The Toledo Museum of Art has undergone major changes in recent years that raise serious questions about whether its current direction remains faithful to Edward Drummond Libbey’s original intent.
Attendance has fallen sharply since the pandemic and has never recovered, while expenses have greatly risen and the number of exhibitions has declined. In 2022, the museum sold three beloved Impressionist masterpieces, after which membership dues dropped significantly. Despite public assurances that the remaining works by Cézanne, Matisse, and Renoir would remain on view, the museum later sent its core Impressionist and early modern collection abroad for extended exhibitions in New Zealand and Australia.
Now, much of the museum itself has been emptied for a multi-year renovation. Galleries have been stripped to the studs, most sections remain closed, and artworks gifted under the Libbey Trust have been sent to storage facilities across the country while public access is greatly reduced.
This raises a simple but important question: does this still align with Libbey’s will, which requires that the collection be properly housed, preserved, and maintained for public exhibition in Toledo?
As citizens and beneficiaries of this public charitable trust, we ask the Ohio Attorney General to review whether the administration of the museum remains in accordance with ITEM XXV of the Last Will and Testament of Edward Drummond Libbey.
Data Portraits
financial and public-facing statistics tracking changes leading up to the museum’s current closure and reconfiguration, 2014–2026.
The museum’s financial growth became decoupled from public engagement and exhibition output – a disconnect between visitors and revenue.
Spending Up, Attendance Down: Trends 2014-2024
Attendance Did Not Recover after Covid
Membership Speaks – Museum Deaf
The IRS Form 990 filings show that membership dues fell sharply after the 2022 sale of the Cézanne, Matisse, and Renoir paintings. Membership revenue declined from $2,134,075 in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022, to $1,598,939 in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023—a drop of more than $535,000, or 25 percent.
At the same time, the museum’s “all other contributions” category—separate from government grants, Libbey endowment distributions, and membership dues—increased by $2,088,766, or 30 percent, rising from $6,966,931 in 2022 to $9,055,697 in 2023. The museum’s annual reports identify many of these new major donors as corporations, institutions, government-related entities, and anonymous contributors, suggesting a shift away from broad membership support toward a smaller group of large funders.
Substitution of Assets principle
As for the $51M net made from the sale of the paintings, why wasn’t the money from the sale of Libbey’s two paintings put back into the Libbey Trust Fund when art was not purchased with it right away, as put forth in Libbey’s will?
Public financial disclosures do not clearly indicate how proceeds from the sale of collection assets are used. This lack of transparency raises a reasonable question as to whether such proceeds remain aligned with the Libbey Trust’s purpose of supporting the acquisition and public exhibition of art.
Instead of returning the money to the Libbey Trust Fund, earmarked for the purchase of art, in order to show good faith and provide a transparent public accounting of such an unusual and controversial deaccessioning of extremely valuable assets in spite of public outcry, the money is deliberately kept out of public scrutiny. The proceeds could have been put back into the Libbey fund – there is no fund rule against it – the Libbey trustees and the museum trustees have plenty of leeway when it comes to being good stewards. Instead, the museum created a private fund, boasting that the new fund is even higher in value than the entire Libbey “corpus.” This begs the question: are they being good stewards of our museum, which was founded and based on Libbey’s vision and will?
The Toledo Museum of Art has never sought to have multiple examples by the same artist—fewer than 11% of the artists in our collection are represented by two or more paintings; masterpieces by Cezanne, Matisse, and Renoir will remain regularly on view on our walls. – Adam Levine, Important announcement from The Toledo Museum of Art; 04/08/2022 10:44AM
At the time of the sale, Adam Levine promised certain other paintings would always be on view. However, not even two years after the sale, we learn from Auckland, New Zealand that the entire substantial collection of Impressionist through 20th Century paintings was being shipped to New Zealand.
TRANSFORMATION 2027
The transformative paradigm shift:
leveraging our art for global elitism
Can he lie to us and that’s okay?
My guest editorial in the Blade on March 18, 2023 caused the phones to ring off the hook at the museum. Adam Levine emailed members, defaming me (by writing to thousands of people that my criticism was based on “myriad factual inaccuracies”), while claiming that membership support is at historic levels. But we know now from Part VIII Line 1b of the subsequent IRS 99o filing that membership had actually dropped by 25%. He also asserted that the “exhibition budget nearly doubled” yet as I have shown in the data portrait on this page, the museum had only five shows in 2023 – a fraction of the pre-covid average of 12 shows per year. According to the 2023 annual report, the amount spent for Art Education and Programs in 2023 was $6,794,521, when in 2019 it was $6,159,996 – which was actually less than ever when adjusted for inflation. My facts are accurate; it’s Adam Levine who is not telling us the truth. The problem is — public information revealing the truth wouldn’t be published until a year or more later — but we are expected to trust him, because he is in a position of great trust. Our museum is in his hands.
