Thomas Cole, "Landscape, The Vesper Hymn: An Italian Twilight." Thomas Cole, hailed as one of America's first noteworthy landscape painters. Culled from the museum's collection sometime after April 2025.
Stewardship is the promise that what one generation builds, the next will care for and carry forward.
Should the Museum be getting rid of classic American paintings from their historic collection of American art? Does the new director have to get rid of the Museum’s collection of American paintings, so well-curated and scholarly researched that a major book was published in 1979 serving as its catalog of 277 paintings? Is the shrinking of the collection really necessary to make way for “global endeavors” (whatever that is supposed to be)?
John Frederick Kensett’s Storm, Western Colorado displayed for the 19th Century American and Western Art auction at Christie’s, Rockefeller Center, New York City, January 19, 2026. Photo by Penny Gentieu
What a fine howdy-do to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary celebration – a massive sale of 18 paintings in an auction titled 19th Century American and Western Art on January 23, 2026 at Christie’s. It was quite opportunistic for the Museum to sell, rather than show, American paintings, and right in sync with the auctioneer’s schedule, who also happens to be a major Museum donor — (an auction house! And so is Sotheby’s, a major Museum donor! Is this ethical?…)
The Museum could have put up an American painting exhibition for show, not for sale, but they chose to put 18 paintings up for sale at Christie’s 19th Century American and Western Art auction instead.
They could have had a show to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America. But instead they sold 19 American paintings.
The Museum closed, and the repair of the HVAC system was the excuse. Along with it, a renovation and reinstallation of the art in chronological order. The project disrupted years of access to art that is held in trust for the community and the educational opportunities that the Museum used to offer the community.
Wikipedia describes what is going on as a “massive multi-year expansion plan to its 40-acre campus,” but in actuality, there will be no increased gallery space or additions. In fact, gallery space will be reduced to make lounges and bathrooms. Not even storage space will be added. But 1,300 new artworks have been added to the Museum’s collection during the past few years. They are spending many millions on the renovation and the new acquisitions, but will have no space to store additional art, so do they sell off everything they don’t happen to like?
Should haters be selling Toledo’s precious collections?
The public perception is that the new director and curators don’t care about the paintings or the fiduciary duty that comes along with being temporary stewards of the art in the public’s trust, or the Libbeys’ Trust and gift of the art museum being for the people of Toledo.
Toledo Museum of Art American Paintings, the book
Documenting the painting, its accession number, the year it was painted, and the plate number in the catalog, I compiled a list of 46 deaccessioned American paintings, spanning from 1840 to 1926 (which were the years encompassing the recently sold paintings). These paintings were documented in the complete catalog of the Toledo Museum of Art American Paintings, published in 1979. Remarkably, over one-third of the oil paintings in this category of the collection have been deaccessioned.
The 18 oil paintings, shown above in color and sold in January at Christie’s brought a measly $289,179. Why sell such a strong early collection? Collecting is about collecting.
46 out of 133 oil paintings dated 1840 to 1926 from the American Painting collection, documented in the 1979 book, Toledo Museum of Art American Paintings, have been deaccessioned.
That’s 46 paintings sold to the 87 that remain.
30 American artists culled from history. 77 remain.
Susan Strickler, Research Associate working on the American Paintings catalogue in 1978. Ms. Strickler went on to be a distinguished museum professional and director of the Currier Museum of Art, now retired.
Curating a collection is about caring for the art. Museums usually increase the number of artworks in their collection over time, but TMA has reduced the size of collections. WHY?
They certainly have large endowments from which to draw funds for new acquisitions, so much more than most museums that it makes the other museums envious. They have over $5,000,000 a year from these funds. What is the point of weakening a collection to increase this amount by 5 percent?
But when the Museum buys a painting for $5,000,000 to support a failing Southern college, and they buy an early Kiddush cup for a record-setting $4,000,000 at Sotheby’s the same year, they are not honoring the way the Museum has successfully built its collection for over a century. The formula was to hunt for periods, styles, and geographical movements that were temporarily neglected by the mainstream art world, and not to buy art at the height of the market, which they have done in both of these examples.
Here’s what the former director, Don Bacigalupi said in 2010 about the Museum’s collections policy:
Because the TMA collection is encyclopedic in nature, spanning cultures from ancient to modern times in a vast range of media, the institution can avoid overheated sectors of the art market and focus instead on spectacular treasures that are receiving less attention. – Don Bacigalupi on the Vibrant Collections Legacy, Annual report 2010.
1,300 new acquisitions but no additional storage?
Why isn’t increased storage a part of the big renovation taking place that’s closing almost all museum galleries not just for months, but for years?
TMA emuseum stats on North American paintings retrieved August 2026:
Search results for North American Paintings in the TMA emuseum database, showing 92 for paintings dated 1840 – 1926. Five are works on paper, so that leaves 87.
Thomas Cole’s painting was deaccessioned since last appearing on TMA’s emuseum in April 2025. Perhaps it was sold privately?
several pages of the book, Toledo Museum of Art American Paintings, with sold paintings cut out:
It’s our American legacy, our history, how our great great+ grandparents saw the world, authentically given to us by the founders of our museum, and several of the artists were local.
Ironically, with the new vision of the museum identifying strongly with telling a historical story, our local history has been erased. Our cultural tradition of the Toledo Area Artists Exhibition, which was almost 100 years old, and brought together the Toledo area art community every year with a competitive, high-quality juried show, was stopped in 2014. That marked the beginning of the ending of the once flourishing community centered museum.
An entire collection of distinguished local art, dated from 1948 to 2013, comprised of the purchase awards of the Toledo Area Artists Exhibition annual shows, was removed from storage at the Museum about 18 years ago, and relegated to the care of the Toledo School for the Arts. At the high school, the collection was stored in a utility closet until 2024, when the Toledo Federation of Art Societies, the historic group formed to put on the annual juried exhibition, disbanded. They gave it to the Schedel Arboretum & Gardens in Elmore, Ohio. The historic and distinguished collection of the TFAS Purchase Awards is not even in Toledo anymore.
it’s anti-local and unamerican
The museum’s so-called “stewards” took our traditions away, they took our education away, they took our art away, and they took our history away!
As for the Glass Pavilion, built to house Toledo’s glass collection and encompass Toledo’s unique glass history; this richly dedicated, all-glass building conceptually designed by the famed Japanese architects, SANAA with this in mind, is being dishonored. I wrote about it here, along with the problem that Toledoans are not getting the news –
The Toledo Museum of Art belongs to the people of Toledo. It is a gift from the Libbeys, but it’s getting broken, torn, separated, divvied out, exploited, used, leveraged and sold out. Voices speaking up are muted and ignored.
Transformation 2027???
Transformation 2027: it’s a cover story for the shell games of the new Toledo Museum of Art, keeping you busy looking in one direction while they are busy doing very questionable things undercover.
We should be proud of our heritage. Hold on to it, don’t let it go.
Crusader Icon, Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, by exchange (for example, instead of the Cezanne)
Object number 2025.132
What gap is Adam Levine filling with the over-priced, over-restored “Crusader Icon,” traded for a valuable Impressionist painting, when Edward Drummond Libbey gave us a dozen similar icons in 1912?
