Freudenheim is marshalling his arguments to stop the art sale through legal channels.
Thursday, December 21st, 2006Dear Buffalo Bloviator:
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Even the most cursory research (I can’t do more at this time) indicates flaws(and/or disinformation) in the public arguments made by the Director and Trustees of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery regarding proposed sales from the collections.  Some examples below clearly indicate that while the Gallery’s focus was on modern art, that wasn’t meant to exclude art from other periods.
(Quotes are in red.)
- 1966 catalogue of a memorial exhibition for A. Conger Goodyear — one of the founders of NYC’s MoMA, a Buffalonian of great note as a collector of modern and [for his time] contemporary art, who also donated: Daumier, Degas (is he on the list of moderns?), four Russian icons (16th-17th centuries), Puvis de Chavannes, Whistler, Hiroshige, Hokusai — of which the Gallery was once proud.Â
- 1964 Gallery Notes: re 1943 purchase of a Seurat painting, and the 1948/1955/1964 additional Seurats (from Goodyear): As a result of these acquisitions, the Gallery now has an outstanding source of work by a man considered to be “one of the half dozen most distinguished French artists of the nineteenth century.”
- In Contemporary Art — Acquisitions 1962-1965 Gordon Smith writes: In addition to the contemporary works, we have also included in this catalogue a listing of acquisitions from earlier periods in art history. The majority of these were selected because of their importance to the background of mid-20th century art. Among items listed are a group of 11 Mexican (Pre-Columbian) objects.
- In 1953 the Gallery issued a small exhibition catalogue What Is Painting? using the entire range of collections — including a 6th century BC Greek vase, a 2nd century Fayum portrait, the Renaissance paintings, etc.,all the way to Klee, Chagall, Picasso, Kandinsky, etc. The point was to demonstrate that even a limited collection could express unity through a wide range of art.
- Gallery Notes Autumn 1963 includes an essay by Philip C. Elliott (SUNYAB Professor), with illustrations of the Gallery’s Rubens oil sketch and Cycladic figures (along with Klee, Donati, Soutine, etc.), demonstrating the ways in which the collections speak to each other from different periods.
- As noted by others, in Painting and Sculpture from Antiquity to 1942 (Steven A. Nash and others, 1979), Director Robert Buck writes: Although the collection is perhaps best known for its modern and contemporary holdings, important representations from earlier periods, such as 19th century French and American painting, 18th century English paintings, and Asian art constitute very major segments of the Gallery’s collection. The acquisitions policy of the Gallery has long held that efforts to add certain works which elucidate affinities and parallels with the art of modern times is an important pursuit. Buck’s introduction describes the Gallery’s collecting history, with its emphasis on modern art evolving out of a combination of philosophical commitment and financial necessities….[which gave the Gallery] a modern character. Buck also cites Director Andrew Ritchie’s distinguished record as a scholar and museum administrator with particular interest in 18th and 19th century European art; and that efforts to round out the collection were greatly furthered in 1945 by the gift of five important 18th century paintings by Gainsborough, Hogarth, Lawrence, Reynolds, and Romney. Indeed, in regard to Seymour H. Knox, the Gallery’s greatest benefactor, noted for his astute selections of contemporary art, Buck notes that While Mr. Knox’s interests have turned steadily toward an amassing of significant post-World War II art on an international basis, he has not neglected earlier periods. In his catalogue Introduction, Nash notes the effort involved in cataloguing and analyzing so many and such diverse works from so wide an historical span and describes curatorial travels, including to a parish church in the small French town of Varangeville, near Nancy, to determine if any remaining sculptures relate to the Gallery’s 16th century Statue of St. Gorgon which originally derived from that church. This hardly suggests the marginalization of the “older” parts of the Gallery’s collection, which the Director and Trustees are now so anxious to sell.
- Note that as of today (21 December 2006), the Gallery’s web-site says: Gallery visitor will find that the permanent collection offers a panorama of art through the centuries, from a Mesopotamian figure dated 3,000 B.C. and Renaissance painting and sculpture, to American and European art of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. However, searching the Collections on the web-site indicates that there is no Mesopotamian figure in the collection. That conforms with another web-site discovery: in November the Eucharistic Dove was listed among the Gallery’s most popular objects; in December it is no longer listed as being in the collection.
- Academy Notes, May 1930, describes a recent acquisition (Purchase, Seymour H. Knox Fund) as follows: Perhaps the most important acquisition the Academy [i.e., Buffalo Fine Arts Academy, a.k.a. Albright Art Gallery] has made from an artistic, historic, and educational point of view is the precious little terra cotta relief of the Virgin and Child by Luca della Robbia. This hardly sounds like a museum with an historic mission to concentrate exclusively on modern and contemporary art.Â
It is important to know how the Gallery Director and Trustees made their case to the New York State Attorney General, and whether the true history of the Albright-Knox was presented. It is also important to know whether this is, as claimed, in accord with the guidelines of the AAMD (Association of Art Museum Directors). These matters, as well as a full list of the objects proposed for sale, should be made public as soon as possible, so that concerned members of the Gallery’s public constituency can judge for themselves whether the Trustees are carrying out their trust responsibilities.
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Tom L. Freudenheim
tom@freudenheim.com   Â
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