Station 14, before and after. Layers of damage embedded in the 14th Station created its own expression.
William H. Machen, Toledo’s first known artist, made these paintings between 1866 and 1873 for the St. Francis Parish in Toledo. Decades ago, a fire at the church damaged the paintings. Poor restoration caused the paintings further damage, hence, sometime in late 2007 they were crated and put in storage.
Station 1 original damaged painting, partially crated and shown here in 2010 in the St. Francis sacristy, and the digitally restored version in 2021.
In 2010, when I began this website, I went to see the damaged paintings. Soon after, I met William Machen’s great-nephew, James Machen. James hired me to photograph the damaged paintings in 2012. I put them on this website and we tried to garner interest in the restoration of the original paintings.
Jim Machen with his retouched rendition of Station 4.
When it didn’t seem likely that we would be able to restore the originals, Jim learned how to digitally retouch a set of low-res files of the photos and made a 24″ set of prints of the 14 paintings. This set ended up in a church in the Philippines. Sadly, in November 2020, James Machen passed away.
Then in December 2020, an architect working on the renovation of Our Lady of Lourdes Church in Genoa, Ohio found my webpage about the paintings. The church’s priest contacted me about making large digital restorations of the paintings to hang in their church, which was a tremendous honor.
Holding the finished canvas of Station 4 (right); photograph of the original damaged painting in 2012.Dale, the caretaker at St. Francis shown with the damaged original painting of Station 11, and my self-portrait with Station 12 in 2012, next to the 2021 digitally restored images.
My 54″ digital restorations of the paintings are layered with the patina of their distinct 150-year history. The paintings are important to our history because they are painted by Toledo’s first known artist for Toledo’s first Catholic church. They were taken down by the church in 2007 and crated. Their fate was up in the air. But now, 15 years later, William H. Machen’s images hang once again on local church walls as they were originally intended. They have a new life in the beautiful, renovated Our Lady of Lourdes Church in the nearby town of Genoa.
Perhaps this story will inspire a way to restore the original paintings, which would entail hundreds of hours and as well as (guessing) about a hundred thousand dollars. The varnish would have to be removed and the flaking paint would have to be scraped off and re-painted. With my digital restorations, the best that I could do by using photography and technology combined with the finest archival art materials to instill them with artistic and historic integrity, William H. Machen’s paintings can once again be appreciated by the public.
It’s a great accomplishment for artistsoftoledo.com’s 11th year in terms of our mission to remember Toledo’s art history.
Standing next to Station 5 with Keith, who is making custom oak frames for the Stations, and Father Ferris at Our Lady of Lourdes Church in May 2021.The stations were installed in the church with digitally controlled focused lights that make them glow like stained glass windows.
More about William H. Machen and James Machen here:
What’s the problem? Check out the pdfs for more beautiful photos of the Ottawa River and waterways here and here and here and here and here. We have nice waterways and they appear to be kept up quite well by the actual property owners, such as the Metro Parks, The Boy Scouts, the Village of Ottawa Hills and the City of Sylvania and Toledo already.
Puppet Petitioners
Mike Pniewski is petitioning the Board for maintenance of ditch improvements.
From the Spencer Township Trustee minutes of March 4, 2021, the meeting that directly preceded the filing of the petition:
Under the heading of “Pay the Bills” —
Mike Pniewski from the Lucas County Engineers’s Office gave a presentation on the cleaning of 10-mile creek. He is petitioning the Board for maintenance of ditch improvements. Resolution 2021-03-04 was read. Trustee Valentine made a motion to accept the resolution. Trustee Anderson seconded. Roll call: 3 yes to 0 no.
Under the heading of “Road”
The Lucas County Engineer’s Office sent information to petition the Joint Board of Lucas and Fulton County Commissioners to construct and maintain ditch improvements to the Ten Mile Creek/Ottawa River Watershed.
A virtual meeting with the County Engineer’s Office for upcoming projects is scheduled for Friday, March 12, 2021, it will be a virtual meeting.
Then on March 20, 2021, Mr. Hood and Mr. Valentine and Spencer Township submitted a Petition that affects the majority of the landowners in not one but two counties.
From the Spencer Township Trustee minutes of April 1, 2021, the meeting that was directly after the filing of the petition:
Virtual meeting was held with LC Engineers on March 12, 2021
Nothing is documented in the April 1, 2021 minutes regarding the submission of the petition, nor is anything noted for the payment of the $500 bond plus $2 for each parcel of land in excess of 200 parcels — which would add up to be about $150,000 for the cost of the petition that was submitted in the name of Spencer Township, naming 74,644 parcel owners as “benefiting.” Hmmm……….. seems like a big action, as well as a big expense, for Spencer Township to leave it out of their minutes.