How does TMA decide what artwork to put on view in the reinstalled galleries?
TMA’s primary goal is to have the highest quality collection that demonstrates our commitment to broadening the narrative of art history. The Museum’s collection has been acquired over the last 125 years and over that time priorities and patterns of collecting have evolved.
As we prepare to install a comprehensive display of art that showcases six centuries of human creativity across six continents, we are prioritizing new acquisitions that fill a variety of gaps in our collection.
These gaps include geographic areas, time periods, under-represented artists, and mediums. To date, these acquisitions have included objects like the Cup of Joy, the Crusader Icon, Hale Woodruff’sThe Underground Railroad, and colorful contemporary Hawaiian quilts just to name a few.
Madonna of Moscow, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1912.521Madonna and Child, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1912.524Alexis Metropolitan, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1912.514St. John; Head of Christ, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1912.523The Archangel Appearing to Saint John, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1912.522Christ with Archangel Michael and Gabriel, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1912.515Head of Christ, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1912.513Madonna and Child, with two Saints, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, 1912.512
A 20th-anniversary celebration was an opportunity to ask what happens next. Instead, an important public conversation went missing.
On August 16, The Blade published an article, written by the journalism intern, Chantal Eulenstein, marking the 20th anniversary of the Toledo Museum of Art’s Glass Pavilion.
A museum anniversary is an opportunity to look backward—but also forward. What did this building mean to Toledo? Why was it created? What has happened during its first twenty years? And, most importantly, what does its next twenty years look like?
There is quite a story to tell about that last question.
The Toledo Museum of Art is now fundamentally changing the relationship between the Glass Pavilion and the collection it was specifically created to house. That change has generated serious concern among people who believe the Pavilion’s architecture, its glass collection, Toledo’s industrial history, and the history of the Studio Glass Movement form an extraordinary and irreplaceable whole.
But people don’t know what’s going on with the changes at the Glass Pavilion, and this article did not say anything about it.
Studio Glass 50-year Anniversary, 2012. Photo by Penny GentieuGlass Study Room, photo by Penny Gentieu 2014
It was misleading and inaccurate to report that “It also houses the first of the glass collections purchased by glass industrialist Edward Drummond Libbey in 1913.” These works were removed from the Pavilion in 2023 when the “Glass Study Room” was repurposed and cleared out. Unreported anywhere, but discovered on an employee’s Linkedin page, over 2,000 glass artifacts were removed in 2023 and put in storage. One can easily see on the TMA emuseum website that these works, that were added to the collection in 1913, the gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, are no longer on display.
They now have a “TMA Forever Exhibit” in that gallery, how ironic. (here is a link to my recent blog post about it:)
The Blade’s anniversary article did not explore any of these issues, but it could have.
In fact, a thoroughly researched guest editorial (shared with me) was submitted to The Blade specifically in response to the anniversary coverage. It examined the history of the Glass Pavilion, the relationship between the building and the collection, and the unique role Toledo played in the development of Studio Glass.
It asked this:
Why weaken something that Toledo has that no other city can reproduce?
The editorial pointed out that SANAA did not design an interchangeable exhibition hall that happened to contain glass. The building itself is part of the experience of the collection. It connected architecture, glass, transparency, reflection, sight lines, working furnaces, and Toledo’s history as the Glass City.
It also brought together a history that is rarely told as a whole: Harvey Littleton and Dominick Labino’s 1962 Studio Glass workshops on the Museum grounds; the subsequent development of the Studio Glass Movement; artists such as Dale Chihuly and Therman Statom; Toledo’s industrial history; and the collectors, donors and artists who helped make the Museum’s glass collection what it is today.
Toledo Museum of Art Annual Report 2001
In the 2001 Toledo Museum of Art Annual Report, the Museum itself described Therman Statom’s presence at its Centennial Ball and identified his dealer, Maureen Littleton, as the daughter of Harvey Littleton, whom the Museum described as having helped found the Studio Glass Movement in an old garage on the Museum grounds in 1962.
That is precisely the kind of history that could have made the Glass Pavilion anniversary story meaningful.
Instead, readers were given very little opportunity to consider what will be lost when the relationship between the building and its collection is fundamentally altered.
Meanwhile, The Blade Has Published Another puff piece
On September 3, The Blade published a letter praising its August 20 coverage of the finally disclosed traveling exhibitions and the Museum’s current direction.
The writer, John Fedderke praised the “complexity and global significance” of the project, the “professionalism, care, and thought” of Museum staff, and the decision to send major works from the collection around the world.
The letter repeated some of the Museum’s own framing of the project, describing the traveling paintings as “ambassadors for Toledo” and praising the Museum for “reimagining” itself.
It concluded by thanking Museum staff for their work and calling the project a “once in a lifetime” undertaking.
There is nothing wrong with a reader expressing enthusiastic support for the Toledo Museum of Art. One might question it though when that writer is an advertising professional, in fact John Fedderke used to be the Marketing Director at The Blade. But putting that little fact aside, there is a larger question here:
Where is the equally visible opportunity for readers to hear the substantive case against what is being changed?
This Is Not About Whether Someone Likes the Museum
The problem is that the public is being asked to understand a major transformation of one of Toledo’s most important cultural institutions without being given the full debate surrounding it.
The Glass Pavilion is not simply a building that can be repurposed whenever the Museum changes directors. Its architecture, collection, furnaces, history and Toledo’s identity as the Glass City are deeply intertwined.
Interior of the Glass Pavilion, with donors’ names etched on the glass walls. Photo by Penny Gentieu
Those relationships deserve examination before they are dismantled—not after.
The Glass Pavilion is only one part of a much larger transformation now taking place at TMA. Major galleries are being dismantled or redesigned. The Museum’s collection is being reorganized. Major works have been sent on extended international tours. And Toledo residents have raised serious concerns about what these changes mean for their Museum.
More than 1,700 people have signed the petition “Enforce Libbey’s Will and Protect Toledo’s Art.” A formal request for review has also been submitted to the Ohio Attorney General’s Charitable Law Section.
Whatever one’s position on those questions, it is difficult to characterize them as nonexistent.
The Toledo Museum of Art is undertaking one of the most consequential transformations in its history.
That deserves more than celebration.
It deserves scrutiny.
It deserves competing viewpoints.
And it deserves a newspaper willing to ask difficult questions before the changes become irreversible.
The Glass Pavilion’s first twenty years are worth celebrating.
Its next twenty years are worth fighting for.
Update: September 8: The Blade, founded in 1835, has announced that it will be closing down if it does not find a buyer by the end of the year.
While most of the museum is closed for renovation and reinstallation, a new show has been announced: TMA Forever. Did they just think of hanging some art in Toledo? Could it be in reaction to the Petition to Enforce Libbey’s Will?
It will be at the recently repurposed Glass Pavilion, in the old Glass Study Room. The Glass Pavilion was built for the glass collection, but they have changed it from its singular purpose. Now they can do whatever they want with it, such as using it for sound shows, jewelry and cursed art exhibits, the local artist Community Gallery, and for hanging some paintings from the collection, calling it “TMA Forever,” to help us understand identity politics art. A warm-up for the dreaded transformation of our museum that we loved just the way it was.
