From the WSJ Opinion Archives
LEISURE & ARTS
Endangered Species
Are single-collector "jewel box" museums becoming extinct?
"Can you imagine actually living with all this?" marveled a visitor overheard recently at the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. Renzo Piano's simple but stunning skylit space was designed in close consultation with real estate developer Raymond Nasher, who paid for the galleries and garden where the collection that once graced his home is invitingly arrayed.
Part of the enchantment of the small, single-collector institution is the daydream of oneself as discerning owner. Dallying among treasures chosen by an informed amateur helps personalize the art experience as no mega-museum ever can. Usually, the architecture also reflects the collector's taste, with spaces that are homey rather than overbearing. This explains the great affection visitors feel for the Frick Collection in New York, Gardner Museum in Boston, Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Mass., and Menil Collection in Houston.
But the dominance of today's attendance-driven encyclopedic museums has endangered the single-collector jewel box. The founders often unwittingly thwart their own desires, failing to create enduring plans for professional management and outside financial support. Too often, the administrators and board members entrusted with the collection's postmortem stewardship are impelled less by the founder's vision than by fiscal and administrative expedience.
Such is the case for two major collections housed in galleries created for them by their strong-willed owners, Albert C. Barnes (1872-1951) and Daniel J. Terra (1911-1996). Their idiosyncratic holdings are now poised to go mainstream in larger, more generic facilities. If that happens, the nonprofit foundations established by these mavericks may be richer, but art lovers will be poorer.
For visitors who make the pilgrimage to Merion, Pa., the allure of the Barnes Foundation, with its fabled trove of Impressionist and modern masterpieces, is bound up in its site. The halls are haunted by the apparition of the eccentric acquirer, who obsessively pursued, assembled and repeatedly rearranged the collection that was his life's work. Mr. Barnes's densely packed "wall ensembles"--eclectic jumbles of old masters, Impressionists and moderns, interspersed with pieces of handwrought ironwork--illustrate his theories about the interrelationships of color and form.
Similarly, the Terra Museum of American Art in Chicago embodies its founder's conviction that the nation's heartland merits its own museum dedicated to our artistic heritage. The uneven quality of his collection has been improved through recent acquisitions. The latest, announced late last month, are the first important Thomas Hart Bentons to enter a Chicago public collection. The Terra now boasts a small but intensely devoted coterie of fans who appreciate its personal character and intimacy. They can get close to each work, unlike the exasperating viewing conditions at the Art Institute of Chicago, which hangs many pre-20th-century American paintings as backdrops to furniture and decorative arts.
But in a plan announced last summer but not yet finalized, the Art Institute may soon get a 15-year loan of about 50 of the Terra's choicest paintings, as well as 350 works on paper and an undisclosed, under-$200,000 annual financial contribution. The Terra intends to shut its Chicago facility on Oct. 31, while still operating its museum in Giverny, France. In a close vote, its board decided this was "the best solution to leveraging the long-term value of the endowments." At $220 million, the endowment had easily sustained both museums, even without any serious attempts to seek outside grants.
The Barnes Collection is also poised to move. Subject to court approval and feasibility studies, it may leave its 79-year-old mansion for a large new building in Philadelphia. Its arboretum and horticulture school will not be transplanted to center city.
In a decision last week, Judge Stanley Ott of Montgomery County Orphans' Court said the Barnes had not yet persuaded him that relocation was "the least drastic" means of securing its survival. He left little doubt that he leaned toward raising funds "through the sale of non-gallery artwork and/or the real estate in Chester County," ordering a financial analysis of those assets to be provided him before he would render a decision on the proposed move. The next day, the Association of Art Museum Directors issued a statement that it was "extremely concerned by the Court's encouragement of the Barnes Foundation to consider selling parts of its collections to fund operations." AAMD's ethical standards dictate that museums should sell works only to acquire others. But the Barnes never acquires and owns many objects not of museum quality.
Both Dr. Barnes and Mr. Terra conceived their unusual galleries in opposition to the more conventional museums nearby. But their go-it-alone approach made it hard after their deaths to enlist savvy professionals to carry on their missions. Their institutions descended into years of administrative chaos, lawsuits and financial losses. A difficult, if less tumultuous, transition has also roiled the Menil Collection in Houston, whose founder, Dominique de Menil, died in 1997.
The now reconstituted boards and staffs at both the Barnes and Terra have proved unwilling or unable to do the hard work needed to get their institutions back on track. During recent court hearings on the Barnes's proposed relocation, board president Bernard Watson, while lamenting his inability to raise major donations, exhibited shocking unfamiliarity with important aspects of the foundation's operations. His biggest gaffe: twice stating the Barnes's endowment was $10 million, prompting the foundation's attorney to remind him gently that the Barnes was broke, which was the whole point of the hearings.
As for the Terra, the decision to close the Chicago museum was unduly hasty, coming less than a year after its new board held its first meeting. They pulled the plug despite two years of moderately increased attendance in Chicago, a year of greatly increased revenue at the Terra Foundation and favorable reviews of recent exhibitions. The board's chairman, Marshall Field V, is also a member of the AIC's board and chairman of its American arts committee. The Terra's director, Elizabeth Glassman, refused to say whether she agreed with the board's decision, but she observed that Mr. Terra's collection would be seen by a larger audience at the AIC than at the facility that he created.
When it comes to viewing art, however, smaller can be better. Rather than giving up, these institutions should revitalize themselves by updating their displays, professionalizing their management and establishing more cooperative arrangements with traditional institutions. This would not violate the fundamental intent of their founders, just deny them the right to dictate from the grave exactly how their earthly possessions must forever be displayed and administered.
At a time when directors of major museums are publicly fretting over the frenetic atmosphere in their crowded galleries, we need to preserve the oases where visitors, in Dominique de Menil's words, "would never know museum fatigue and would have the rare joy of sitting in front of a painting and contemplating it."
Ms. Rosenbaum is a contributing editor of Art in America magazine.
