Artworks supporting the arts

Jack Reznicki, reflecting on Vivian Maier's life and passing, wrote "The compelling issue for me with all this is why some truly talented photographers can’t make a living with their photography and are respected and revered after their passing. Why is there not a support system and economy for such work? This case of Vivian Maier is very reminiscent of Eugene Atget and how photographer Berenice Abbott made the world aware of his wondrous and marvelous images of Paris, after he was gone. John Maloof is playing Berenice Abbott to Vivian Maier’s Eugene Atget." The support system for artists, such as it is, consists of artists, schools, dealers, auctions, collectors and museums. Everyone at every level tries to identify and support talent, but they all face strong limitations as to what they can offer. The reason those limits are so strong is the gross financial mismanagement at art museums. They idly hoard tens of trillions of dollars worth of financial value that could produce hundreds of billions of dollars a year in endowment income that could pay for far more curators, exhibits, teachers, studios and additions to their collections. With that funding, the arts economy could far more comprehensively identify and support talent, enriching artists' lives financially and the public culturally.

It's hard to blame museums, though. It's more the fault of finance and legal experts who've never given museums managements tools that can mobilize that financial value without diminishing the public domain. But then, it's even hard to blame them. I'm aware of two methods that have emerged to mobilize the vast idle endowments at museums: James Maroney's tenancy-in-common plan and my own Coaccession℠. I stumbled across Coaccession trying to find a way to keep archaeologists from picking fights with collectors, and only later figured it was a financial management tool too (and I'm a finance PhD!). So, James Maroney is the only person I know of who consciously looked for a way that a museum (the Barnes Foundation) could use the financial value of its artworks to enlarge its cash endowment, and his method still involves the incentive incompatibility of putting the artwork in a private investor's hands for only the life of the investor. It took sheer good luck to come up with my incentive compatible method, just as it took good luck for John Maloof to find Vivian Maier. But then, life is often that way... progressing in fits and starts from random connections. Here's hoping at least that discoveries lead to progress, onward and upward, rather than one step forward and another step back. With the financial value of artworks supporting the cultural value of the arts, the arts economy's aesthetic explorations can be both broader and deeper. That would be better for humanity than investing much of our money to dig gold up out of the ground only to bury it again in vaults and caches.

Have your Stills and ... ... sour-mash(???) too

Dean Sobel, director of Denver's Clyfford Still Museum, says there can't be a deaccession if there's no accession first. As Kyle MacMillan reports, Still's widow Patricia had previously sold a handful of the 400 works Still had left to her personally (separate from 2,000 other works he had left to create a museum of his ouvre), and since those works she owned personally and also left to Denver haven't been formally accessioned into the nascent museum's collection, Denver figures it has an ethical opportunity to sell another handful to create an endowment... or at least a not unethical opportunity. Kyle calls its ethicality a technicality on AAM/AAMD strictures, and reports that Janet Marstine agrees it's a loophole that nonetheless passes muster, both for the transparency of the sale and the intention to keep the works together in the public domain by selling them as a group to a museum. Judith Dobrzynski is for the sale, and Sergio Munoz Sarmiento isn't against it, and Donn Zaretsky wouldn't be either, if he got around to commenting on it.

That leaves me as odd man out, or perhaps James Maroney and me as odd men out. As I commented at JD's blog:

As long as Denver has decided to sell, it makes far more sense for them to sell partial titles than full titles. James Maroney's tenancy-in-common plan would get the four works back at the demise of their life estate purchasers (this would be problematic if corporations or other perpetual institutions bought them, of course), while my own equitable servitude Coaccession℠ method would let Denver get them back whenever the Still Museum had an exhibition, a research or conservation project, or some other active cultural use. In the meantime, the partial title buyers could enjoy the paintings whenever they would otherwise be in storage at the Still. If other museums bought them, instead of private parties, the paintings might always be on display or in active cultural use, either at the Still or at the other museum. Actually, artists like Clyfford Still who want to keep their ouvre together could do that culturally with Coaccession, rather than having to keep full title to every painting. His widow might have felt much better about her actions if she'd kept the ouvre intact by retaining Cultural Titles℠ to those works, selling off only the conditional possession of Collector Titles℠.

Coaccession makes far more sense than deaccession, and that's true even when the artwork in question hasn't technically been accessioned. Museums that need current income can let collectors have future capital gains on Collector Titles while still maintaining cultural control with Cultural Titles. They don't need to give up all rights to the artwork.

Have your Picasso and peonies, too...