Cleaning out the old building
Claiming to have to do it for the HVAC system, they closed the historic white marble columned museum building and emptied it out. While they are transforming the Toledo Museum of Art into a world art history museum, they are ironically deleting the history of the museum and many of the artists it has held in its collection. They are on a special DEI mission to be the great influencer for American museums that must be changed. (“TMA’s strategy calls for us to become the model art museum in the United States for our commitment to quality and our culture of belonging.”) Not that the Toledo Museum of Art itself had ever been guilty of racism – far from it – but it doesn’t mind sacrificing itself for the cause.
Everyone is thinking of re-installations and reinterpreting collection today especially as a field and as institutions we’re coming to terms with the colonial and racist histories and legacies of our own institutions and their continued impact on what we do and how we do it today. – Diane Wright TMA Curator of Glass, TMA Symposium, Expanding Horizons, July 20, 2023
They bought 1,300 new pieces for the museum, including these two:
Early Kiddush Cup, cost $4,000,000, which is about three times the annual draw of the Edward Drummond Libbey Endowment for the purchase of art.
The Kiddush cup continues something of a busy spree at the Toledo Museum of Art, Levine said, citing the roughly 1,300 acquisitions it had made through gift and purchase over the past five years. ARTnews, November 6, 2025
The same year they bought the cup, in 2025, they bought this painting by a relatively unknown painter for another estimated $5,000,000, as a part of a bailout of a small college in Alabama.
“My objective and the objective of the Toledo Museum of Art is to support Talladega College.” Adam Levine, New York Times, “To Avert Crisis, Talladega College Sells Its Art Treasures” October 29, 2025
“Much of the African American population of Toledo traces its genealogy to individuals who fled on the Underground Railroad, so this will be deeply meaningful for our audience.” Adam Levine, Forbes, “Art Imitates Life: Hale Woodruff’s ‘The Underground Railroad’ Headed North To Ohio” November 1, 2025
They claim that whatever they put up will be fine –
“The superpower that an art museum has is when something goes up on the wall, it’s considered good. We set the canon.” Adam Levine, Forbes, Feb. 28, 2022
They are replacing the 17th and 18th century Italian Baroque paintings in the Great Gallery with this:They moved the historic glass installed at the Glass Pavilion for reinstallation in the renovated museum building:
“It would be senseless not to have glass showcase alongside these other media, and to divorce glass history from overall art history,” Levine said. The Blade, August 2025
Conceived as a building of glass to display one of the world’s greatest art collections, where glass would be made, glass would be taught, and the history of glass would be studied, in a city known as the glass capital of the world, that gave birth to the studio glass movement in 1962, in a museum founded by a ground-breaking glass industrialist, it was in beautiful working order, as designed by master architects, to work together like a Swiss watch. Why did it stop?
Meanwhile…
The museum has set out to increase their international footprint and relevance. In the past, the museum had plenty of international relevance right here at home. The museum was visited by luminaries from around the world, such as the King and Queen of Greece. In any given year, the museum had been regularly visited by people from every state of the nation and over 50 countries around the world.
But now, instead of bringing people to Toledo to see the fine collection, the collection has been sent on tour, along with museum staff including curators and the art restorer. Many of the best paintings are either on loan or are being rented internationally. The art is put to work to fulfill their “transformative” mission, and the travel budget is going through the roof.
These paintings have been prepared for extensive wear and tear by reframing them with glass. You can imagine the many years it took to prepare so many paintings for such stress. For example, the two-year loan of four paintings to the Hudson River Museum that commenced in June 2025 and will end in June 2027 was arranged in 2023, as indicated on the adjacent plaques.
Rarely seen, except on the Mona Lisa, glass is used on canvas to protect it from damage. To glaze a painting, the art restorer has to crack open the frame, remove the artwork, and add glass to the frame. Then, the installation of spacers along the inside of the frame to keep the glass from touching the surface of the painting. As some depth of the frame has been taken up by the glass and the spacers, the canvas spills out of the back. A retro-fitted frame job is not the ideal framing for the valuable artwork. The paintings, like this one, have to be hung from hinges at the sides of the frames instead of from the back. I went to see some, in Yonkers, New York.
Here’s what Toledo’s art restorers did to the paintings to add glass — to upwards of 150 of paintings —
No wonder museum attendance has been pathetically low, considering that the curators’ attention has been focused on making shows for the rest of the world, instead of putting on good shows at the actual Toledo Museum of Art.
Edward Drummond Libbey Will
…all paintings, pictures and other works of art by it or them acquired by expenditures from said income, shall at all times be properly and appropriately housed in one or more rooms of The Toledo Museum of Art in said City of Toledo,each of which rooms shall at all times be designated and plainly marked “The Edward Drummond Libbey Gallery”; each and every of said painting, other pictures and works of art shall at all times be plainly marked “Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey”, and shall be kept adequately insured against loss from fire, theft and other causes…
Florence Scott Libbey Will
…in the purchase of paintings, statuary, furniture and other works of art, each of which, when so acquired, shall have designated thereon, or near thereto, the following words: “Florence Scott Libby Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott”, and shall be permanently installed in one or more rooms of the building or buildings of said Museum of Art, each of which shall be designated and known as the “Maurice A. Scott Memorial Gallery”…
What don’t they understand about Libbey’s intentions for the art to be for the people of Toledo? Instead, the curators — all new to the museum — are using the great art belonging to the people of Toledo, risking and renting it all over the world. The Toledo elites are all in. So is The Blade, which supports the museum whole-heartedly, and the museum advertises in The Blade. (Update, September 8: The Blade announced that it is closing down if it is not sold by the end of the year, and the managing editor Mike Brice has a new job now promoting commercial concerns in Ohio. The Blade is in free-fall, so is it any wonder why they no longer publish fair journalism; see post dated September 6 right before it was announced, What The Blade Didn’t Publish About the Glass Pavilion)
Living far above it all, none of the movers and shakers understand the importance of the museum to the community. They don’t understand that you can’t take that away for all these years without changing the character of Toledo forever.
Telling a story in the “Everything Has a Story” Exhibition at the Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, New York
Four American paintings were lent to the Hudson River Museum and are the only paintings in the museum with glass on them. They look bad and Toledo looks bad. The wall text was written at the height of Toledo’s post-pandemic anti-colonialist revisionism panic, and it was unlike any of the other wall text on the rest of the art. For example:
The Toledo Museum of Art explains to the foreign press that the reason the museum can “loan” so many masterworks at one time is because back home they are doing a massive renovation. But in fact, that excuse is only to make the museum look good to the foreigners. At home, the museum is closed for an unnecessary renovation along with an unwanted reinstallation. It is taking years and the museum will have not have any additional gallery space. In fact current gallery space will be reduced for the addition of new bathrooms and a lounge. Storage space will be not be added, even though in the past five years they have acquired 1,300 new art objects for the dreaded reinstallation.
As far as the rest of the world is concerned, the museum’s Wikipedia page claims that the museum is in the midst of a massive “campus expansion.” That’s great for international PR, for the people who will never set foot in Toledo but will pay admission fees overseas to view our art.