The bond is to cover the expense of the notifications. At two dollars per parcel owner, why didn’t Lucas County send official letters? The county cut corners by sending the landowners a notice in the form of a postcard, instead of in a letter that is clearly marked on the envelope, “Legal Notice” that would have been taken much more seriously by the 127 thousand landowners it will affect (including the recipients in South Toledo who are victims of the duplicate petition filed the same day by the neighboring village of Whitehouse for the “Swan Creek Watershed.”) Doesn’t the Ohio Revised Code specify that all petition notifications shall be in the form of a letter with the envelope so marked? Many people ignored the postcard, as it was casual, and you don’t have a clue why you would get it if you don’t live on 10-Mile Creek. That’s what we thought at first, and so did our friends. I venture to speculate that this sneaky petition is huge for Lucas County, in that it is directed to the largest group of people in twenty or forty years. Just a guess, judging from the very few tax assessments on our tax bill. Why didn’t Lucas County do it right? The answer seems obvious.
Also in the April 1, 2021 Spencer Township minutes is this report under “Correspondence”:
Spencer Township will be the lead agency to bid and award any crack seal work located in and around the Township. The Lucas County Engineer’s Office will prepare the necessary plans, bid documents, specifications and construction estimates.
Did Lucas County Engineer Mike Pniewski manipulate Spencer Township to put their names on a petition that did not really come from Spencer Township? Sure looks that way.
A blank check
Is this all a scheme to make a lot of money for the department, a result of Mike Pniewski’s zeal to “grow our economy?” Mike Pniewski is quoted in a Toledo Blade article from last April:
“I see myself as the chief infrastructure officer of the county,” Mr. Pniewski said. “I need to get as much money into the county as we can, to grow our economy and grow our competitiveness.” The Blade, April 21, 2020, “New position marks move closer to home for Lucas Co. engineer”
I don’t hear him saying, to clean up the environment.
How fair is that to the population of Toledo, Sylvania, and Ottawa Hills are essentially being told to give the county a blank check, and personal property rights, for entry anytime for anything they want to do to a creek, river, pond, or ditch on or near their property?
Seems like it is not the Lucas County engineer’s job to dream up tax assessments for us. Petitions for ditch improvements normally come from a citizen or entity and are limited to a specific legitimate need — not from the Lucas County Engineer himself, who seems to have economic growth and competition on his mind. Public officials are fiduciaries of our trust and best interest, after all. We elect them to serve us, not so we can serve them.
Hoodwinked
It appears that the origin of the scheme to put an eternal tax assessment on work that has not been proven to be necessary and unprecedently changes private property law forever, did NOT come from Spencer Township. It appears that the Spencer Township Trustees got hoodwinked by Mike Pniewski, and we in turn are getting hoodwinked by these unsavory shenanigans. A hoodwinking that will last forever….
Are we going to let them do that?
So Conflicted!
Recorded in the minutes of the November 5, 2020 Spencer Township meeting, Trustee Michael Hood stated that he would not put a levy on the ballot, especially in the current financial status of the country. But apparently Mr. Hood doesn’t care if homeowners are simply assessed extra taxes for this sweeping, multi-county ditch improvement that is undefined in specificity but unlimited in scope.
Location of the first “view” and hearing on June 10 at 3:30pm — Lathrop Park, 12150 Sylvania-Metamora Rd., Berkey, Ohio. Pack a snack since they are probably too cheap provide refreshments — and come early to reserve your picnic table!
And need I mention, the world is experiencing a pandemic. Lucas County’s big push now is to get our community vaccinated, as we lag in percentage of vaccinated population compared to the rest of the country. Listen to the county’s plans here — The Lucas County Commissioners still have virtual meetings! But as many as 75,000 landowners (and their spouses) received official notifications from the county to publicly gather for the first “view” and hearing at a venue that has a couple of picnic tables and one porta-potty. Doesn’t look like much of a venue for a “show and tell” for a community of 100,000 people, does it? but then does the county really expect anyone to show up? Because they think this is a slam-dunk! Hope it doesn’t rain…
The Engineer’s office at Lathrop Park?
Penny Gentieu June 5, 2021
Stay informed by following my new Facebook page on this subject, Toledo Now
10-Mile Creek painted by William H. Machen in 1875
Lucas County combined with Fulton County is taking a nasty money and property rights grab.
