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Conflict at MoMA
by Daniel Grant
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Circle Series #22--Picasso Mode
Marceline Saphian
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What's new at the museum? This time, it's ethics. S.I. Newhouse, Jr. resigned from the board of New York's Museum of Modern Art because of a conflict-of-interest issue resulting from his purchase of a Pablo Picasso painting that the museum was selling.
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Museum officials were unaware of Newhouse's plan to buy the painting and, when they learned of it and questioned him, Newhouse resigned. The Museum of Modern Art, like many other museums in the United States, prohibits staff and board members from purchasing objects deaccessioned by the institution. Newhouse, chairman of Advance Publications, which owns Conde Nast Publications (publisher of The New Yorker, Vanity Fair and other magazines), purchased the painting for $10 million from the dealer through whom the museum was selling the work. According to Glenn Lowry, director of the museum,
Newhouse was not part of the decision to sell the 1913 painting, nor was he involved in establishing a price for it.
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So He Said...
Cecily Barth Firestein
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Wisdom Unknown
Alice Zinnes
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Still, Newhouse's purchase "gives at least the impression of a conflict of interest, of working from insider
information," said James Duff, director of the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and chairman of the professional practices committee of the Association of Art Museum Directors. Behavior may be described as unethical only when it offers the appearance of impropriety. If S.I. Newhouse had early knowledge of the sale of the Picasso, perhaps even having a voice in setting the price, he, as a collector, would certainly have had an unfair advantage in the process of buying it.
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However, according to Charles Dambach, president and chief executive officer of the Washington, D.C.-based Museum Trustee Association, "Art museums are put in a dilemma here. The people on their boards are usually collectors and, in fact, they are the people most interested in those very works, the ones you would otherwise contact about buying them. Do you penalize these people for serving on the board? It's hard to balance things."
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Balance
Marjorie Tomchuk
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Read our archived Art in the News |
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