Thursday, May 19, 2005
NY Public Library trustees - unkind thoughts about
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
Unkind thoughts about the NY Public Library trustees
The spring art auction season at Sotheby’s and Christie’s has come to a close, with some high-priced items being withdrawn, or fetching below-expectations prices.
A particularly painful event to New Yorkers, especially Gramercy Park people, was the auction sale of Asher Durand’s 1849 Hudson River School masterpiece “Kindred Spirits,” depicting William Cullen Bryant and Thomas Cole on a rocky ledge overlooking the Caterskill Gap, given to the NYPL by Bryant’s daughter many years ago. It was one of the treasures I would look up whenever visiting Reference, Room 315. The buyer was a Sam Walton heiress, Alice L. Walton, 54, a Texas horse breeder worth $16.5B. It will be the cornerstone in a museum maintained in Bentonville, AK by the world’s richest family, a long way for the world to beat a path to see the accumulated treasures. She, however, will lend it to national museums and NY museums “ to assure that it will continue to be seen there in the future.”
Horse feathers, there is no there there, the painting belongs here. New York, consider yourself put in your place. Wealth has its privileges, though, I bow low to those public-spirited patrons who not only give major art to the public but also donate 300M to their local university. But to sequester such major art in Bentonville seems uncommonly ungenerous.
One feels let down by the trustees of New York Public Library, no matter how poverty-struck their endowment (it dropped from $530M to $436M in two years, to 2002, but has since recovered), and how badly they missed out on pricey book acquisitions. They might have emulated Dr. Vartan Gregorian, who knew how to ask for money, invoke local pride and raise funds without selling off the treasures. The silent auction, using sealed bids, was run by Sotheby’s, with the library “offering preferential purchase terms to New York institutions.” Ha! The realistic Met Museum/National Gallery of Art counter-bid was not big enough, and the use of sealed bids assured the Bentonville moguls of the prize regardless of the price, at an estimated $35M the highest ever in an auction of an American painting.
One does not really care for the sell-off of the two George Washingtons by Gilbert Stuart, New York has more, and they are of national interest. Besides, Stuart painted nearly 100 of them, mostly of the third, Vaughan sitting. But to put the most meaningful NYPL association artwork for sale is sinful, and disrespectful to the memories of Bryant (1794-1878), whose name is carried by the park that hosts the Library, and to John Bigelow, the planner (for a quarter century, to 1911), founder and first president of the Library. The latter (1816-1911) was Bryant’s partner and co-owner of the New York Post (then Evening Post, founded by Alexander Hamilton). Bigelow was the executor of Samuel Jones Tilden’s (1814-1886) Trust, the main source of the funds that created the NYPL, and lived at 21 Gramercy Park South. The house was given to him by Tilden who dubbed the old historian and Civil War diplomat “the worst used man in the US.” His daughter Grace (the actual donee – Tilden knew that the old man would refuse the gift) was a trustee and eventually President of Gramercy Park (1916-32), and John Bigelow’s great-great grandson Andrew Eristoff was our area’s City Councilmember 1n the 1990s.
It is truly a sad commentary that the paintings, visited by tourists and locals a lot more than the books, should be sold. As regards buying important book collections, rare books at 42nd Street and 5th Avenue are of limited specialist interest, and the graduate students will travel. As for high school and college student interest, the libraries founded by Andrew Carnegie to serve the public are doing away with older titles, to make space for multiple copies of mystery fiction. The kids often cannot get to Jane Austen, or early Saul Bellows, for that matter, and may resort to Cliff Notes and Barron’s, because the library does not keep old books. Read that again and think how you feel about it
To tell you more about our loss, Thomas Cole (1801-1848) originated the Hudson River School by trudging up the river in 1825 to sketch the Catskills. By the time his short life ended he had recorded American wilderness all the way to Mount Desert Island in Maine. “Go forth, under the open sky, and list to Nature’s teachings,” said his friend the poet Bryant. Cole’s first disciple was Asher Brown Durant, an established engraver and artist, who gave up the burin for a brush and followed Cole into the wilderness. Bryant had given the oration at Cole’s funeral, and Durand painted the picture as a gift to the poet, although it was commissioned by a patron of Durand’s. Cole’s small cottage near Catskill is now a modest museum.