A postcard from the Joint Board of Fulton and Lucas County Commissioners, c/o Lucas County Engineer, 1049 S. McCord Road, Holland Ohio mailed to 71,000 addresses: “Ditch improvement notice — hearings on the TenMile Creek Watershed for a Joint-County Ditch Petition filed by Spencer Township on March 20, 2021 —
“All costs of engineering, construction, and future maintenance will be assessed to the benefiting parcels of land…”
Lucas County wants a new tax on 117,554 Lucas County homeowners for a new ditch improvement petition that covers Lucas and Fulton Counties.
We called about the above ditch improvement notice and spoke to Jay Mosley, the Lucas County Stormwater Program Manager, who told us this:
“At this point, we do not have a project identified nor are we making any assessments to any of the parcel owners, this is just to start the process.”
“The county doesn’t have permission to go in and work on private property, so we are setting it up.”
“This process allows us to spread the cost of any projects we would do…to all of the parcels in the watershed that contribute runoff that would ultimately get to the ditches and creeks and streams.”
“We are not proposing any projects at this point, this is just to have a mechanism in place so that when we do identify a project that has a critical need, we can come up with a cost and then spread the cost over all of the parcels in the watershed.”
“We are looking at places where there are ditches that need some maintenance that have been filled up with sediment and have some trees down, we certainly would not disturb nice natural habitat.”
“We are proposing to spread the assessments out over everyone in the northern part of the county and city of Toledo, even to Fulton county.”
“We don’t have a project identified.”
“We can’t go on to private property and do it without this mechanism.”
Diggers in waiting, in the early morning mist.
Rivers and ditches have always been the responsibility of the property owners. Ditches along county roads are the responsibility of the county, and tax funds are already allocated for those ditches, as are ditches created after 1957. Without this tax increase petition, river, creek and ditch maintenance on private property would remain the responsibility of the property owners, which Lucas County tells us in their FAQ’s.
Individual property owners have always taken care of their rivers, creeks and ditches, as it is on their property, but now the counties want access to all property on the 10-Mile Creek-Ottawa River Watershed, and also the Swan Creek Watershed.
With the passing of this assessment, property owners will be giving the counties blanket permission to bulldoze through their property for any and all future river, ditch or pond project, and they will be paying for it forever.
Without the passage of this assessment, the county does not have the absolute right to tear through private property. What they do have now is a limited utility access, as delineated on the maps on Areis (Lucas County property database.) If the county needs more, it has to get permission, and they have to repair any damage they incur with their bulldozers. The county now wants the absolute right to tear through our property, carte blanche.
Damage done to nice natural habitat on our property adjacent to the 10-Mile Creek caused by the use of heavy machinery.
The watershed and flow of water is like breathing air; it’s a fact of life, — it’s not a benefit. But the list of so-called Lucas County “benefiting parcels” in the 10-Mile Creek and Swan Creek watersheds total 117,554 homeowners, most of Toledo and all of Ottawa Hills and Sylvania!
Out of these 117,554 homeowners, maybe a total of ten or fifteen families actually have 10-Mile Creek running through their property. In Toledo, Sylvania, and Ottawa Hills, most of the land adjacent to 10-Mile Creek is owned by the various municipalities and parks, as will be shown below. But 117,554 Lucas County homeowners are hereby petitioned to bear the brunt of cleaning up twigs or dredging a ditch in Fulton or Henry County and while doing so, grant Lucas County the perpetual right to bulldoze through their private property whenever the county wants to and for whatever reason the county dreams up in the future, while Lucas County gets to raise taxes on 117,554 homeowners forever.
The pattern of the rise and fall of the floodplain, on which we live, has not changed during the the many years we have lived on it. I have also observed the floodplains of Ottawa Hills for over 50 years, and they seem the same as always. Our delicate watershed on which we live should not be disturbed by the county engineer.
In all of the county website information (see below for links) they have not even shown one good reason why they should be granted a tax assessment that could possibly disturb our ecology — we have floodplains, and our floodplains haven’t changed in the past 50 years, and our floodplains are working just fine now. Should the EPA be involved in this proposal that concerns our delicate watershed? We are just not convinced that there is a problem that needs to be fixed here. The county shows us no issues.
10-Mile Creek – Ottawa River watershed area (click to enlarge)
What about the River Raisin Watershed in Michigan, connected to the Ottawa River Watershed? Are they going to get them to pay, too?The Ohio Watershed — why not think big, politicians and money-grabbers!
Why us?
could this have something to do with it…
The vast majority of parcels containing 10-Mile Creek, that are really “benefiting” from 10-Mile Creek are owned by entities such as the City of Sylvania, the Franciscan Sisters, The Boy Scouts, the Metro Parks, the Village of Ottawa Hills, the University of Toledo, the City of Toledo, and the Lucas County Port Authority, who all happen to be Lucas County tax exempt from any assessment made to “improve” the 10-Mile Creek running through their property. (see these major 10-Mile Creek parcel owners here)
Taxpayers are already paying for a lot of the maintenance of the “watershed” because 1. these entities listed above get tax breaks that we make up for by paying more tax, 2. we pay taxes that support many, if not all, of these entities, and 3. the many grants available for river and ditch projects, much of which comes from our tax money!