Actual decline of Libbey Endowment Trust Funds and museum telling us otherwise
Even as the Toledo Museum of Art has publicly framed its strategy as reducing reliance on the Libbey endowments, it has been drawing more heavily from it, both in percentage and in dollars.
March 9, 2021: The Blade: TMA announces strategic plan to build art collection
The plan, which was put together internally with input from the community and board, calls for financial changes that include increasing the museum budget from more than $16 million to $20 million, and decreasing the percentage the museum draws annually from an endowment fund that founder Edward Drummond Libbey established for the museum upon his death in 1925.
March 23, 2023: TMA to The Blade: “TMA Corrections”
After my above-mentioned March 18, 2023 guest editorial in The Blade, the museum asked The Blade to make numerous corrections. Not one correction was made, because everything I wrote was either factual or my educated opinion based on facts. Here’s one of their assertions:
“The draw from the Trusts has not decreased and remains at 5% of a rolling 12- quarter average.”
But in actuality it has been drawing more heavily from the Libbey Endowments both in percentage and in dollars.
The draw rate from the Libbey Endowment funds moved from normal to dangerous, increasing percentages of draws from the Libbey endowments while they get smaller every year.
In 2014, the combined Libbey trusts distributed $2.5 million, or 5.3% of assets—well within standard endowment practice. By 2024, that draw had risen to $3.6 million, nearly 8% of a smaller fund. The museum is now taking more than $1 million more each year from a smaller Libbey fund than it did a decade ago—a clear shift from preservation toward accelerated spending–to a level that, over time, can only diminish the fund it was meant to preserve.
In 2014, the combined Libbey endowments stood at $47.6 million. To simply keep pace with inflation, that total would need to be about $66.5 million by 2024. Instead, the funds stood at only $45.2 million—worth just $32.4 million in 2014 purchasing power. While the museum has been drawing more from the Libbey funds each year, the real value of the endowment itself has steadily eroded.
See charts on ProPublica for the Edward Drummon Libbey Endowment and the Florence Scott Libbey Endowment.
regardless of the truth that is public information when the IRS and Annual Reports are published, the museum gave false information at critical times about the membership and the rate of draws from the Libbey funds.
Is that okay to lie to the public, ever, but especially in light of the total transformation and paradigm changes they are making to OUR museum?
The Glass Pavilion
No longer for the display of the museum’s large and important glass collection — the purpose for which the building was built in 2006. but Adam Levine has decided that it will be used for other purposes. It is up for remodeling next.
The Cloisters
The Cloister Gallery was the heart of the museum. When the museum announced the closure of the newly renovated Cloister Gallery on January 30, 2025 with only three days notice, there was public outcry on the museum’s Facebook announcement post with thousands of reactions and hundreds of comments and post shares.
The Cloisters had just been renovated three years prior to this new closure — it was repainted, reinstalled with new casework, lighting and security measures. All this effort and wasted money — and millions more to dismantle and move it a few galleries over. Where is the money coming from, and why waste it to do this to a gallery that was just renovated and reinstalled in December 2021?
There was no mention in the March 2021 strategic five-year plan about literally tearing the museum down to the studs – how could this happen without advance planning, disclosure and the approval of the community? The Cloisters were a gift of the Libbeys to the people of Toledo.
Why won’t they tell us how much it costs to renovate the museum? They always have in the past
Adding to this, now labor problems
Recent labor concerns and reports of union conflict have added to broader public questions regarding the museum’s current direction and institutional stability.
read the newest artistsoftoledo blog post about this issue and more, here:
Read/download pdf of Item XXV of the Edward Drummond Libbey will —
ITEM XXV–LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF EDWARD DRUMMOND LIBBEY
Read/download pdf of Item XI of the Florence Scott Libbey will —
ITEM XI – LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF FLORENCE SCOTT LIBBEY
When a museum loses members but replaces them with a handful of large funders, who is it really accountable to?
this page is in progress…please visit again for updates