For most of my life, the Toledo Museum of Art has been part of my story.
I was born and raised in Toledo and began attending the museum’s Children’s Saturday classes from third grade on. As an art major at the University of Toledo, I continued taking classes at the museum. The artistic foundation I received there helped prepare me for a successful photography career in New York.
After three decades away, my husband and I returned to Toledo to be closer to our aging parents. Inspired by Toledo’s rich artistic heritage, I created Artists of Toledo, a website dedicated to documenting the city’s artists and cultural history. During the fifteen years I lived in Toledo before recently returning to New York, I closely followed and documented the dramatic changes taking place at the museum.
Following the abrupt departure of Director Brian Kennedy in 2019 and the arrival of an entirely new leadership team, the museum embarked on a period of significant transformation. Strategic plans and public statements described ambitions to become a “model museum,” leverage the collection for institutional change, and expand national and international visibility.
At the same time, important collection works were sold, galleries were closed, the Glass Pavilion was repurposed, collections were reinstalled, and significant portions of the museum’s holdings were committed to international touring exhibitions extending through at least 2027. These exhibitions became known through foreign galleries and foreign media reports rather than through news released by the museum itself.
As I reviewed annual reports, Form 990 filings, strategic plans, public statements, exhibition records, and other publicly available materials, I became increasingly concerned that the museum was moving away from the purposes envisioned by its founder, Edward Drummond Libbey.
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 to maintain the museum and acquire works of art for public exhibition. He further required that those works be housed and exhibited in Toledo and that the museum maintain a building there for the benefit of the public.
Can current museum leadership permanently alter charitable assets entrusted for a specific purpose by a donor whose intent was clearly stated and whose gift created one of America’s great civic museums?
I wasn’t the only one concerned about the changes at the art museum. I created a petition on change.org, and it garnered 1,309 signatures. Many people shared similar experiences growing up, and they are deeply saddened and even angry about the new direction.
Along with the citizen petition “Enforce Libbey’s Will and Protect Toledo’s Art” and the 39 pages of signatures, I submitted a 23-page “Request for Review Regarding Compliance with the Libbey Trust and Public Charitable Obligations (including relevant excerpts from the Libbey Will).”
The submission asks for review of issues relating to donor intent, charitable trust administration, stewardship of charitable assets, governance practices, public access to collection works, and the long-term relationship between the Toledo Museum of Art and the people it was created to serve.
The museum and the treasured art in the museum make up Toledo’s unique cultural heritage. It was, and is, an extraordinary gift by the Libbeys to the people of Toledo, past, present and future. Can temporary stewards convert this heritage into something completely different? Stewardship first and foremost means preserving cultural treasures and honoring the purposes for which they were given.
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