As for the “campus expansion,” the museum actually sold an important campus building – the art deco Professional Building, that housed the Symphony and Toledo Arts Commission, to the American Numismatic Society for $2 million one year ago. That is hardly “campus expansion.”
56 of 60 Impressionist thru Modern paintings on multi-year world tours, mangled with glass on them:
53 Old Master paintings on multi-year world tours, mangled with glass on them:
What we are losing:
Instead of presenting the great art that has been painstakingly collected for over a century, the new crew at the museum is using the art to illustrate a presentation of a narrow view of politics.
The membership has dropped significantly, as has attendance, which never recovered after the pandemic. Who is paying for this transformation of the people’s museum? What strings are attached?
See more charts, graphs and data portraits analyzing the museum’s statistics on this page:
The tall bars show the increasing draws taken every year, the short bars show the reduction in the funds’ value adjusted for inflation, declining 32% between 2014 and 2024. Data source: 990 IRS filings, 2014-2025, of the individual Edward Drummond Libbey and Florence Scott Libbey Endowments.Excessive Spending, Declining Visitors: Exhibition Activity, Attendance, and Financial Trends at the Toledo Museum of Art 2014–2026
The success of a museum is measured by the attendance.
While the Toledo Museum of Art, as of June 2026, is closed for renovations, it is important to remember that it was entirely open for visitors through fiscal year 2024, which ended June 30, 2025, 13 months ago.
What’s up with the low attendance?
This chart reflects the annual visitors through June 30, 2025. The numbers are taken from the annual reports. See, here, for the actual pages of annual reports for your own comparison: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025.
What does Adam Levine have to say about it?
I didn’t ask, but he volunteered. Here is a bullet point in an email to me, cc’d to the Toledo City Council, Mayor, State Representatives, and The Blade, all of whom I had originally cc’d on my email to the board liaison, Sandhya Holston asking for a current list of board members (the second time I asked, and it was all I asked. This time my email was passed off to Adam Levine to respond, who still didn’t give me the list, but responded with bullet points) ––
Comparisons can be misleading between current attendance and pre-pandemic attendance.
“The Museum changed how it measures success since COVID.”
Because prior to the pandemic, according to Adam Levine, when reporting annual museum visitors in the annual reports and to the press, the previous directors reported anyone who came to the museum for any purpose. In other words, he’s saying that before COVID, the museum fudged the numbers by adding anyone who ever stepped foot into the museum buildings for any reason, including employees, university students in the Gehry building Center for the Visual Arts, wedding rental attendants, business event attendees, contractors, repairmen, construction workers, and not just people coming to see the art.
– Museum visitors (to see the art): 132,000
– Community classes & Family Center: 25,000
and to pad the numbers, we are to surmise that perhaps they added:
– Employees: 50,000
– Student and teacher attendance at CVA: 125,000
– Peristyle attendees: 40,000
– Users of the library: 5,000
– Private venue rental attendees and caterers: 20,000
– Contractors, construction workers & delivery workers: 15,000
– Dog walkers, strollers, joggers, block party attendees: 18,000
–– to comprise the 430,000 visitors.
Levine reports “welcoming” just as many campus visits as the previous directors would report museum visits (but were really campus visits, and now Levine is coming clean with that revelation.)
Adam Levine only counts visitors who come to see the art, unlike his predecessors. In 2025, museum visits totaled 131,733, one-third of what it was pre-pandemic, before he became director.
Wrangling, mangling and rewriting history
Throughout its history, the museum is famous for having the same or more visitors as the population of Toledo year after year. And now, the attendance has dropped to be one-third of what it had always been and the director is telling us that in the past, the previous directors lied to us. Who is doing the lying?
March 30, 1914. Toledo Museum of Art Archives
Fortune Magazine, January 1938: museum draws 104% of the population of Toledo in a year.How does Toledo Museum of Art stack up against nation’s best? The Blade, September 17, 1989The Blade, Sept 17, 1989 showing 1987 gallery attendance
How the museum brought them in
Impressionism, brought in 146,237 visitors alone, in only eight weeks. 393,418 people visited the museum that year, according to the 1991 annual report, an increase of about 98,000 from the previous year, due to the Impressionism show.
In fiscal year 2000, 397,349 visitors took pleasure in the Museum’s renowned collections, exhibitions, and special events.
In 2001, the museum reported that from July 1, 2000 through June 30, 2001, presenting 16 exhibitions that year, 397,349 visitors took pleasure in the Museum’s renowned collections, exhibitions, and special events.
Looks like the public was still going to the museum in 2012.Chart published in The Blade January 17, 2016
2015: Toledo Museum of Art sets attendance mark
In 2015 the museum set an attendance record — over 440,000. Toledo Museum of Art sets attendance mark, The Blade January 17, 2016. Director Brian Kennedy said,
While the increased attendance numbers are “great,” they don’t necessarily measure the museum’s success, says TMA director Brian Kennedy. Rather, it’s the programming chosen and a measure of the relevancy of the museum itself that drives the institution.
“Attendance numbers are not the most important thing for us. The most important thing for us is visitor satisfaction,” Kennedy said. “We want to be the best in other people’s opinions.”
In 2019, The Blade reported a 3% attendance drop in the article, Attendance falls at Toledo Museum of Art, January 15, 2019.
The numbers are in line with overall museum attendance, which dropped 2.8 percent from 423,145 people to 411,123, according to TMA’s recently released annual report. The 12,000- person decrease was less than in fiscal year 2017, when attendance dropped by almost 34,000 people.
Those numbers don’t alarm museum officials, who say the museum has consistently seen more than 400,000 visitors come through its doors annually in recent years.
“While attendance is something we do track and report on, how the museum really benchmarks its success is two-fold: the quality of what we offer the public and in return, what visitors say about the museum,” Ms. Elton said.
Attendance of special exhibitions is reported:
– The Mummies: From Egypt to Toledo, 2018: 33,228 – Fired Up: Contemporary Glass by Women Artists, 2018: 34,849 – Rebecca Louise Law: Community, 2018: 44,817
– Kehinde Wiley, 2017: 69,000 – Play Time including the Red Ball project, 2016: 135,000
Fast-forward to post-covid
Adam Levine’s gallery visits estimate in 2021, that half of museum visitors will spend time in a free temporary exhibition, which might be 100,000 to 175,000 people in a year. Seems to be talking about visitors coming to see the art.
It takes a real effort to bring the people in.
“Our curatorial team has tripled while our exhibitions budget has nearly doubled.” Adam Levine wrote in an email to TMA members in March 2023.
Whereas 16 shows annually had been the norm in the past, in 2025, the museum had only five exhibitions, with only two shows in the major temporary exhibition spaces:
– Rachel Ruysch: Nature into Art (Levis Galleries)
– Infinite Images: The Art of Algorithms (Canaday Gallery)
Now, in 2026, all of the sprawling galleries of the white-pillared museum building are closed and the art has been removed – it has been rented overseas, loaned throughout the U.S., and stored off-site, out of town while they “renovate.”
What was Director Adam Levine doing all these years with a tripled curatorial staff and a doubled exhibition budget? We know now, as they were shutting down the museum, that they were actually really busy working on secret international blockbuster exhibitions with the masterworks. Secret, because no announcements were made to the Toledo public, who had to find out through foreign news stories that most of their best masterworks were overseas in unprecedented institutional “loans.”
