"What Museums Got in '98," The Wall Street Journal, April 9, 1999, p. W12.

The Enrichment of America's Museums: a survey of 1998 acquisitions

by Jason Edward Kaufman

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. According to a survey of 65 of our nation's most prominent art museums, approximately two thirds of their most notable artworks acquired in 1998 were gifts or bequests harvested from private collectors. This is only one of the surprising facts uncovered by the study, in which museums reported some 5,000 paintings, sculptures, photographs, and decorative objects.

Of course, museums today also shop for their art, although the Association of Art Museum Directors reports that only 14 of 117 institutions have endowments generating more than $1 million for acquisitions. With individual paintings selling for tens of millions of dollars, no wonder museums must rely on the great American tradition of cultural philanthropy for the enrichment of their permanent collections.

Of the numerous bequests in 1998, the most magnificent was that of Betsey Cushing Whitney, the socialite widow of the former Ambassador to Britain, who left $300-million worth of French impressionist and modern art -- by Monet, van Gogh, Cézanne, Picasso, and Matisse, among others -- to the National Gallery of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, Yale University, and The National Portrait Gallery. One highlight was the National Gallery's first self-portrait by van Gogh. (Sotheby's will offer property from her estate, including works by Cézanne, Seurat, Picasso, and others estimated to bring $80 to $110 million in a series of sales April 22-25 and May 10.)

Her gift was rivaled by Sara Lee Corporation's donating more than 50 masterworks by Degas, Gauguin, Braque, Bonnard, and others to dozens of museums nationwide, from the Art Institute of Chicago to the Lauren Rogers Museum in Laurel, Mississippi. The public relations coup was an unprecedented departure from the sorts of fire sales with which companies like IBM and Reader's Digest liquidated their collections.

And when the Indianapolis Museum set its sights on a Swiss private collection of paintings and prints by Gauguin and his circle, the Lilly Endowment stepped in with an astonishing grant of $20 million to make the acquisition possible.

When we think of art museums, we tend to think of old masters, but the survey suggests that the most burgeoning field in museum collecting is photography -- an astounding two fifths of the number of notable acquisitions in 1998 (counting each print as an individual object). Massive blocs of photographs went to museums:

-- The Art Institute of Chicago bought 73 vintage prints by Julia Margaret Cameron from a descendant.

-- The Museum of Modern Art added more than 200 prints by Garry Winogrand and 163 more by Michael Schmidt, as well as vintage prints from the Moscow descendants of Rodchenko, and images by Manuel Alvarez Bravo, purchased from the artist.

-- The small yet financially mighty Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., established a photograph collection by purchasing more than 40 19th- and early-20th-century prints by the masters of the medium.

-- The Corocoran Gallery received the entire contents of their recent retrospective of Gordon Parks as a gift from the artist, and hundreds more by South African Constance Stuart Larrabbee.

-- The Guggenheim accepted 531 prints by George Platt Lynes.

-- Vassar received 83 prints by muckraker Lewis Hine as a gift of an alumna.

-- St. Louis received 30 prints by Andreas Feininger as a gift of the artist.

-- The Metropolitan added works by Nadar, Arbus, and a remarkable 1858-59 large-format print by Charles Négre of the refectory at Vincennes, a gift from photo dealer Hans P. Kraus Jr.

Non-western art also has become a major component of U.S. museum collecting, with Asian art accounting for about 15% of the objects in the survey, and African art about 8%. The Asian figure was boosted by 331 Chinese snuff bottles given to the Seattle Art Museum and 163 Japanese netsuke bequeathed to the Cantor Museum at Stanford. But collecting was widespread, with Cleveland acquiring an important Ming hanging scroll by Wen Zhenming, and the Freer and Sackler Galleries receiving a variety of works, including an illuminated Persian manuscript once owned by Shah Jahan, builder of the Taj Mahal, which director Milo Beech describes as "a manuscript of such complexity that it is a virtual collection within the covers of one book."