It’s been the responsibility of the landowners all throughout the history of landownership (going back, no doubt, hundreds and thousands of years and probably based on the Magna Carta and old Roman law, if not the common law of cavemen) to tidy up their own rivers, creeks and ditches.
In Toledo, that’s exactly what they do — property owners care for the rivers and creeks on their land — those conscientious Franciscan nuns, the rich golf-course owners, the well-funded-by-our-taxes metro park maintenance departments, the well-endowed University of Toledo, the rich Village of Ottawa Hills, the cities of Toledo and Sylvania with their maintenance crews and dedicated water departments, and the very few lucky private owners of the eastern and most populated half of the parcels that contain such waterways. These stewards of the river are more than happy to be good caretakers of the water that flows over their land. They’ve been doing it ever since human beings have populated the planet. We don’t see them petitioning the residents of the counties of Lucas and Fulton Jointly to get the government to take this burden off of them.
Bringing this petition are two people who live in Holland, Ohio: Michael B. Hood of 630 N. Meilke Rd. (who lives at Spencer Township Hall, aside of Drennan Ditch, which is over-run with trees and brush. Why don’t they clean up their own ditch? They seriously want us to do it for them? Why should we have to clean their ditch? –
Drennan Ditch between N. Meilke Rd. and S. Raab Rd. This ditch is actually part of the Swan Creek Watershed, so why are these Spencer Township folks (who BTW actually do not own property in Lucas County as far as I can see, according to the AREIS parcel owner database) petitioning parcel owners of the 10-Mile Creek Watershed? So many details of this petition are weird and strange.
– Oh! I see that Lucas County IS cleaning up their ditch presently — 2.25 miles of it, and it is costing $200,000 and is funded by Great Lakes Commission’s Great Lakes Sediment and Nutrient Reduction Program…) and Shawn P. Valentine, of 9545 Frankfort Rd. (a neighbor who lives around the corner, a property which is also on Drennan Ditch, see photo on left, on the part that is getting cleaned right now. On Areis, Valentine is not identified as the owner of the listed address, just as Michael Hood is not the owner of the Spencer Township Hall.) These two petitioners, who actually live who knows where – they are not Lucas County parcel owners, attached the names and addresses of 74,644 parcel owners in Lucas and Fulton counties, petitioning them to pay for any and all ditch and creek clean-up projects they can dream up within a broad geographic reach.
There is also a petition for the Swan Creek Watershed for another 49,005 parcel owners, adding up to 123,649 total parcel owners who will be stuck with an assessment — 117,554 who live in Lucas County.
The petitions, both having the same exact language, site no problems, nothing specific; just, “Let’s do it!”
Lets do an improvement utilizing any and all of the methods in Ohio’s Revised Code Section 6131.01 (C)(1)(2)(3)(4)(5) necessary for the disposal of surplus water, and make this list of 117,554 suckers in Toledo pay for it! (As they outnumber us 100 to 1.)
You would think that farmers in the rural areas are fine with taking care of their own ditches, and when there is an urgent problem with a ditch or creek that they cannot handle, they would get assistance from the state or local bureaus that help farmers, maybe even theGreat Lakes Commission’s Great Lakes Sediment and Nutrient Reduction Program, as Spencer Township is doing right now.
But to force the responsibility of rural ditches on the majority of the population in Toledo, while at the same time taking away certain landowner rights and responsibilities? Not cool!
Tearing through private property and dredging up ponds and rivers on “watershed” missions to be determined (show us one example!) has got to be inefficient and hurtful to our local and regional ecology. But what a lucrative business model that would be!
Not the most transparent petition, this “Joint-County Ditch Petition filed by Spencer Township.” Yet, it is easy to see through.
125,185 parcels are proposed to be subject to the new tax. 117,554 of those parcels are located in Lucas County. 7,486 parcels are located in Fulton County. 145 parcels are located in Henry County. It doesn’t seem quite equitable for Lucas County to bear 94% of the proposed burden, especially when we already pay in tax dollars a healthy portion of the maintenance of 10-Mile Creek. I wonder if we should start thinking about charging Fulton and Henry counties for their water running through our “watershed.” It’s an idea almost as ridiculous as having to clean up their creeks, ponds and ditches, when we’ve already paid for our own. What are we, moneybags? Or just suckers?
