A CALL ON ALBRIGHT-KNOX MEMBERS TO STOP THE

AUCTION

For those who would like to take action to stop the upcoming sale of the older work at the Albright-Knox, we, the undersigned members of the gallery, would like to propose the following: the calling of a special meeting of the members of the gallery to discuss and vote on a resolution to withdraw from the sale. This method will take some doing. Special meetings are usually called by the President or by the majority of the Board, but after some of us spoke to a few members of the board and asked for a special meeting, we were informed, after a few days of discussion among board members, that the board was not interested in calling one. That leaves the third method allowed for by the bylaws of the gallery, the request of five per cent of the members, which means that we will need at least 300 requests for the meeting in order to make it happen (five percent of the total membership of about 6,000). If you are not a member, and care about this issue, this is the time to join. We must act now. The items have all been shipped to Sotheby’s in New York, and the first lot is scheduled to be auctioned on March 15.

For those of you who are still not sure you’re against the sale, we urge you to give a hearing to our contention that the justification offered for the sale is not valid, that the sale violates the basic duty of the gallery to cherish our cultural heritage, and that the secret manner in which deliberations leading to the sale have been conducted violates the right of the members and the community to open and transparent dealing.

Why have the board and the director decided to sell at auction our older masterworks, some 144 objects of the permanent collection—mainly Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquities, European art before 1800 (especially Medieval and Renaissance), and older work from India, China, Africa, Central and South America, and the Middle East? They claim that we need to increase the budget for new art, and they believe that the sale is a proper way to get an additional $15 million because the older art is not relevant to the mission of the museum, which is the collecting and exhibiting of modern and contemporary art. But, as others have pointed out in public letters, an examination of the history of the museum shows that while modern and contemporary art has clearly been its primary focus, it has consistently collected older art as well.

The 144 items sent away to be sold were not secured inadvertently, at moments of inattention; they were acquired by gift or by purchase as the result of a deliberate policy, carried out by successive boards and directors over many generations, on the supposition that the art of the present cannot be understood in historical isolation, that to appreciate any single period requires placing it in the context of art of other eras and traditions. So Robert Buck, who was director from 1973 to 1983, gave an important place to the older work in his catalogue of the collection, agreeing with previous directors that such work “forms a background and perspective that lets us see and judge better the modern collection.” And the last director, Douglas Schulz, in his 2001 Strategic Plan, lists as one of the primary goals of the gallery “incorporating pre-modern objects from the collection to contextualize and enhance the understanding of modern and contemporary art.” In deciding to sell off the older pieces, then, the board and the director were not following the traditions of the gallery, but rejecting them.

Not only is the justification offered for the sale untrue, but it demonstrates a profound misunderstanding of the duties of an art museum to the community it serves. A serious art museum like the Albright-Knox acquires art not as an investment in a marketable commodity but as a contribution to the cultural heritage of the community. The trust that is vested in our trustees, our board and director is founded on their commitment to preserving and enlarging this heritage. Our tradition does give special emphasis to acquiring newer work, but it also emphatically endorses a respect for acknowledged masterpieces of other times and traditions that precludes funding the new by selling off the old. In suddenly adopting this self-destructive policy, the board and the director have betrayed their duty as stewards of our patrimony.

This betrayal is especially costly in Buffalo because our city provides very few alternatives where one can encounter older art first hand. There is no Buffalo Museum of Greek and Roman antiquities, of Indian or pre-Columbian art, or of European masterpieces. The Science Museum does house collections of African and Chinese art, but who knows how long we can expect either of its collections to remain in Buffalo if the Albright-Knox sets the precedent for declaring such collections to be irrelevant to its mission? Who could criticize the Science Museum for selling off its collections when the major art gallery of the city has decided that such art is inappropriate? Shouldn’t our museum set an example of cherishing art rather than spurning it? It’s true that our collection of older art doesn’t make us more glamorous to those who rank us by our contemporary art alone, but it deepens the experience of art for the people who live here, and for our visitors, by allowing us a direct encounter with the history of art in the West and with the art of other cultures. For the students among us it plays an essential part in their artistic education, not only college students who come deliberately to study the relation of old and new, but the students in our primary and secondary schools, brought by teachers energetic and imaginative enough to break from the usual routine in the interest of education. For them the gallery offers their only chance at an introduction to the range of the artistic tradition.

How completely the decision to sell our older work disregards its service to our community is underscored by the argument of the present director that museums with a broader historical focus are easily reachable from Buffalo in two or three hours of driving. To us it’s clear that for most people the difference between art at home and art two hours away is the difference between making art a part of one’s life and failing to do so. An interest in art is most often planted and nurtured not by rare, day-long trips to another city but by frequent visits to art near at hand, which permits individual works that seem strange at first to grow gradually familiar and significant. In this regard, some of our older works play an especially important role because they tend to be more immediately accessible to the beginner, and so provide a welcome starting point for interests that then can develop gradually to include the modern and contemporary.

Commitment to the duty of stewardship of the past is especially important in a museum that makes contemporary art its chief focus because what the term “contemporary” refers to is always changing. When the museum was established, contemporary art was the art of the 19th century. Can we call that art contemporary today? If we can’t, should we sell it off as irrelevant to our mission? The auction now scheduled does not include such art, but it establishes a precedent that could be used by later boards and directors for divesting the collection of painters like Eakins, Homer, Ryder and Inness. It certainly forecloses forever the possibility of any donations to our museum of art before 1800. And it would have an immediate chilling effect on donations of any art before 1900. Who would want to leave a Homer or an Inness to a museum that might sell it off in a few decades? By rescinding the sale we make it clear that we do not want the Albright-Knox to restrict itself to the shifting, narrow band of the art of the moment but to cherish a long tradition of aesthetic excellence. Selling off our older art would radically curtail the range of the beautiful in the visual arts in Buffalo. There is no answer to this objection.

