Looks like we have an interesting brewing around all of this stuff.

By Christa Desrets

cdesrets@newsadvanc e.com

Thursday, November 8, 2007
A Lynchburg Circuit Court judge on Thursday granted a temporary injunction that could delay the sale of four paintings from the Maier Museum of Art until ongoing litigation against Randolph College is settled.

The injunction would take effect once opponents of the sale post a $10 million bond, Judge Leyburn Mosby Jr. said after hearing several hours of arguments from both sides.

After the ruling, plaintiffs said they were unsure how or when they would raise the money, and college officials said they would quickly seek appeal.

At issue are four pieces of art from the former Randolph-Macon Woman’s College’s Maier Museum of Art - George Bellows’ “Men of the Docks,” Edward Hicks’ A “Peaceable Kingdom,” Ernest Hennings’ “Through the Arroyo” and Rufino Tamayo’s “Troubador.” They were removed from the museum on Oct. 1.

The artwork was slated for sale in public auctions on Nov. 19 and Nov. 29. Officials expected the auctions, to be held through New York-based Christie’s, to raise $32 million or more.

Mosby said he had to weigh the damage that would be done if the art was sold, and compare that to the damage that would be caused to the college if it could not sell the art.

Dennis Belcher, a Richmond-based attorney representing Randolph, said that the money from the auctions would go to the school’s endowment.

Last December, the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, Randolph’s accrediting organization, put the college on warning after a review showed the school spending its endowment at an unsustainable rate.

This December, SACS will perform another review. If the school hasn’t improved its finances, it could be put on probation, one step away from losing accreditation.

Chris Burnley, the school’s vice president for finance and administration, said the extra money from the auction, if added to the endowment, would lower the college’s spending rate and possibly help secure a positive SACS review.

Opponents of the sale of the art countered that information, saying that the auction would damage the college, the museum, students and the community.

Museum docent and retired judge Paul Whitehead Jr., who in 1997 donated $155,000 for the school to purchase an Andrew Wyeth painting, testified that the sale would devalue the remaining art and also affect the number of future donations.

Ellen Agnew, former associate director of the museum before resigning in August over the sale, testified that the school did not follow its own policies or widely accepted art policies directing a museum to use proceeds from the sale of art only to directly benefit the museum.

The Association of Art Museum Curators, the Association of Art Museum Directors, the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries, the College Art Association and the Virginia Association of Museums each have issued statements critical of the college’s decision.

Margaret Williams, a Randolph College senior majoring in art history and museum studies, and American history professor John d’Entremont also testified.

Belcher compared the plaintiffs’ arguments to “throwing everything up against a wall to see what sticks.”

Mosby said, “I think the harm if the art is sold is greater than the harm if the art is not sold.”

He also overruled a motion that the college filed asking him to dismiss the case.

The college will immediately seek an accelerated appeal in the Virginia Supreme Court, spokeswoman Brenda Edson said. The school hopes to reverse Mosby’s decision before the first auction on Nov. 19.

“We’re disappointed in the court’s decision but we continue to believe that the college has the right to make the choices that are in the best interest of the college as a whole,” she said. “We believe we will prevail in the higher courts, and the college will be able to move forward with its plans to auction four paintings.”

Christie’s spokesman Rik Pike said by e-mail Thursday night that he could not comment on how the case would affect the planned auctions because he had not seen the ruling.

Melissa Roberts, representing opponents of the art sale, called the judgment a “significant victory” but was unsure about specifics related to the required $10 million bond.

“When and how we can post that will be decided later,” she said.

If the injunction is finalized, then the sale of the art would be halted pending three legal decisions regarding the college.

Two of the cases involve the college’s decision to become coeducational. Mosby dismissed both cases in January, but the Virginia Supreme Court has agreed to hear appeals, which have not yet been scheduled.

Another ongoing case involves legal action the college filed in August to determine whether it could sell or share 36 pieces of art bought from a trust bequeathed in the will of Louise Jordan Smith, the school’s first art professor.

Litigation filed in response asks the court to declare that the entirety of the collection is interconnected and should be protected from sale.

A hearing for that case has been scheduled for Nov. 15, also before Mosby in Lynchburg Circuit Court.

Now that’s my kind of comment, thanks for chiming in here. I certainly agree with you that Alice Walton isn’t necessarily to blame, but she is certainly a symptom of a larger problem of accumulating culture while at the same time benefiting from its destruction with mega wholesale box-stores like Wal-Mart.

But, in fact, I think we’re all to blame in some real ways. So maybe I’m just trying to problemtize the process by which art has become a means of establishing cultural status for your average billionaire while at the same time decimating and localized flavor of culture and pride. I mean isn;t this what Wal-mart does, it makes all ppalces the same and defines what you can and cannot have access to, albeit for less! The selling off of master works of art that get relegated to a few museums in a few locales is not that different in my mind, it is the concentration of culture in the hands of a few elite whom, by extension, frame its relevance for us.

How different is that from the Bellows piece hanging in the Randolph College library as a testament to its rich history in the arts? The context will soon be lost, like the context of the small, intimate storefront where you can buy a range of things you can never get from a box store. And while I may be guilty of some virtual nostalgia here, I can’t help but think that we are disemboweling our culture, so the sad irony that the Wal-Mart fortune is being used to buy up our culture is cuts deep in my mind.

That said, I had no idea the new president for Randolph College was a St. Louis art collector, the plot thickens yet again. And connecting the dots ain’t that hard, wasn;t the Bush family in the Oil business or something like that?

Alice Walton isn’t to blame. She has loads of money, and can spend it on whatever she likes. She could just buy clothes and private planes and houses. Instead, she buys art, and everyone treats her and her second-rater sycophant employees like they are actually educated or have any taste or knowledge about the works and their history. At least it’s respectable. She didn’t build Wal-Mart, her Daddy did, so you can’t fault her for being born right.

The rich have always bought art to make themselves seem cultured and sophisticated. That’s fine. That Randoplh is selling is just the old boys network at work — you wanna bet that the President of Randolph isn’t schmoozing with some NY poohbahs and greasing old connections with this sale?? Pleeeaaazzee!