Calculating a quick estimate of the cost of creek clean-up, as put forth by the Drennan Ditch project now being done on 2.25 miles of ditch for $200,000 by the Great Lakes Commission’s Great Lakes Sediment and Nutrient Reduction Program, it’s going to cost Toledo homeowners a lot of money, at $88,889 per mile of ditches. And when they have completed cleaning the 200+ miles of waterways in Lucas and Fulton counties for 18 million dollars, they will start all over again, under the guise of “permanent maintenance.” That assessment amount will stay on our tax bill forever, or at least until the year 2100.
Tell them what you think of Petition 1053.
Three Lucas County Commissioners will be either approving or not approving this petition. Here is their contact information — let them know what you think:
Tina Skeldon WozniakPresidenttwozniak@co.lucas.oh.us
Happiness is having a book published. Utter happiness is when Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library picks your book to be sent to over 100,000 babies every year, for five years in a row.
Crucifix by LeMaxie Glover at St. Richard's Church in Swanton, Ohio
St. Richard’s Church in Swanton, Ohio
LeMaxie Glover’s lifesize walnut crucifix in the babtistry of St. Richard’s Church in Swanton, Ohio.
LeMaxie Glover, 1916 – 1984
Le Maxie Glover was born in Macon, Georgia in 1916. He received a MFA at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.
He showed at the Toledo Museum of Art in the Toledo Area Artists Exhibitions from 1956 to 1964, and the Black Artists of Toledo Exhibitions in 1973 and 1974. He had a one-man show at the Toledo Museum of Art in 1970.
He showed in the Michigan Area Artists Show in 1957, Ohio Sculptors Show in 1962; the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis, 1963; Contemporary Sculptors Show at the Cincinnati Art Museum in 1963. He had numerous one man shows.
He is in the collections of the Williston, N.D. Museum of Art; the Besser Museum of Art, Alpina, Michigan; and in numerous Toledo area institutions.
A critique on the museum’s 5-year plan for growth
as reported by The Blade
The last paragraph in the above article.
In the spirit of community involvement, I’m compelled to offer some feedback on the recent article in The Blade about the museum’s future. But first a discussion about the last paragraph in the article, “The Toledo Museum of Art was founded in 1901 by Mr. Libbey and his wife, Florence Scott Libbey.” That’s incorrect – The Toledo Museum of Art was founded by a group of artists.
Don’t get me wrong – I don’t mean to say that Libbey was not important in the establishment of the museum – he was by far the chief benefactor in establishing the Toledo Museum of Art. But to say that he and his wife founded it is like throwing the museum’s populist history down the memory hole.
There are many near-contemporaneous accounts of how the Toledo Museum of Art was founded by a group of artists.
This is how Osthaus is described in the Toledo Museum of Art’s own collection:
The Blade, October 29, 1926. Obituary of George W. Stevens, the museum’s long-time second director, founding member of the Tile Club, the group of artists responsible for “procuring a museum of Toledo.”
The Blade, September 30, 1922: “Museum Idea Takes Form” In 1893, the painter, Thomas Parkhurst formed the Tile Club, a group consisting of artists and architects in 1893. In 1900 the club had its first exhibition at Parkhurst’s store on Superior St. Out of that event grew a movement. After the exhibition, the group of artists and architects was so enthused and fired up with the idea of establishing a home for art in Toledo that they got together with George Stevens as the leader, and talked art museum day and night. Robinson Locke, son of David R. Locke of Petroleum V. Nasby letters fame, helped through The Blade. Finally, George Stevens, “in an inspired moment” elicited the co-operation of Edward Drummond Libbey, who gave them the use of an old building on Madison Ave. and 12th Street to use for the museum, but they needed money…
The Blade, March 27, 1923The Blade, March 27, 1923
Edward Drummond Libbey was the biggest benefactor, and he encouraged community involvement because everyone wanted a museum that belonged to the people. Libbey matched donations, and children collected pennies to contribute to the building fund.
The Toledo Museum of Art was always OUR museum….
Nearly all cities of any size in the country have their museums and galleries, which are fast becoming a necessity….We owe it to ourselves, to the school children of Toledo, and to the future generations to see that our good work shall continue, that we lay a foundation so solid and so complete that the future citizens of Toledo will look back upon this, our pioneer work, with praise and appreciation. — Edward Drummond Libbey. First annual report of The Toledo Museum of Art.
By the Seventies, the museum was in high gear: it was a leading teaching museum, providing annually about eight Educational Fellowships, training museum professionals from all over the country, who also helped with the free children’s Saturday classes that drew around 2,000 children per week. The Toledo Museum of Art ranked in the top 10 American art museums for popularity and assets. It was the center of the community art scene, with not only Saturday classes for grade school and high school students, but for its small but superior college art program in the basement of the museum, the Toledo Museum of Art School of Design, which extended to adult classes. That really brought in the community.