Faced with having to report pathetic post-COVID museum attendance statistics, which really look bad compared to other museums, Adam Levine informs us that the past has been a fraud – the museum was dishonest with the public, implying that all the reporters at The Blade writing about museum attendance throughout the years had to have been dumb and gullible, as were all of the museum stakeholders, all those many years.
What a deceit.
The founders of the museum intended for the museum to be maintained in Toledo and for the art to be displayed in Toledo. The Libbey will is clear: the museum is for Toledo.
But Adam Levine had a different idea: change the measurement of success by leveraging our art and betraying our legacy.
I was merely asking for a current list of board members. It seemed outrageous to me that they didn’t simply send it to me the first time I asked, so when I had to ask a second time, I cc’d the city council, state representatives and the press. I expected the reply to be straight-forward: a list of current board members.
I wanted a list of current board members, since the list was not current on the TMA website, and I wanted to see who the three newly announced board members were replacing.
Can you believe the audacity of Adam Levine to use my email to broadcast to city council, state representatives and the press that previous directors had falsely reported museum attendance, and that recent attendance is equal to what it had been when our museum used to be great?
This goes way beyond gaslighting. It’s difficult to grasp how our museum is being used and abused, torn apart and lied about, all in plain sight.
I wonder what Ward Canaday, “Father of the Jeep,” would think, knowing the gallery that he endowed and was built in 1982 for blockbuster exhibitions, the Ward M. Canaday Gallery, is getting repurposed for a history of glass gallery (never mind that the Glass Pavilion was built in 2006 to house the glass collection, but that’s getting repurposed, too.)
The Ward M. Canaday Gallery is being re-christened “The Trumbull Family Gallery.”
Inlands, Home of the Canadays, 1926
Margy Trumbull, a board member, lives (or lived) in a house on property that had been part of the original Inlands estate in Ottawa Hills, the estate built by the Canadays in 1926. And now she has his gallery space in the art museum. The Inlands house and remaining property (which was subdivided after Canaday’s death) was donated to the museum in 2021 when the then-owner died — Charles Johnson, of Johnson furniture fame. But the museum refused it. The museum has instead an 1876 centennial side table to honor Charles Johnson.
Screenshot from online video, captured July 16, 2026
The Canaday name is moving to the back of the museum, to a former gallery space. This space will now be a lounge with a lot of “comfortable seating.” Windows are being cut into the wall revealing a view of the parking lot. Which is apropos, since three years after Ward Canaday died, in 1979, the Jeep Administration Building was imploded for a parking lot. Which turned out to be unnecessary, since the new Jeep factory was then relocated a few miles to the north.
Photo: Penny Gentieu
The Canaday Reflection Gallery will be a place to hang out and reflect on how you never know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Especially in Toledo.
The renovations reduce gallery space. Most museums, when they go to the trouble of renovating, add gallery space. But if you have other plans for the art — makes you wonder why then did the museum acquire 1,500 new artworks during the past few years?
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 23, 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.”
Photo: Christies to show scale, 2026$7.4 millionWhat are our other four artworks sold at this auction? The Art Newspaper
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 months before the museum sold 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 – fragile, centuries-old art, and disregarding the excessive carbon footprint 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:
While From Rembrandt to Goya travels to the South Korean department store, Toledoans are invited to a picnic at the Glass Pavilion — the former venue of the Toledo glass art collection, a building which is now being used for other purposes, such as this picnic on July 11.
Fast following Art Bridges and the relaxation of rigid humidity and temperature requirements
Axios NW ArkansasOn indefinite loan to the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, following an easement on humidity and temperature requirements for loans.
“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?
TMA’s “40 year” talking points
leveraging a paradigm shift
Sara Jane DeHoff
President of the Board of Directors, 2023-2025
Sara Jane DeHoff was not the first female president (chair) of the museum’s board of directors, but at age 79 in 2023 she was the oldest person to ever step into that role. It’s a pretty hefty position which must have been full of stress since the museum is presently getting torn down to the studs, both physically and metaphysically.
“The last time we did work this major on a gallery was maybe in the 1980s. We’re talking over 40 years ago. It’s time.” Sara Jane DeHoff, The Blade, 11-21-2024
Ms. DeHoff has been a major donor and involved with the museum for many decades and remembers when the Canaday Gallery was built when the back entrance was added in 1982 but she seems to be forgetting:
1990 –Classic Court is reinstalled with the 2,000 year old Bacchus mosaic floor, and the Peristyle is renovated
1992 – Center for the Visual Arts designed by Frank O. Gehry is built, houses gallery and museum’s reference library
1992 – Old boilers, chillers, and engine drives replaced with “the most efficient products available on the market at that time” Carol Bintz, the museum’s finance director, said.
2001-01 – Facade of the front of the building restored, $15 million spent on repairs, including “The new electronically controlled atmosphere is “state of the art” for artwork, “In such utterly stable conditions, the art will last longer than we could ever have imagined.” Carol Bintz, the museum’s finance director, said.
2001 – Professional Arts Building renovated, gallery added
2001 – Georgia and David K. Welles Sculpture Garden built, adding twenty-two sculptures and landscaped green spaces
2004 – 2006 – Glass Pavilion built for glass collection, 76,000-sq. ft. post-modern building designed by Tokyo-based SANAA, Ltd.
2008 – 1,450 solar panels are installed on the roof over the Classic Court and Peristyle to maximize operational efficiency through renewable energy, one of the largest solar panel installations in the state of Ohio. On a clear, sunny day, the solar modules produce up to 20% of the total electrical demand for the building.
2012 – glass collection reinstalled in the Glass Pavilion
2012 – Wolfe Gallery for Contemporary Art, a new renovated space costing $2-million, opens
2016 – POLISHING THE GEM: renovation and reinstallation of galleries in the West Wing including Gallery 29, American Art, and the creation of a “new media gallery” replacing the two period rooms (Swiss room, French room) and storage room along the south wall.
2016 – Levis Galleries (Galleries 28A-C) in the West Wing: “The renovation of the Levis Galleries is part of our plan for large-scale gallery renovation and reinstallation to be completed by 2020.”
2019 – HVAC temperature control replacement $605,020
2021 – Cloister Gallery renovated, repainted, reinstalled with new casework, lighting and security measures.
Fritz and Mary have stepped forward to say that they not only believe in the future of the Toledo Museum of Art, they believe in the future of this region,” said Betsy Brady, TMA board chair. “We certainly hope their generosity inspired others to give to the Museum.”
Adam Levine
Director, Toledo Museum of Art, 2020 – present
Adam Levine is the museum’s youngest director, starting in 2020 at age 34. It’s a pretty hefty position which must be full of stress for such an inexperienced museum professional to be radically changing the museum Toledoans know and love.
I joke that there are two rules of human history that are inexorably true. First, every generation has been convinced that it knows absolutely everything, and second, every generation in history has been convinced that the generation before it knew absolutely nothing.