Museums continue to focus considerable attention on modern and contemporary art, which constituted more than 30% [RECHECK PERCENT] of acquisitions. At least five important Picassos entered U.S. museums, including his 1901 Self-portrait ("Yo") given to MoMA as part of the Whitney bequest. MoMA and the Art Institute of Chicago received canvases by Matisse, and the Morgan Library in NY acquired the archive of the artist's son Pierre, a leading modern art dealer in mid-century New York, whose trove includes 2,000 letters from artists such as Chagall, Miro, Balthus, Giacometti, Dubuffet, about 100 drawings, and unpublished correspondence between the gallerist and his father.

Half a dozen Warhols went to museums from Boston to Fort Worth, and Phyllis Wattis underwrote a multi-million-dollar shopping spree for San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art, which included works by Duchamp, Warhol, Mondrian, and a Magritte that fetched a record $7.1 million at auction. And one of the hottest contemporary artists was the German Anselm Kiefer, whose work was acquired by major museums in New York, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Fort Worth, and San Francisco

Most contemporary art was sold by New York galleries, but several artists became their own sales reps. Robert Rauschenberg sold a handful of drawings to the Guggenheim and 14 works to SFMOMA, including early "combine" paintings and his infamous "Erased de Kooning Drawing" (1953). Sol LeWitt sold 19 drawings to the Whitney Museum, which also acquired bodies of work by Ad Reinhardt and Brice Marden. And Jasper Johns relinquished his White Flag (1955) for which the Metropolitan is said to have paid more than $10 million. The Museum of Modern Art also received two paintings by Johns as part of a gift from architect Philip Johnson, who added canvases by de Kooning, Philip Guston, Warhol, and James Rosenquist to the more than 2,200 works he has given the museum since 1932.

Top-quality old masters are increasingly rare commodities, as works enter museums never to return to the market. "Great old master art is an issue of supply and demand," says National Gallery director Earl A. Powell III, "and there is increasingly less of a supply." The sources for that dwindling supply remain the two major auction houses -- Sotheby's and Christie's -- and primarily dealers based in London and New York. There were no show-stopping Rembrandts or Raphaels last year, but fine works by lesser masters were sprinkled around the country, including Golden Age Dutch paintings acquired by at least eight institutions.

In the most extraordinary old-master deal, the Blanton Museum at the University of Texas at Austin acquired 250 old master paintings, 400 drawings, and 20 sculptures amassed by two generations of art historians in the Suida-Manning family. Not every one is a masterpiece, but the hoard includes oils by Sebastiano del Piombo, Veronese, the Tiepolos, Guercino, Poussin, and Claude Lorain, among others.

And what are the museums not acquiring? Ancient and medieval art. So few notable examples were added to U.S. museum collections last year that together they account for only about 1% of the survey. Michael Ward, whose Upper East Side gallery specialises in medieval and antique art, explains that relatively few museums collect in these areas, and fewer have the money to by major works, which in any event are increasingly rare as the finite supply goes into museum collections never to return to the market.

Anthony Blumka, whose third-generation Upper East Side gallery specializes in medieval and Renaissance works of art, says museums are inclined to buy "two-dimensional blockbuster art that will be more popular with their viewers." His business has swayed toward private collectors:

"As recently as the seventies and early eighties we used to sell 80% to museums," he reports, "and now it's maybe 30% to museums."

Moreover, with the press focusing attention on the black market for illegally excavated, stolen, and smuggled antiquities, heightened concern with provenance has complicated transactions. Samuel Merrin, whose Manhattan gallery specialises in antiquities, says that "because of the press, museums are much more concerned about provenance and do more thorough checks when it come to antiquities. Dealers are doing the same thing." he says. The Getty, once a major player in the ancient art market, has refrained from buying unprovenanced works in the wake of the controversy that erupted when an Italian official accused the museum of having purchased a statue looted from an archaeological site in Sicily. The claim was unproved, and the fifth-century-BC 7 ˝ -foot-tall marble-and-limestone so-called "Aphrodite" remains at the museum.

Jerry Eisenberg, owner of Royal-Athena, another Manhattan antiquities gallery, agrees that American museums have become "fussy", but he says "it's not a matter of provenance -- it's their lack of budget." He has found that European museums have been active, often with support from their governments. Merrin confirms that many works are leaving the country for Europe or Asia, but he points out that antiquities have never been a priority with most American museums: "For every antiquity sold there must be 30 or 40 paintings," he says. Our survey indicates it's closer to 100.

Jason Edward Kaufman ©