The museum also had monthly shows featuring local artists from 1933 to 1970, 540 in total, for both men and women artists. Beginning in 1918 it hosted the annual Toledo Area Artists Exhibition, celebrating the local art community. The museum was alive with community involvement.
The Blade, February 15, 1993
In the 1990’s, the museum’s School of Design and much of the adult education ended when the Frank Gehry building was built, which was connected to the east side of the museum. The University of Toledo’s School of Visual Arts occupies the space, taking over for the museum’s School of Design. The extensive children’s Saturday class program slipped away. The Saturday class program that had served the community for many decades became a sorry shadow of what it used to be.
What have they done to OUR museum?
Director of the museum from 2010 to 2019, Dr. Brian Kennedy at the Toledo Museum of Art Halloween party, October 28, 2010
In 2014, under the new director Brian Kennedy’s watch, the venerable, 95-year old tradition of the Toledo Area Artists Exhibition came to a shameful demise when the Toledo Museum of Art opened the show to entries from Detroit, Cleveland and Columbus, populations nine times the size of the Toledo region, while simultaneously limiting the show to only 27 artists. To add insult to injury, they stuffed it with Toledo Museum of Art insiders, mostly men. Additionally, the show was totally devoid of diversity, the absence of which is not the norm and has never been the norm for our TAA show. See a full account of the 2014 show on this website, in the tag cloud in the footer of this page.
In 2011, Brian Kennedy presented his five-year strategic plan. I remember him saying that if art classes were available at one place in town, they were not necessary in two places because that’s redundant, we should save resources. Kennedy’s “basic principles” projected on the screen contradicted what he was saying there, as would his subsequent actions to what was projected on the screen.
An overhead slide projected at Brian Kennedy’s presentation of his “5-year Strategic Plan.” at the 93rd TAA jury dinner, August 2011.
In 2015, a few months after the 2014 TAA show debacle, I was at the museum attending the senior curator Larry Nichol’s gallery talk about a particular painting we were sitting on front of in the gallery, when at the end, he asked the small group of people before him, mostly age 45 and up, how to bring younger people in. I raised my hand and said, bring your children’s classes back. Bring the TAA show back. Bring the monthly local shows back. He said, “noted.”
What did they expect would happen to attendance at the museum, when they take everything away that enlivened the art community, from classes for children and adults to lending a wall for a local art show?
Yoga on the steps of the museum if you are between 24 and 45. July 2014
The exclusive, discriminatory “Circle 2445” membership effort designed to bring in the museum’s desired younger members was short-lived. The overt ageist discrimination insulted many people.
click on letter to see more…
In other ways too, the Museum became unresponsive to the Toledo community. For example, here’s a story having to do with Toledo’s first artist, William H. Machen, who died in 1911. Over the years, his descendants have approached the museum for advice, once in 1941 and again in 2015 — see the contrast in responses between the third museum director, Blake-More Godwin and the ninth director, Brian Kennedy…
In 2019, Brian Kennedy resigned after only eight years to become the director of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. (Which might be a fine historical museum that is owned by Harvard University, but it doesn’t hold a candle to the great Toledo Museum of Art.)
Now then, back to the subject of this post, a critique of the new 5-year plan as outlined in the above screen-shotted March 9, 2021 Blade article…
the new 5-year strategic plan
to continue to build on its diverse collection... Well that’s good, because Edward Drummond Libbey’s bequest stipulates that half of the money taken from the fund in any given year must go to buying new art.
working more closely with local artists through a more active outreach and engagement strategy… Does this mean they will bring our Toledo Area Artists Exhibition back? Have they forgotten the relationship they used to have with local artists? I hope they will read my blog post, it’s outlined above!
becoming an employer of choice through support and retention policies…Hasn’t the Toledo Museum of Art ALWAYS been an employer of choice? Or are they talking about the museum guards, whom for many years were hired from our community of senior citizens, but about 10 years ago the museum started replacing senior citizens with young people, who just aren’t sticking with the job like the seniors did, because being a long-time museum guard is a dead-end job… Are they using young people for their ageist young image?
creating a platform for operational excellence through the upgrade of visitor amenities, making museum access a priority, growing the museum’s financial base and becoming more efficient…
Are we doing great?
Culture of Belonging
and Authentic Integration
of great art and everyday community
As if words, regardless of deeds, will make it so.
