masses, and this is a great collection of the best of the best, including some not-explicitly-political stops, which could make for some welcomed breaks during the avalanche. To those who are going, we say godspeed, good luck, and have a blast.

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