We want to stress here that to lose our older work is not only to lose unique masterpieces that can never be replaced but to lose the dialogue between past and present that increases our understanding of the modern and contemporary art that is the Gallery’s primary focus. We learn something about the meaning of Gauguin’s Yellow Christ by contrasting it with the representation of sacred figures in medieval, Roman, Greek, Indian and Chinese traditions. We learn something important about Rodin’s Age of Bronze when we see it juxtaposed to the kind of Classical sculpture that inspired it. We learn something about Giacometti’s Invisible Object when we see its kinship with African carvings and in general we have a better understanding of modern sculpture when we see it juxtaposed to the powerfully expressive distortions and abstractions of figures from ancient Peru, Mexico and the Cyclades. Not many museums that focus on contemporary art can provide this kind of rich historical context for the art they feature. If the auction of the old actually takes place, the experience of the new will be sadly diminished.

Did the board or the director have any inkling of the harm that the proposed sale would do to our collection and to the experience of visiting the gallery? We believe that they didn’t, that they made the decision thinking that the sale would help the gallery, not harm it. As for whether they anticipated a strong resistance to the sale, that is a harder question to answer. We’d like to think that they would not have made their decision if they had known that many members would be against it. We’d like to think that they will not try to push forward if they can be convinced that a siginificant number of the members are opposed to the sale. Yet if the members of the Board had really been concerned about the opinion of the members, why, we wonder, did they hide from the members any suggestion that they were contemplating such a sale? It’s true that selling an individual object from a collection is not an uncommon procedure for any museum, and usually it does not require special notification, especially when the object is of inferior quality or of doubtful authenticity or one of a group of objects that are similar in subject and style. But selling off so many objects at once, a great many of which are rare and of the highest quality and not replaceable, objects that when taken together constitute almost all our collection before 1800, may be unprecedented in the history of any American museum, and is without a doubt unprecedented in ours. It should not have been done without the most extensive, open consultation with the museum membership and with the larger community. Yet the discussion about the sale went on for many months within the walls of the museum without the slightest hint of it making its way outside. We have to assume that the board and the director were operating under a rule of the strictest secrecy. It’s hard to read this policy as anything but a deliberate attempt to keep the membership and the community in the dark until the contract for the sale had been signed, so that the protest would come too late. In fact, when news of the sale was made public in the Buffalo News the objects had already been sent off for auction. This is not the open and honest dealing that we as members have a right to expect from a board that we have elected.

The only way for us members of the gallery to make clear to the board and the director our determination about the sale is to hold a special meeting of the members in which we vote up or down the resolution to withdraw from the sale. We therefore urge all the members who care about the issue to write the gallery as soon as possible, so that a meeting can be scheduled within two or three weeks.

Carl Dennis, Frank Kowsky, Ansie Silverman Baird, Martin Pops, Ann Colley, Max Wickert, David Derner, Howard Wolf, Katka Hammond, Patrick Klinck

Buffalo Art Keepers

SUPPORT FOR THE ALBRIGHT-KNOX DEACCESSIONING

I am writing in support of Director Louis Grachos and the board of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in their decision to expand the collections of contemporary art. As a scholar of 19th-century American art, I know that the Albright-Knox has been, throughout its history, one of the museums in this country that was always on the “circuit” of contemporary art exhibitions. A look at any one of its scrapbooks will reveal the laudatory reviews of shows of artists of the moment. If the mission is to continue that tradition, then it is most appropriate for the director and his curators to be right up-to-the-minute in their quest for new acquisitions.

Laurene Buckley, Ph.D.

Director, Castellani Art Museum

As a donor and frequent visitor to the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, I am writing to voice my personal support for the board and Director Louis Grachos.

I fully trust that the decision to sell certain works was made in the best long-term interest of the gallery and it is exciting for me to think of what new works may come into the collection.

The Albright has earned my trust by virtue of the sound fiscal decisions that have been made in the face of the severe economic challenges and by the consistent and stellar programming of exhibitions and activities.

My nine-year-old son and I attended a free Gusto at the Gallery on a recent Friday night. He had been on a field trip to the Albright with his school class and much to my surprise, he was able talk about numerous contemporary works he had learned about from the docents. Bravo!

Instead of haranguing the gallery, I think we need to be thinking about how we can support the Gallery and ensure it is here and is vibrant for future generations.

Dan Hart

Amherst

I am writing to applaud Louis Grachos and the Board of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery for its vision to keep the gallery and the arts community in Buffalo moving forward. The Albright Knox has always stayed true to its mission to collect, preserve and exhibit the best of modern and contemporary art. The board recently voted to deaccession some antiquities from the permanent collection. Frankly, the Gallery is fortunate to have been gifted some of these pieces over the years because, while they do not fit with the mission of the Albright-Knox, their sale will allow the gallery to increase its endowment for the purchase of works of art that do fit with the mission, whether it is filling in gaps in the 20th-century collection or acquiring the Picassos and Jackson Pollacks of tomorrow. I thank the board of the Albright-Knox for providing the Buffalo Niagara region with a world-class museum of modern and contemporary art and making sure that the next generation of Western New Yorkers will be able to have the same exciting experience when visiting the gallery in years to come by being engaged by the exhibits of tomorrow’s contemporary artists.

Elizabeth Stevens Gurney

Buffalo