That’s exactly what the Toledo Museum of Art used to do. The Toledo Museum of Art didn’t have to try to be authentic — the Museum oozed with authenticity and community involvement. That’s because it was our museum – it belonged to the people of Toledo – it was Edward Drummond Libbey and the artist founders’ intention – funded in part with the pennies of the children who have since become our forefathers.
Will the Toledo Museum of Art bring back our venerable, prestigious Toledo Area Artists Exhibition? Will they bring our classes back? Will the Museum ever be the center of the working artist community again? Or will it continue to be a place for yoga on the front steps for the 24-45 crowd, and “baby and me” looking-at-art classes in the galleries for bored (but sufficiently young) parents?
The artists of Toledo can’t wait to find out.
The last authentic Toledo Area Artists Exhibition, 2013, and the 94th TAA Awards Ceremony at the Peristyle. Brian Kennedy and Amy Gilman handing out awards. The prestigious juried exhibition has launched many a young artist’s career.
The Blade 1999 photo used for James Machen's online news obituary.
James Machen died on November 7, 2020 at the age of 91. Thanks to James Machen, a member of one of the oldest families in Toledo, we have paintings showing how Toledo looked at the very beginning. His great uncle, William H. Machen was Toledo’s earliest known artist, who migrated from Holland to Toledo in 1848. James Machen actively preserved his ancestor’s artwork and history. In doing so, he greatly honored his family, while also greatly honoring his community.
James Machen’s obituary, The Blade, November 11, 2020James Machen and William Machen’s Painting Number 1. April 18, 2010.David and Jim Machen posing next to their ancestor’s painting of the Ten-Mile Creek. February 19, 2012.Jim Machen with his restored rendition of William Machen’s Station No. 4, April 16, 2015.Jim Machen’s William Machen’s restored Station No. 1 in a church in the Philippines, 2018.
Toledo in 1852 by William H. Machen. Gift to the Toledo Lucas County Public Library by James Machen in 1999.Chosen for James Machen’s online Blade news obituary is this very official yet very poignant photo from 1999 of the Toledo Lucas County Library commemorating James Machen and his gift of this painting, Toledo in 1852.
James Machen’s family history going back to the twelfth century:
The authoritative, comprehensive random sampling survey of late-seventies iconic world-of-advertising and subjective definitive targeting, as I knew it, with some art thrown in.
In 1917, the Toledo Federation of Art Societies (TFAS) was established by the joining together of the Tile Club, Athenas Society, Artklan and the Toledo Museum of Art to create an annual local exhibition of Toledo artists at the Toledo Museum of Art.
In 2014, the Toledo Federation of Art Societies conspired with the Toledo Museum of Art to kill the local annual museum show, just four years shy of the 100th anniversary, by extending the region to a 150 mile radius, slashing the number of artists accepted, using museum employees to judge and curate the show, and putting in their own people, including two museum employees, an ex-employee, the husband of an employee, a close friend of the director, and two Toledo Federation of Art Societies past presidents. (Another past president, Leslie Adams, had been awarded with a museum solo show, just the year before.) The president of the Federation at the time shrugged off the suggestion of impropriety and corruption by saying with misguided sophistication, “It’s the world we live in.”
With the demise of the prestigious Toledo Area Artists Exhibition, gone was the important center of the Toledo artist community — the museum — along with valuable opportunities for the local community of artists, including 14 monetary awards that had been awarded annually:
Arts Commission of Greater Toledo Purchase Award for the City of Toledo’s
Art in Public Places Program
Athena Art Society Award
Toledo Friends of Photography Award
Toledo Area Sculpture Guild Rose M. Reder Memorial Award
Bob Martin Memorial Award
Edith Franklin Memorial Award
Lourdes University Art Department Award
Toledo Potter’s Guild Award
Toledo Area Artists Solo Exhibition Award
This month, on April 28, 2018, the Toledo Federation of Art Societies and the Toledo Museum of Art present a 100th anniversary show celebrating the Toledo Federation of Art Societies itself, as if the Federation is anything to celebrate. After devouring their baby — what the Federation was formed to make — the annual Toledo Area Artists Exhibition that they cared for, for 97 years, the oldest local art show in the country and a prestigious one at that – how ironic that they now celebrate themselves by showing the Federation collection of purchase awards from the historic, venerable, prestigious, but dead Toledo Area Artists Exhibition, killed by their own device.
No mention of the Toledo Area Artists Exhibition, pushing it down the memory hole, as if what they did will ever stop stinking.
With this show, called, “Decades in the Making,” the Toledo Museum of Art makes what should have been the 100th anniversary of theToledo Area Artists Exhibition into a 100-year celebration of the lousy caretaker the Federation has been to the culture, history, and potential of the Toledo artist community.