Wally Dobelis thanks Carol Vogel and the Times.
Unkind thoughts about the NY Public Library trustees
The spring art auction season at Sotheby’s and Christie’s has come to a close, with some high-priced items being withdrawn, or fetching below-expectations prices.
A particularly painful event to New Yorkers, especially Gramercy Park people, was the auction sale of Asher Durand’s 1849 Hudson River School masterpiece “Kindred Spirits,” depicting William Cullen Bryant and Thomas Cole on a rocky ledge overlooking the Caterskill Gap, given to the NYPL by Bryant’s daughter many years ago. It was one of the treasures I would look up whenever visiting Reference, Room 315. The buyer was a Sam Walton heiress, Alice L. Walton, 54, a Texas horse breeder worth $16.5B. It will be the cornerstone in a museum maintained in Bentonville, AK by the world’s richest family, a long way for the world to beat a path to see the accumulated treasures. She, however, will lend it to national museums and NY museums “ to assure that it will continue to be seen there in the future.”
Horse feathers, there is no there there, the painting belongs here. New York, consider yourself put in your place. Wealth has its privileges, though, I bow low to those public-spirited patrons who not only give major art to the public but also donate 300M to their local university. But to sequester such major art in Bentonville seems uncommonly ungenerous.
One feels let down by the trustees of New York Public Library, no matter how poverty-struck their endowment (it dropped from $530M to $436M in two years, to 2002, but has since recovered), and how badly they missed out on pricey book acquisitions. They might have emulated Dr. Vartan Gregorian, who knew how to ask for money, invoke local pride and raise funds without selling off the treasures. The silent auction, using sealed bids, was run by Sotheby’s, with the library “offering preferential purchase terms to New York institutions.” Ha! The realistic Met Museum/National Gallery of Art counter-bid was not big enough, and the use of sealed bids assured the Bentonville moguls of the prize regardless of the price, at an estimated $35M the highest ever in an auction of an American painting.
One does not really care for the sell-off of the two George Washingtons by Gilbert Stuart, New York has more, and they are of national interest. Besides, Stuart painted nearly 100 of them, mostly of the third, Vaughan sitting. But to put the most meaningful NYPL association artwork for sale is sinful, and disrespectful to the memories of Bryant (1794-1878), whose name is carried by the park that hosts the Library, and to John Bigelow, the planner (for a quarter century, to 1911), founder and first president of the Library. The latter (1816-1911) was Bryant’s partner and co-owner of the New York Post (then Evening Post, founded by Alexander Hamilton). Bigelow was the executor of Samuel Jones Tilden’s (1814-1886) Trust, the main source of the funds that created the NYPL, and lived at 21 Gramercy Park South. The house was given to him by Tilden who dubbed the old historian and Civil War diplomat “the worst used man in the US.” His daughter Grace (the actual donee – Tilden knew that the old man would refuse the gift) was a trustee and eventually President of Gramercy Park (1916-32), and John Bigelow’s great-great grandson Andrew Eristoff was our area’s City Councilmember 1n the 1990s.
It is truly a sad commentary that the paintings, visited by tourists and locals a lot more than the books, should be sold. As regards buying important book collections, rare books at 42nd Street and 5th Avenue are of limited specialist interest, and the graduate students will travel. As for high school and college student interest, the libraries founded by Andrew Carnegie to serve the public are doing away with older titles, to make space for multiple copies of mystery fiction. The kids often cannot get to Jane Austen, or early Saul Bellows, for that matter, and may resort to Cliff Notes and Barron’s, because the library does not keep old books. Read that again and think how you feel about it
To tell you more about our loss, Thomas Cole (1801-1848) originated the Hudson River School by trudging up the river in 1825 to sketch the Catskills. By the time his short life ended he had recorded American wilderness all the way to Mount Desert Island in Maine. “Go forth, under the open sky, and list to Nature’s teachings,” said his friend the poet Bryant. Cole’s first disciple was Asher Brown Durant, an established engraver and artist, who gave up the burin for a brush and followed Cole into the wilderness. Bryant had given the oration at Cole’s funeral, and Durand painted the picture as a gift to the poet, although it was commissioned by a patron of Durand’s. Cole’s small cottage near Catskill is now a modest museum.
Wally Dobelis thanks Carol Vogel and the Times.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 6:24 PM 