Second, 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
“Leveraging Paradigm Shifts”
We seek to innovate for our community and for our field. Museums need big solutions for 21st century problems, and we will not be afraid to take calculated risks or to leverage paradigm shifts. 2021 strategic five-year plan
The superpower that an art museum has is when something goes up on the wall, it’s considered good. We set the canon. Adam Levine, Feb. 28, 2022, Forbes
Last night, the Toledo Museum of Art sold three paintings made by artists better represented in the collection by superior examples. We are grateful for a successful result and are focused on the opportunity to leverage these funds into supporting our collecting strategy, our strategic plan, and our mission. Adam Levine, May 22, 2022, The Blade
“When you create a framework, it’s operational in an ongoing way,” Levine said. “Once we provided the resources to that ongoing effort, now we have a cultural shift and a new framework for how we can leverage this extraordinary collection to service the community.” October 1, 2022, The Blade
The Universe & the HVAC according to Adam Levine
Levine claimed that the museum had neglected HVAC maintenance for years. However, the timeline itself shows that the HVAC was indeed maintained before his arrival. He used this as an excuse to close all galleries and replace the HVAC system to preserve the art. Notably, the first time he mentioned having to close the museum for this reason was in The Blade on August 24, 2025.
“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.” August 24, 2025, The Blade
The timing, Levine added, is driven by necessity. The museum’s heating and cooling system has reached the end of its life, and closing some galleries allows staff to tackle all upgrades simultaneously. November 17, 2025, WTOL
Why make changes now?
Levine said the short answer to the question of timing is that TMA’s heating and cooling system is at the end of its useful life and needs total replacement.
Since the HVAC system mostly exists in the attic and is divided into separate units, galleries must close as different zones are replaced throughout the building.
“You cannot leave artwork in galleries that do not have humidity and temperature control,” said Levine. “So forget the reinstallation — there was no universe in which every gallery of the Toledo Museum of Art wasn’t going to have to close by 2027 anyway, because the artwork would have needed to be moved as the HVAC unit was replaced.”
Museum leadership decided to seize on the opportunity to re-evaluate what Levine described as a “tired” conceptual framework that does not represent the world or the breadth of the collection as it has grown over the past 50 years adequately.
Museum administration decided it would be more efficient in terms of time and cost to reinstall the galleries as part of the HVAC replacement. –December 11, 2025, Toledo Free Press
With aging mechanical systems and infrastructure, the museum decided this would be the ideal time for a major renovation. Gardner noted that it is rare for a museum to have the opportunity to make such dramatic changes.
“We knew we were going to have to do a major infrastructure upgrade to the heating and cooling system, which necessitates taking all the artwork out of the galleries anyway,” [Andrea Gardner, deputy director] said. ~ January 24, 2026, bgindependentmedia.org
Deferred maintenance – ??
In addition to keeping up with changing audiences, the project allows the museum to tackle deferred maintenance and refresh tired areas of the building, Ms. Gardner said.
“It was really time to do an update, and so now we’re able to do that comprehensively and address our deferred maintenance…” Ms. Gardner called working on the reinstallation a “one-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” “They haven’t done it for 40 plus years, and so they probably won’t do it again for 40 plus years.” October 22, 2025 The Blade
Why are you doing this project? The Museum’s HVAC system had reached the end of its useful life. To safely replace it—and protect the collection—we needed to remove artworks from the galleries and store them securely. This necessary work also gives us the opportunity to rethink how we share the collection.
Why is so much closing at once? This is part of TMA’s once‑in‑a‑generation reinstallation project, marking our first full gallery reimagining in more than four decades.
Is the overall footprint of the museum changing? The overall square footage will be very similar, a little larger than it is now.
Has TMA loaned artwork to other museums or put artwork in to storage? Yes, but it will be back. In order to install the HVAC system, all the artwork had to be protected, which means it needed to be removed and put into storage. Some of the art was loaned to other museums and will return when the museum re-opens.
What are the museum’s plans for its art storage needs?
“The facility we are in is not growing, so we are looking for more art storage options, but that is not part of this project.” May 9, 2025, City Paper
Leveraging our art for a paradigm shift
The building torn down to the studs for a renovation requiring a multi-year closure but it’s not growing in size, and it has not built any new storage areas. Maybe Adam Levine will not need storage areas because he has been and will be traveling the art that Libbey gave to Toledoans, leveraging our collection for the “paradigm shift.”
Instead of museum attendance recovering after the pandemic at the Toledo Museum of Art, as it has in every other major museum across the United States, our museum was busy all those years prepping our art for international exhibitions while they made plans to empty the classic, marble columned Greek Revival building and tear it down to the studs. Disturbing 114-year old asbestos while they were at it. A classic, historic building that Toledoans loved just the way it was.
Visitors can expect to be dazzled by the much-loved highlights of Toledo Museum of Art’s internationally-renowned collection, on display exclusively in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland from 7 June 2025. “Never have so many of our masterworks travelled together, and we could not be more excited for them to debut in Auckland.” Adam Levine said.
A unique journey that brings together over 60 masterpieces from the prestigious Toledo Museum of Art to the city, with a total value of over one billion euro. Treviso is the only European stop on an international tour: a unique opportunity to admire works by Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, Cézanne, Matisse, and many other protagonists of modern art. Thanks to the temporary closure of the American Museum for significant modernisation and expansion works…
It reads like a who’s who of the art world – Vincent Van Gogh, Claude Monet, Piet Mondrian, Paul Cezanne, Edgar Degas, Pablo Picasso and more – and it’s heading to Adelaide for an Australian-exclusive exhibition. Featuring works never-before-seen in the country, Monet to Matisse: Defying Tradition feature masterworks from the acclaimed Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio and will open at the Art Gallery of South Australia in July as the debut exhibition in AGSA’s new Winter Art Series.
Presented in partnership with the South Australian Government through the South Australian Tourism Commission, AGSA’s Winter Art Series is a major new initiative that brings major international exhibitions exclusively to Adelaide during the winter seasons from 2026-29, celebrating Adelaide’s position as a vibrant cultural destination through exhibitions from world-renowned art collections and complemented by curated experiences and events. – weare.sa.gov.au
Leveraging art for commercial ventures around the world is apparently Levine’s “new paradigm shift” for the 21st Century. But this new paradigm does not fit in with the Libbey Will, which clearly puts the people of Toledo first. Not Last.
LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT of EDWARD DRUMMOND LIBBEY
ITEM XXV. All the rest, residue and remainder of my properties…. fifty per centum thereof in the payment of the cost and expense of maintaining its building…including the making of necessary repairs thereto and the salaries and wages of its officers and other employees, and all the remainder thereof in the purchase of paintings and other pictures and works of art for the purpose of public exhibition.
All paintings, other pictures and works of art by me bequeathed said The Toledo Museum of Art, its successor and successors, by this my Will, or by any codicil thereto, and all paintings, pictures and other works of art by it or them acquired by expenditures from said income, shall at all times be properly and appropriately housed in one or more rooms of The Toledo Museum of Art in said City of Toledo, each of which rooms shall at all times be designated and plainly marked “The Edward Drummond Libbey Gallery”; each and every of said painting, other pictures and works of art shall at all times be plainly marked “Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey”, and shall be kept adequately insured against loss from fire, theft and other causes. Said The Toledo Museum of Art, its successor and successors, may temporarily loan for the purposes of public exhibition elsewhere any such painting or other picture or work of art, upon taking proper security for its safe return; and it and they may, from time to time and at its and their discretion, sell or exchange any painting or other picture or work of art purchased by expenditures from said income, and from the proceeds thereof may acquire some other or others.
