They won’t tell us, but by doing deep searches on the internet, we can see what they are doing at our expense.
Adam Levine, the fast follower
We took a deep dive into the specific strategies utilized in pursuing innovation and decided that we wanted to be a “fast follower….” …we look to other, larger organizations in our industry or adjacent industries to prove concepts and bring costs down. Then we leverage these new tools and approaches when they are at or near maturity. – Adam Levine, July 14, 2025, Observer
The 14th century Mamluk glass cup fast follow
Following the record sale of a Mamluk glasswork for £5.1 million at auction in November 2024, Toledo Museum of Art sold its rare 14th century Mamluk footed glass cup purchased in 1954 with funds from the Libbey Endowment, a gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, for a record £5.54 million, setting a new global auction record for Mamluk glass at Christies in London on April 30, 2026 (and taking the piece out of public view.)
Extremely rare, “There are only three other Mamluk footed bowls that are known: one in the Royal Ontario Museum, one in the British Museum, and one at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
Impressionist global show fast follow
Following Worcester Art Museum’s February 2025 Impressionism show in Seoul, South Korea at the Hyundai department store’s gallery, ALT.1, Toledo Museum of Art sent an Impressionism show of 57 artworks to Auckland, New Zealand, then added four more artworks for a total of 61 to Traviso, Italy, then to Adelaide, Australia, while sending 50 17th-18th century European paintings to the Hyundai Seoul’s ALT.1 gallery in April 2026.
Erin Corrales-Diaz
Toledo Museum of Art’s new curator of American art, Erin Corrales-Diaz, hired in November 2021, came to Toledo from the Worcester Art Museum at the same time the traveling show, The Age of Armor: Treasures from the Higgins Armory Collection at the Worcester Art Museum, debuted in Toledo. Erin Corrales-Diaz co-curated the Worcester Impressionist show while serving as curator in Toledo.
Worcester liked the idea of traveling their collections, but to do a European Impressionist show,
“We couldn’t really do that show because it would empty our galleries,” co-curator Claire C. Whitner of Worcestor said.
“And that show also has been done by other museums. So I started talking with Erin Corrales, who was our previous assistant curator of American art, and she said that some of the paintings in the collection that she was really excited about are ones that were not on view in the galleries — things like our DeWitt Parshalls, which are of the Southwest.” telegram.com March 27, 2023
Hence the two curators, Witner of Worcester, curator of European art, and the Worcester Museum’s former curator, Erin Corrales-Diaz, Toledo’s new curator of American art, co-curated the Worcester Museum traveling show, “Frontiers of Impressionism” consisting mostly of Worcester’s Impressionist paintings that had been in storage for decades. The show debuted at the Worcester Museum on April 1, 2023, and traveled mainly in Japan and southeast Asia for two and a half years.
Meanwhile, Toledo arranged their own traveling Impressionist show. Not having any reservations regarding emptying the Toledo Museum of Art’s galleries, the Toledo curators even cut short by five months a special In a New Light Impressionism and Post-Impressionism show at the Glass Pavilion to pull paintings out of it. Erin Corrales-Diaz accompanied the Auckland Gallery show, A Century of Modern Art, at the opening on June 7, 2025.
Erin Corrales-Diaz’s scholarship in American Impressionism was not mentioned in her bio when the Toledo Museum introduced her to the public. The press release emphasized everything trendy, like baseball, Native Americans, female gendered color lines, and disability, such as this blurb about the subject of her 2014 dissertation:
authoring the first major effort to historicize the visual culture of war-related disability, a significant deviation from previous scholarship around the American Civil War, which focused on the death toll. In “Remembering the Veteran: Disability, Trauma, and the American Civil War, 1861-1915,
Who knew she was a scholar of American Impressionism? Or her deep involvement curating impressionism while at TMA? She was at the Toledo Museum six moths before the museum deaccessioned the three French Impressionist paintings in May 2022.
Unlike the Worcester Museum, that celebrated their Impressionist traveling show by first showing it at their own museum, the Toledo Museum of Art shared nothing with Toledoans about the shows they were sending off to the other side of the world. They did so in secret, with no transparency whatsoever.
The New Zealand show, A Century of Modern Art, closing September 28, 2025, was packed up and shipped to Italy and renamed From Picasso to Van Gogh for the show opening November 15, 2025:
The only information about any of these global shows was filtered back to America via Google alerts of foreign news stories such as this:
The show in Italy, renamed Monet to Matisse: Defying Tradition, July 11 – November 8, 2026, was then returned to the Southern Hemisphere, to Australia this time, disregarding excess carbon footprint the museum imposed on the world to do so:
Meanwhile, fast-following Worcester’s show at the Hyundai department store in Seoul, Adam Levine leveraged another collection of Toledo’s paintings, removing them from the walls of the Toledo Museum and shipping them off to Seoul for the show opening on March 21, 2026:
Fast following Art Bridges and the relaxation of rigid humidity and temperature requirements
Right after loaning these two works to the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, Everything Has a Story: Reflections on the Collection, which opened June 20, 2025, Adam Levine stated this:
“There was no universe where every gallery in the Toledo Museum of Art wasn’t going to have to close by 2027 because we had to replace the HVAC for the preservation of the artwork.” Adam Levine, August 24, 2025, The Blade
The public trust
Most of the artwork here was purchased with the funds of the Libbeys for the people of Toledo. It is in a public trust.
Edward Drummond Libbey established a perpetual charitable endowment intended to support the acquisition, preservation, and public exhibition of works of art in Toledo. His will directed that endowment income be used for maintaining the museum and for the purchase of artworks “for the purpose of public exhibition.” The will further required that such works be appropriately housed in Toledo and that the museum “shall forever maintain” a building in Toledo for public exhibition and free public access on designated days.
Are the current so-called stewards of our museum, who are mostly out-of-town strivers with an agenda, and new since 2020, selling us out?
Sign petition to enforce Libbey’s Will and protect Toledo’s future art rights