Advocacy

The Artist-Museum Partnership Act of 2009, legislation introduced in both houses of Congress, would allow a fair-market-value tax deduction for charitable contributions of literary, musical, artistic, or scholarly compositions to collecting institutions such as museums, libraries, and archives. At present, a donating artist, writer, or composer can only deduct the cost of materials used to create the work, which is not a fair incentive to donate and also hurts the missions of public and nonprofit institutions nationwide to increase public access to these unique creations.

The sponsors of the bill—Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Robert Bennett (R-UT) for S 405 and Representatives John Lewis (D-GA) and Todd Platts (R-PA) for HR 1126—hope that past enthusiasm for such legislation will grow in the current 111th Congress. Although similar Senate bills have passed five times in previous years, the House version of the bill in the 110th Congress had 111 cosponsors. Now that a new Congress is underway, more cosponsors are needed to help advance the bill.

The American Association of Museums has worked with the Association of Art Museum Directors to provide a draft letter that you can use to encourage your federal lawmakers to cosponsor the bill. With your help, this important legislation for both artists and institutions can move forward.

The website of Art in America magazine reports that the Rose Art Museum is not closing this summer as previously expected: “Current exhibitions—‘Saints and Sinners’ and ‘Hans Hofmann: Circa 1950’—will remain on view through May 17th; after a brief de-install, the museum will re-open on July 22nd with works from the permanent collection.” Four museum staff members are expected to retain their positions, although Michael Rush will no longer direct.

Further, according to the museum administrator Jay Knox, Brandeis University plans to dissolve the museum’s board of directors, and the longterm stability of the collection is still unknown.

April 10–12, 2009, is the sixth anniversary of the looting of the National Museum in Baghdad and the subsequent pillaging of archeological sites across Iraq. In the years since 2003, Saving Antiquities for Everyone (SAFE) has held, and has encouraged others to hold, global candlelight vigils in commemoration of the tragic loss suffered by the ransacking of the museum and the looting of artworks and artifacts there—many of which are still missing despite the recent reopening of seven museum galleries.

In New York, a gathering is taking place on April 11, 6:00–7:30 PM, in Washington Square Park. For those living in or near New York, please join the vigil. Donny George, former director of the Iraq Museum, is scheduled to speak.

Elsewhere in the United States, lectures, discussions, and SAFE-related vigils are being held at institutions in Fairbanks, Alaska; St. Paul, Minnesota; Eugene, Oregon; Ceres, California; and Amherst, Massachusetts. Please see the full listof vigil times and locations. You may also host a vigil in your own area.

To show additional support, please light a virtual candle on the SAFE website. By completing a simple form, your name and location will be displayed on your personal candle page and will also be listed on the main virtual-candle page.

For a review of the tragic events of 2003, read an interview with Donny George, conducted by Zainab Bahrani, in the September 2007 CAA News, as well as his detailed talk prepared for the 2008 Annual Conference in the May 2008 issue.

SAFE is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving cultural heritage worldwide. Its mission is to raise public awareness about the irreversible damage that results from looting, smuggling, and trading illicit antiquities. SAFE promotes respect for the laws and treaties that enable nations to protect their cultural property and preserve humanity’s most precious nonrenewable resource: the intact evidence of our undiscovered past. While the impetus to found SAFE was the ransacking of the National Museum of Iraq in Baghdad in April 2003, its efforts are global. SAFE has no political affiliations.

A bill drafted by Richard L. Brodsky, an assemblyman in the New York State Legislature, aims to prevent museums from paying for general operating expenses with the sales of artworks. Brodsky collaborated with the New York State Board of Regents and the Museum Association of New York in response, in part, to a recent deaccession by the National Academy Museum and the planned sale of works from the upstate historic site Fort Ticonderoga, as well as the decision by Brandeis University to close the Rose Art Museum in Massachusetts.

Robin Pogrebin of the New York Times reports that the board of regents already has regulations on the sale of art in place, but that these rules were too general. The proposed bill would echo standards by the American Association of Museums and Association of Art Museum Directors, which state that sales of works may be used only to acquire more works.

News about the closing of the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University and the selling of its collection slowed down this week, but not without several highlights. Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz issued a formal apology—not for the decision to dismantle the museum’s collection but rather for his mishandling the announcement to do so. He also regretted leaving out the Brandeis community in the board of trustees’ deliberations.

Michael Rush, director of the Rose, posted his statement on the closing and sale directly to his museum’s website this week. The university’s Department of Fine Arts also joined the chorus of protest voices, issuing a statement to all university faculty, students, alumni, and friends of the department. Also, the New York Times condemned the Brandeis decision in an article by Roberta Smith and in an unsigned editorial.

Jeff Gilbride of the Daily News Tribune in Waltham, Massachusetts, was at the “funeral march” held this week by Brandeis students as an “emotional and rowdy counterpart” to last week’s sit-in at the museum. Relatedly, Jeff Weistein fromObit wonders, “Can a Museum Die?”

Greg Cook reviews the current exhibition at the Rose, Hans Hoffmann: Circa 1950, for the Boston Phoenix, and Daniel Grant considers donor responses and restrictions on gifts in his article “Is the University’s Museum Just a Rose to Be Plucked?” for the Wall Street Journal.

The Rose Art Museum website is chronicling the press on the closing and sale. Laurie Fendrich has been passionately following the story in the Chronicle Review, the blog of the Chronicle of Higher Education. And, of course, theBoston Globe has been leading the charge with daily reports.

