If the museum needs to make repairs to its HVAC system, and it doesn’t have the money in its own operating funds, why doesn’t it take more money from the Libbey endowment? If the museum can’t find enough money in the Libbey endowment because the Endowment requires that 50% needs to be spent on art, why not do a fundraiser? If the museum can’t raise enough money from a fundraiser, why doesn’t it apply for grants? If the museum still can’t raise enough money to repair the HVAC system from the endowment, fundraisers and grants and its own operating funds, why doesn’t the museum apply for a loan from a bank?
These are fair questions. Instead, the museum went to the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, asking them to install “port authority facilities” into the museum in the form of an HVAC system. The port authority eagerly agreed and posted a bond for the museum as a part of their .4 mill operating levy that was passed by voters on November 5. More money came from the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority and the Columbus-Franklin County Finance Authority for the total of $24.89 million for a new HVAC system. Pretty slick.
The Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority owns and operates “port authority facilities” such as the Port of Toledo, Toledo Shipyard, Toledo Express Airport, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza train station, ParkSmart Parking Facilities, General Cargo Terminals. And now the port authority is adding one more “port authority facility” to this governmentally controlled list — the HVAC system at the Toledo Museum of Art. The port authority approved a $25 million bond, together with the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority and the Columbus-Franklin County Finance Authority, then approved by taxpayers, the constructing, developing, equipping, improving, and installing “port authority facilities” across the 328,568 square foot museum.
Interestingly, the Secretary of the Toledo Museum of Art Board of Directors, Thomas Winston, is also the President and CEO of the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority. The Vice Chair of the Toledo Museum of Art Board of Directors, Sharon Speyer, is on the Board of Directors of the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, among other interested parties, including a banker.
Now the big question is, where is the money coming from for the rest of the “improvements,” “remodeling” and “reinstallation” for the newly planned “facelift” of the Toledo Museum of Art, as every gallery gets remodeled and painted white, and the recently renovated Cloister gallery gets disassembled and moved to the east, and new technologies get installed in every gallery, and all of the art gets shifted around and arranged chronologically? The Glass Pavilion, which cost $35 million to build in 2006, will be repurposed as the glass gets removed and scattered among the art in the main building arranged by date. What is it going to cost, and what will the museum have to do for that? Are they going to sell their soul, as they have already let the port authority claim “port authority facility” ownership to infiltrate the very air they breath? Do people need or want this radical change?
And the even bigger question is, how much great art that the public loves will fall through the cracks during this seismic shift?
Remember the sale of the three French Impressionist paintings for $62 million in 2022, and the promise for new art, which never happened. And then the removal of all the rest of the Impressionist paintings to a back room of the glass museum.
Art. think about it. Is it inevitable that the last bastion of freedom and independence and great wealth in Toledo, the freedom of art, will get gobbled up by the turkeys?
They just can’t seem to get enough.