Each and every bequest by this my Will, or by any codicil thereto, made unto aid and for the benefit of said The Toledo Museum of Art, its successor and successors, is bequeathed subject to each and every the following conditions, to-wit: that said The Toledo Museum of Art, its successor and successors, shall forever maintain in said City of Toledo a building for the public exhibition of paintings and other pictures and works of art, in which the same shall be properly and appropriately housed and protected, and, except as temporarily closed for repairs, alterations and seasonable vacations, shall be kept open a reasonable length of time on at least two days of each week, for the admission, without charge, of all persons whomsoever.
Toledo Museum of Art is not meant to be a traveling museum – Keep Toledo’s art in Toledo! Enforce Libbey’s Will — petition asking for oversight of the Toledo Museum of Art by the Ohio Attorney General, here.
Protect Toledo’s Art for Toledo’s future generations.
It’s been quite the week in the hellscape that is the new Toledo Museum of Art. On Monday, we found out that our 57 impressionist paintings were just shown in Traviso, Italy, with three more paintings added to it so now the total of that show is 60. We were not informed by the museum – we discovered it after a deep Google search. Eight hours into a lively discussion on the Facebook Toledo Then and Now page, the museum chimed in – the first time ever to comment on one of my posts, and told us:
Screenshot May 18, 2026 – the singular message anywhere to the public that “TMA is traveling works through 2027.”
We had to find out about the New Zealand show through Google in New Zealand. The Australian show was discovered a year later through Google in Australia. But sending them to Italy in between? And now they go back to Australia to kick off tourist season in Adelaide. The town received a $15 million grant to promote the town, so the museum must be making money. And where do our paintings go after Australia? We aren’t allowed to know yet. A billion dollars worth of paintings that Edward Drummond Libbey gave to the people of Toledo to be on display in Toledo, Ohio.
Then on Wednesday, we read a completely misleading story on Michigan Public NPR – Art museums in Toledo, Flint creatively draw people in post-pandemic written by Newsroom Intern, Anna Busse, effectively congratulating the museum for having the worst post-pandemic attendance recovery in the country.
TMA’s attendance rose from 83,633 visitors to 131,733 visitors between 2020 to 2025, an increase of nearly 50,000 people.
The attendance actually dropped from 269,728 visitors to 131,733 between 2020 and 2025, a decrease of 137,995 people.
If a football team had such losing seasons with such low attendance they would fire the coach.
As for the Flint museum, a museum less than half the size of Toledo’s — it has completely recovered, and has attendance now that exceeds Toledo’s.
Ending the week, we found out that there is disturbed asbestos in the area of the museum by the offices and children’s classrooms, and that the employees are being forced to work under these conditions. Children’s classes are still going on.
After seeing the Cursed Show over at the Glass Pavilion, come over and see the Asbestos Installation outside employee offices around the corner from the children’s classes.
The museum is torn up right now. Almost every gallery is closed in the main building, and the main building of the museum will be completely closed in June — only the Family Center and some classes and the library will be open. The rest of the building, the entire gallery floor, is closed until the end of 2027, as they tear it down to the studs. And surprise, surprise, they have disturbed the asbestos of the 114-year-old building. And the trolls are thick on Facebook putting laughing emojis on our post about the asbestos. It’s not funny — disturbed asbestos causes Mesothelioma. Mesothelioma is caused primarily by airborne asbestos. When microscopic asbestos fibers are inhaled or swallowed, they become permanently trapped in organ linings, causing chronic inflammation and cell damage over several decades.
Margy Trumbull’s husband, Scott Trumbull died of Mesothelioma in 2020, after a 5-year battle with it. Major donors to the museum, he was a board member, and now she is a board member. What does Margy Trumbull have to say about employees and children in the immediate area of disturbed asbestos? How could she possibly be okay with it?
Museum’s substantial expenditures on rebranding and institutional marketing was not for bringing people in – it was to send our paintings around the world
2/1/2025 The Blade A look for the future: Toledo Museum of Art’s rebrand continues to grab attention
The logo brings the transformative power of art to everyone; it’s a public manifestation of TMA’s five-year strategic plan to become the model U.S. museum with a commitment to quality and a culture of belonging.
“Our normal activities of the Toledo Museum of Art quite literally generate millions of dollars in advertising values for the museum, and therefore for our community,” Levine said.
“The museum isn’t just broadcasting the incredible work it’s doing, it’s broadcasting the incredible things happening in Toledo to a national and international audience … There is no institution in Toledo whose earned media equates to our earned media.”
Museum Attendance Recovery Since the Pandemic
But the museum got off easy, even hired three new curators in 2021:
March 3, 2021 Art News
Has the museum stopped serving the public?
They didn’t they bring the public back to the museum after the pandemic.
They doubled their operating budget and spent at least $2M between the brand strategy manager and the logo designer rebranding themselves.
They shipped a billion dollars worth of artwork to undisclosed locations for undisclosed shows on a multi-year world tour with no announcement while tearing apart our museum to the studs.
The value of the art in the art museum is many magnitudes the value of the building that houses it – the art is worth billions of dollars.
The primary purpose of curators and a museum director is to care for the art and keep it safe for future generations – it belongs to the public – it’s in a public trust.
The museum is doing this because “the HVAC system has reached the end of its useful life. The necessary work also gives us the opportunity to rethink how we share the collection.” see this transcript of the museum’s accordian-formatted question-answers here (retrieved from code May 20, 2026)
Rethinking how they share our collection?
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.
Billions of dollars worth of art is not at the museum anymore, it has been shipped overseas for shows and to storage facilities across the country. This valuable art is exactly where right now?
Looking inward instead of outward
If you wonder why attendance at the Toledo Museum never recovered after the pandemic, here’s a clue — the curators looked inward instead of outward — they decided they would tear up the museum and start over, after all, they were mostly new employees — only 3 out of 15 were there before the pandemic, and Adam Levine was so supportive. They traveled to 160 different museums, historic houses and art spaces during 2021 and 2023. Some international. They were like kids in a candy store. As if the parents gave them the keys to the Maserati and they didn’t quite have a learners permit. Here’s the story from the source:
Toledo Museum of Art Symposium:
Expanding Horizons: New Approaches in Display and Interpretation
Taken from the transcript of the July 2023 symposium hosted by the museum, Diane Wright (Curator of Glass) describes the museum’s process to other curators from around the country.
“We have a solid history at TMA that we are very proud of yet in 122 years there have also been so many opportunities for variation change even some discontinuity and in 2023 we find ourselves in a moment where we ask ourselves and really demand of ourselves the refocusing and clarification of our strategy for display.
“In 2020 and 2021 TMA experienced major non-pandemic related staffing changes in leadership at the director level and on the curatorial team. Adam Levine joined TMA as the Edward Drummond and Florence Scott Levy director in April of 2020 followed by our long-term colleague Andrea Gardner taking on the role of head of Curatorial Affairs along with collections.”
