Whose money? Whose power? Whose art history? - Money, Power, and the History of Art

In a ill-shaped conclusion to an otherwise tightly argued case, James Beck not long ago imputed dishonesty of motive to the National Gallery, London, for attributing its Entombment to Michelangelo.(1) He implied that institutional vanity and commercial interests might play a character in the gallery's sustaining an attribution he finds for a like reason obviously wrong. After all, the attribution to Michelangelo rather than to, say, Baccio Bandinelli (to whom it one time was attributed) might hold greater appeal for the gallery and, not least of all, Beck noted, for its marketing of "knickknacks, video disks, CD-Rom volumes and other publications, tee-shirts, slide [sic] and deals with vast international computer industries." "[M]useums have become big business," he argued, "and big business has a healthy stake in its image and especially the public's reception of its activities."(2)

Not drawn out ago, Beck's colleague Richard Brilliant wrote of an art museum's obligations to its nonscholarly public as a debilitating constraint upon museum-based art historical scholarship. "Professor and curator diverge in their respective engagement in the artworks they (re)view, in the interpretations they advance, in their resorting to display or publication to make their ideas known, and in the historical dimensions and objectives of their scholarship." This is in part, he argued, because the curator must subserve the museum as "collector, guarantor of authenticity, conservator, inventory manager, recorder, journalist, exhibitor, and asset protector and enhancer." If in addition he or she look fors to "raise the residual cultural value of the artworks in popular rate no wonder, then, that museum curators have les and les time and might to give to research, scholarly-critical writing, the production of scholarly exhibitions (however defined), and the creation of meaningful historical perspectives." Rarely if at any time can a curator present the sophisticated and nuanced adjoining matter within which a work of art from "another site and another time" ought to be considered.(3)

From Beck's point of view, a curator's scholarly work meet withs from reflexive institutional self-boosterism in the name of "big business," while for Brilliant it is compromised by dint of the myriad of public responsibilities he or she has to perform in the name of "public access." Although naive and cynical, these charges are not without interest.(4) If nothing other they raise the question of museums - the professional "other" to university-based art historians - and the enigmas we face at the extreme point of the twentieth century.(5) I use the opportunity of writing for these pages to discuss what I consider to be far more real and pertinacious problems.

Coercive Philanthropy and Social Agendas

Museums are and have been for a certain quantity of time in financial crisis. Without consistent conduct support, we are forced to rely upon notoriously fickle sources of income - admission and rental remunerations museum shop profits, and individual and corporate gifts - all of which are, as they say, "market driven."

We've all heard weird stories of commercial incidents in museums: greatest in quantity recently, and most bizarre, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts' partnership with Oldsmobile in the presentation of a Magritte exhibition. For the duration of the exhibition an Aurora, the latest Oldsmobile archetype was parked in the museum lobby because, as Glenn Lemmerick, manager of advertising and promotion, Oldsmobile, for GM of Canada, set it, "With the Aurora, Oldsmobile was seeking to demonstrate a novel and unexpected look for the division. That is for what cause [i]or[/i] reason the visual elements, produced for the Aurora's participation in the exhibition, were discloseed to highlight the natural fit between the car and Magritte's works."(6) on the other hand these are just plain weird; they are not a harbinger of things to advance and there is no sign that they have affected scholarship in the ways that Beck imagines.

More influential and problematic are the constraints placed upon museum activities by federal, corporate, and foundation granting agencies. In an op- piece in the novel York Times two years ago, theater director and cultural critic Robert Brustein quot an unidentified contributions manager as stating in the newsletter Corporate Philanthropy Report, "We no longer 'support' the arts. We use the arts in innovative ways to support the social causes chosen by dint of our company." He also quot the stated aim of the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund's three-year grant program for resident theaters as "[t]o expand their marketing efforts, high hill new plays, broaden the ethnic makeup of their management, experiment with colorblind casting, increase community outreach activity and sponsor a variety of other programs designed to integrate the theaters into their communities." Nowhere did the capital express the desire to expand, broaden, or support an artistic goal, sole to encourage art's presumed social effects

Brustein is right to call these unravellings in cultural funding coercive. And he is right to intimate that (be limited resources available for the couple social and cultural programs in our region encourage humanitarian agencies to believe that "a single dollar can fulfill a double purpose" and that "by forcing artistic expression to become a conduit for social justice and equal opportunity instead of achieving these goals [i]or[/i] part of to the other basic humane legislation, we are distracting our artists and absolving our politicians."(7)