Yesterday about two hundred students and other protesters staged a sit-in at the Rose Art Museum, reports the Boston Globe, which has been following the story closely since Monday. A Facebook group and a website, established this week shortly after the news of the closing, played a major role in rallying students and support.

The Boston Globe also presents some of the larger issues surrounding Brandeis University’s finances. Modern Art Notes has published an general email sent by Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz to those who wrote to him. In it Reinharz gives a few more details about his school’s financial situation. The Justice, the independent student newspaper at Brandeis, and the Wall Street Journal are also looking into this part of the developing story.

The Brandeis Hoot also weighs in on the situation, and Emily Leifer of the Justicewrites an op-ed about Brandeis’s public image.

Art & Education, the academic wing of e-flux and Artforum, republished and emailed CAA’s statement against the closing.

Ford W. Bell, president of the American Association of Museums, has issued a Statement on the Closure of the Rose Museum at Brandeis University. Read it at the Boston Globe’s Exhibitionist blog.

Artinfo.com has published the response from the Association of Art Museum Directors.

The Association of College and University Museums and Galleries, a CAA affiliated society, has published its statement, ACUMG Responds to the Closure of the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University.

Also as reported in the Boston Globe, the president of Brandeis University, Jehuda Reinharz, said that while he would not reconsider closing the museum, he is entertaining the possibility that his school might not sell the Rose Art Museum’s art collection and reaffirmed that the museum building would become a “fine arts teaching center with studio space and an exhibition gallery.” CAA notes that the Rose Art Museum as it stands now is already this.

Other updates and articles can be found at Bloomberg.com, the New York Times, and Modern Art Notes, including a Q&A with Michael Rush, director of the Rose Art Museum. Time also interviewed Rush on Tuesday, and Lee Rosenbaum at CultureGrrl has additional information.

Donn Zaretsky at Art Law Blog is also writing about the Rose situation, with deaccessioning in mind.

The College Art Association (CAA) was shocked and dismayed to learn of the decision by Brandeis University to close the Rose Art Museum and sell its entire art collection for operating revenue.

CAA supports the Codes of Ethics of the American Association of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors, which clearly state that works of art in museum collections are held as a public trust and that any proceeds of sales must only support the acquisition of new works. However, perceiving an entire art collection as a disposable financial asset and then dismantling that collection wholesale to cover other university expenses is deeply troubling for all college and university collections.

The closing of the museum at Brandeis will be devastating to the academic community, not only affecting our colleagues at the museum and students and faculty in the Department of Fine Arts, which offers programs in both studio art and art history, but also depriving the entire arts-loving public in New England and around the world. The teaching of art and art history in higher education is untenable without the direct study of physical works of art, and it appears the Brandeis Board of Trustees has disregarded the kind of scholarship and creativity that have been the hallmark of CAA members for nearly one hundred years.

According to news reports, neither Brandeis University nor the Rose Art Museum is on the brink of economic collapse, nor are they unable to maintain the collections. Given that no clear explanation has been offered on the school’s financial exigencies, the closure of the Rose Art Museum and the sale of its collection appear to be in violation of professional museum standards and of academic transparency and due process; the decision also demonstrates a lack of academic responsibility and fiduciary foresight. We appeal to the Trustees of Brandeis to revisit and reverse their decision.

Paul B. Jaskot
President, College Art Association
Professor of Art History
Department of the History of Art and Architecture
DePaul University

Linda Downs
Executive Director, College Art Association

Download a PDF of this letter from the CAA website.

CAA has joined a list of twenty-six national organizations, six regional museum associations, and thirty-nine state associations in sending a letter to President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team. The letter, drafted by the American Association of Museums and sent on December 22, 2008, states the case for the importance of US museums of all kinds and recommends $50 million in funding for the Office of Museum Services at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) in fiscal year 2010—an increase of $19 million over this year’s budget.

The Education and Labor Subcommittee on Healthy Families and Communities in the US House of Representatives is scheduled to hold an informational hearing on museums and libraries at 9:30 AM EST on Thursday, September 11, 2008. The subcommittee will be examining how museums and libraries help to strengthen communities and will specifically focus on programs where museums partner with local government entities to solve community problems. One such program expected to be highlighted is a children’s museum that uses an IMLS grant to support a collaborative initiative between the museum, the county’s child welfare agency, and the family court system.

“Museums and libraries are playing such a vital role in communities around the nation,” said Ford W. Bell, president of the American Association of Museums (AAM). “I commend Chairwoman Carolyn McCarthy (D-NY) and Ranking Member Todd Platts (R-PA) for calling this hearing to explore the exceptional work that museums and libraries are doing to strengthen communities.”  He added, “I hope the museum field will be able to listen in on the Committee proceedings.”

The witness list for the hearing includes: Anne-Imelda M. Radice, director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington, DC; Suzanne LeBlanc, executive director of the Long Island Children’s Museum in New York; Mary Clare Zales, deputy secretary of education and commissioner for libraries in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Anna Nunez, executive director of the Arizona Health Science Library at the University of Arizona in Tucson; and Eric Jolly, president of the Science Museum of Minnesota in St. Paul, Minnesota.

For additional information about museum advocacy, visit AAM’s Museum Advocacy Action Center, Speak Up for Museums, or email AAM’s grassroots manager, Ember Farber. Please keep in mind that all Congressional action is subject to change, and the committee website will usually reflect any changes.