The Huntington Library, Art Collection and Botanical Gardens surely* wanted to bring Frances Brody's Picasso, “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” into the public domain at their own institution. Francie, a board member, had other ideas. Her greatest love at the Huntington was for the gardens, and she wanted especially to endow their care. Gifting the Picasso to the Huntington would leave the painting's $106.5 million dollar value stranded, contributing art appreciation and capital appreciation to that institution's art collection, but not a penny of income to support its gardens. To cultivate income, her estate sold the Picasso to an anonymous buyer on the open market and gifted the cash to the Huntington. So no Picasso for the public to ponder, but plenty of pesetas for peonies, posies, pansies and petunias.

Poor Frances apparently knew nothing about Coaccession℠, which would have let the Picasso join the Huntington's art collection while also providing cash income dedicated (ostensibly, at least**) to the gardens. Sharing wisely allows many mutual benefits, while an institution's solipsistic greed can isolate and diminish it. Here's hoping the Huntington and other institutions ready better plans for expanding the public domain when similar opportunities arise again.

*Marion Maneker does question: "So which would the Huntington rather have had: the art or the money?"

** Jori Finkel does report Huntington president Steven Koblick saying that "using the Brody money for botanical purposes frees up existing funds to address other needs..." Diligent donors don't forget fungibility!

How to get art out of the basement...

Paul Klein was good enough to point me to Maria Mazria Katz's Art Newspaper coverage of Eli Broad's talk at the annual meeting of the American Association of Museums. Broad's call to get art out of the basement prompted me to comment there:

Broad's right, of course, that museums should exhibit more. The problem is money. Tight public budgets can't get art out of basements -- they already threaten art in education. To reverse the trend toward layoffs downsizing exhibitions and outreach, artworks will have to support the arts. Their financial value in museums is the one realistically available fortune big enough to get art out of basements. Avoiding cultural depletion from deaccession requires new thinking, though. Coaccession™ preserves museums' cultural endowments while creating financial ones. Museums keep the property rights with an artwork's cultural value while selling the right with most of its financial value. This turns capital gains that can't pay for exhibits into stock and bond income that can, so a museum can have its Monet and money, too. Coaccession can start getting art out of the basement now while expanding art in the public domain rather than shrinking it.

Cameron Henderson was perceptive enough to call that a great post. We're both hoping Eli Broad will lead the way toward artworks supporting the arts by Coaccessioning his art collection so its own financial value provides a financial endowment to help maximize its cultural value through expanded exhibitions and outreach.

Needless Pressure on Arts Funding

The Kennedy Center's Michael Kaiser responded early to the Great Recession, organizing a website and team that puts desperate arts organizations together with better-positioned mentors in a noble effort to keep more arts organizations alive through this very rough patch. His recent Huffington Post note tells how that's been going. Basically, funders have been quite exigent, demanding impeccable arts management performance that at-risk arts companies simply can't provide, even with mentoring. Arts organizations have been going down, and will keep going down unless something fundamental changes.

Kaiser points to arts management skills. This makes sense if you take funders at their word that impeccable arts management would get them to open their wallets. If that's just a pretext to deflect attention from the economic pressures funders face, though, all the arts management training in the world won't save a lot of these performing companies. What would save them is a substantial increase in available funds, and as my comment to Kaiser's note points out, art museums have the financial wherewithal to generously fund the arts embedded in their permanent collections. Deaccessioning or leasing from those collections to generate liquidity would be a mistake, though, now that Coaccession offers a better alternative that lets a museum have its Monet and money, too.

It's time for artworks to support the arts!

Don't deaccession, Coaccession(tm)!

Northwestern Art Review publisher Cam Henderson shows through his writings his interest in, among other things, art markets and artists rights, so I reached out to him about Coaccession's role in those areas. That led to an interview over coffee, which led to his NAR post:

Don’t Deaccession, Coaccession™: The Need for a Radical Transformation of the Economic Management of America’s Fine Arts Institutions

Cam's youthful enthusiasm shows through quite clearly. I hope it will prove infectious so that artworks can finally start supporting the arts with all the munificence that their vast financial value can provide. Cam certainly seems committed to spreading the meme, and his efforts could be key to converting the views of some powers that be.

Tightening the bonds?

Art 21 Blog published my comments on Maxwell Anderson's deaccession principles:

Whether today’s curators should be bound by past curators' decisions is debatable (legislators aren’t), but it seems beyond debate that today’s curators should use Coaccession(tm) to care better for an expanded collection.

Coaccession can let museums reduce deaccessions by reducing financial reasons to have "Items for which the Museum is not able to provide proper storage or care." Cultural Titles(tm) can be forever practically, even if circumstances make undivided titles impractical.