At least the former Federation president Walter Chapman got to live to be 100 years old (he died in 2015 at the age of 102), unlike the Toledo Area Artists Exhibition.
Welcome back to Roger Mandle, the fifth Director of the Toledo Museum of Art, from 1977 to 1988. He spoke at the museum’s Little Theater on June 8. It was a wonderful talk, about working with Otto Wittmann, the 4th museum director of the museum, and then as the assistant director at the National Museum of Art in Washington, DC, and then as president of Rhode Island School of Design from 1993 to 2008, and then how he helped develop two new museums in Qatar. Now he is starting a new museum for art and technology in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
It was a great era when Mandle was at the Toledo Museum of Art, because the museum had meaningful art community involvement. The museum was built on meaningful art community involvement, in fact it was built by artists. Beginning in 1916, the museum offered grade school through high school classes, then university classes, and always adult art classes. Local artists had monthly shows at the museum. The museum hosted the Toledo Area Artists Exhibition (TAA). Who would have thought that the TAA Show would have been extinguished, just four years short of its 100th year celebration next year, what was the oldest, most venerable exhibition of its kind in the entire United States.
I benefited from the classes at the museum from age 9 to 21. I taught the first kids photography class that the museum offered, in 1979, with the darkroom right below the Peristyle stage. I exhibited in a few TAA shows, and in 2013, my daughter’s photography career received a huge boost, perhaps even a complete launch, as a result of her prize-winning entry in what was to become the final local Toledo Area Artists Exhibition. This year, four years later, my daughter is showing her photographs in Venice, Italy in a show at the European Cultural Center in the context of the 57th Venice Biennale.
My daughter spent the summer of 2006 at Rhode Island School of Design in a high school program, and that’s where she fell in love with photography. Because I knew Roger Mandle from the museum, we sent him the photos she shot that summer. He was sincerely impressed and without our even asking, sent her photos to the admissions department with a strong recommendation. To be encouraged by such a knowledgeable and important person so early on was a great formative experience.
Kids classes as well as adult classes have nearly disappeared at the Toledo Museum of Art. The local art community is no longer tied to the museum that the artist-forefathers of Toledo had so progressively formed. It used to be our museum and everybody understood that — it belonged to the community of Toledo — but today for the first time suddenly it is no longer our museum.
Today it’s all about the grants. A Mellon grant brought down the TAA show, along with a bamboozling by the museum to the Toledo artist community, as if our community artists would benefit by expanding our local art show 10-fold to 13 million people and a 300 mile diameter. At least it looked good on the grant application. That was three years ago, and it was the last show. Judged by Halona Norton-Westbrook, a Mellon Fellow employed at the museum, the eleven local artists who were accepted into the show happened to be closely associated with the museum (including two employees, the husband of an employee, a past employee, and two past presidents of the Federation.) Only two of the Toledoans were women.
Our current director, Brian Kennedy, tells people openly that Toledo artists are not good enough to show at the museum in any show, even our annual, 100-year old show that’s always been at the museum. So unbecoming of our museum, which had such a progressive, community oriented beginning!
Rejecting local artists is an elitist spin on Toledo’s communal inferiority complex and famously poor self-image. Museum supporters don’t care. They buy their art in New York. Thus, the ax has come down on this fine opportunity and tradition for artists in Toledo. Our deceased museum directors must be rolling in their graves.
It is a shame that the artist community that was once centered around the museum has disappeared and opportunities no longer exist at our most magnificent and inspiring cultural center, the Toledo Museum of Art, that was built by artists, educated artists, and for many years, was led by artists (including Roger Mandle.)
Roger Mandle and the museum directors who preceded him kept the local art community alive and well at the Toledo Museum of Art for more than eight decades. And while accommodating the community, they had blockbuster shows, bigger and better than we see today.
1967 was the 50th anniversary of the Toledo Area Artists Exhibition, Otto Wittmann was the 4th director of the museum.
Brian Kennedy tells people that Toledo area artists aren’t good enough for the museum to continue hosting the annual Toledo Area Artists Exhibition, an important, century old tradition started by the museum with the Federation formed for that purpose. Leslie Adams, past president of the Federation, tells Toledo area artists to trust that with the change in the show, that the museum has their best interests at heart.
The museum gave Adams a one-person show in 2012 as a new Toledo Area Artists Exhibition award in 2011 (the first and only recipient of that award) and the museum even acquired three of her pieces in 2015.
You just have to wonder when they kill our show and profess that no local artist’s work can ever be good enough to show at the museum, but they buy Leslie Adam’s work.
Leslie Adams in the collection of the Toledo Museum of Art, acquired in 2015