“A strong sentiment for change amongst colleagues blended with opportunities that Adam brought to the museum and conversations about reinstallation naturally led to one about how we would build a staff to accomplish such a monumental project.”
“As you look at this screen with a lot of names on it and small text I can tell you that there are 15 names on here with two placeholders.
“Only three of these people were here in 2020 as we started this conversation, so we really had an amazing opportunity to build a team that would come in knowing that this project was at hand. And coming in, all really with the same kind of motivation and values and ideas.
“We have a collection that changes frequently, whether it’s new acquisitions or how we write about it, or what we put on display, or what we put into storage. Dropping the term permanent from the description helps us convey this more clearly to both ourselves and our audiences.
“At the same time we’re doing all this internal work, we also began to look outward to the state of museums, to you curators, and importantly, museum from across the institution, have been out to see more than 160 museums, historic houses and art spaces in the last two years. Mostly in the United States, but also internationally, finding inspiration and getting advice from all of you. We are immensely appreciative, not only of the hospitality that has been shown to us but all of the honest and frank conversations that we’ve had with you.
“These engagements have been so enlightening and honestly really one of the most joyful parts of this work so far. Over the last two years, we’ve also held periodic day-long intensives. We’ve built continuity of thought with these, the regular cadence of conversation that’s helped us really gain momentum. During these long sessions, we’ve debated, discussed, advocated for different approaches to an overall collection layout. And when I say this, this group was primarily at this point, curators and Andrea, and so our head of the department.
“We talked about geographical, thematic, chronological, maybe a mixture of all three. We actually spent the better part of a year having this conversation and conversations so we, uh, recently in June, made the first major decision, project decision, a significant step forward with us.
“We are using chronology as our primary approach. One of the exercises that helped us get to this point was to study over and over again, our gallery maps, repeatedly drawing out variations of our ideal installation. This was both collective and individual work. Often we would take these home, write on them, bring them back and review them together, which I would say is one of the most fascinating aspects, to figure out what we would actually come up with when they’re not all in the room together.”
“The display in the Glass Pavilion you’ll notice is almost entirely devoted right now to one medium. When it was built in 2006, the Glass Pavilion was meant to showcase this rather singular collection, which is actually a third of the overall collection here, while also providing state-of-the-art glass making studios.
“We’ve really achieved that goal, and before the new installation opens this space will be 20 years old.
“So the future of the Glass Pavilion is to show special exhibitions, some collection installation, and artist commissions while remaining a space for our glass making facilities and residencies and special events such as this one.”
Diane Wright’s closing words were telling – We will inevitably get things wrong too. My hope is that this will not inhibit us from taking risks finding our collective and our individual voices and using the most creativity that we can muster, being true to who we are as Museum professionals and institutions to connect art and people.
Participating museums at the symposium were:
North Carolina Museum of Art
Delaware Art Museum
Denver Art Museum
Los Angeles County Museum of Art
Joslyn Art Museum
Seattle Art Museum
Peabody Essex Museum
Now in 2026, we can see how these other museums have done compared to how Toledo has done by examining their published attendance statistics.
Every museum that participated in the 2023 symposium did much much better than the Toledo Museum of Art.
The Toledo Museum of Art succeeds at failure however, as it barely achieved 27% of its pre-pandemic attendance.
The new Toledo curators didn’t learn much from going around to the 160 museums. After their world tour with tons of money spent to make the museum better, the museum got worse.
I can think of a reason why the museum didn’t do better in 2021. I remember the public outrage over it. The museum was closed to the public on October 22, 2021, a Friday, for a private concert in the Great Gallery that night, for only 40 neighborhood children and sponsors. They completely rehung the gallery, removing the famous Italian and European masterpieces from the sixteenth and seventeenth century, to replace them with contemporary paintings for a private John Legend concert.(Sojourner’s Truth, Nov. 4, 2021)
To make it clear that the museum’s annual attendance was always larger than the the population stats, in 2021, Adam Levine stated that “In a year, the museum has about 350,000 visits.” The Blade, June 20, 2021, Savages donate for community gallery. That Friday, October 22, had a potential of 1,500 or more museum visitors to whom the museum closed its doors for the first time on a Friday. (A little more than average daily visitors because it was on a Friday. 350,000 visitors divided by 260 days that the museum is open in a year is 1,346, give or take a day or two.)
2021 Toledo Museum of Art Annual Report: “More memorable [private, closed to the public] community events such as this are being planned and will take place in the coming years.”
In a double-page spread, the museum’s annual report for 2021 highlighted this private, for the neighborhood only event, for only some people living within a two-mile radius, less than 2% of the Toledo area that the museum serves. “More memorable community events, such as this, are being planned and will take place in the coming years.”
The Private Lecture that should have been public
Anna Marley, Director of Curatorial Affairs
In April of 2024, the museum had a speaker come for a private audience – themselves. The speaker was Anna Marley, a curator from the Pennsylvania Academy of Arts, who gave a lecture on her work with Impressionist paintings, a show called, The Artist Garden American Impressionism in the Garden Movement. For this show that she had in 2015, she borrowed our William Merritt Chase painting of a garden scene.
The curator had just moved the Impressionist paintings to the Glass Pavilion from Gallery 35, and was advertising them in a show, In a New Light: Impressionism and Post-Impressionism. The show opened on March 30, 2024.
Two years later, on the PBS 419 Show this past month (available on youtube) Anna Marley talked about the experience.
After my lecture, he [Adam Levine] hosted a little dinner for me, and he sat me down and had a glass of champagne, and he said, ‘so tell me about your career ambitions, Anna.’
She was hired as Director of Curatorial Affairs and started in September 2024.
This talk was not announced to the public, there is no ad nor facebook post about it. It was a lecture that Anna Marley was giving to the public elsewhere. Why wasn’t the public invited to this lecture, welcoming and educating the public with a lecture about Impressionism, the subject of In a New Light – Impressionism and Post Impressionism?
Edward Drummond Libbey endowed the Toledo Museum of Art for the people of Toledo, but the core art collection of Impressionism thru 20th Century paintings — 60 of them — have been sent abroad on a multi-year tour without any announcement to the public. Attendance has never been worse at the Toledo Museum of Art, because the art is gone — in these shows abroad, and the rest of the art has been sent to storage facilities across the United States.
20 billion dollars worth of art is gone — it’s not display, it hasn’t been on display for quite some time, and as for being on display in the future, they tell us that some of it will be back on display after they reopen. Probably after 2027.
2022 Kress Fellow Job description— TMA aims to blend scholarship with equity and inclusion in paradigm-shifting ways to become the model museum in the country for its commitment to quality and culture of belonging.
This fellow, Adero Kauffmann-Okoko, was hired in January of 2023. She graduated with a degree in art history from Swarthmore College. As of May 2025, she is now the museum’s “Grants Program Specialist.”
“Museum Development” is the biggest department of the museum now, – nine women – most of them new hires, piling up the money from wherever they can find it. Our museum, that had always been fine for 125 years with local support.
It’s not just the museum that is succeeding at failure. They get their employees to do it too.
Sara Jane DeHoff
Ending the week, we found out that there is disturbed asbestos in the area of the museum by the offices and children’s classrooms, and that the employees are being forced to work under these conditions. Children’s classes are still going on.
