Category: Artists of Toledo

The 21st Century Battle of Toledo

Post author By pennygentieu
Post date May 6, 2026

I love this story about the Toledo Museum of Art. The author, James Moore, kindly granted me permission to share it here.

They are the words of a highly distinguished curator who got his professional start at the museum. James Moore left Toledo to become the first director of the Albuquerque Museum of Art and History, directing it for over two decades.

In the 1970s, James Moore served as a coordinator for the Art History department at the Toledo Museum of Art.

It was the most unique workplace I have ever experienced. The professional staff (curators/educators) all met in the restaurant for coffee at 10 and again at 2. It wasn’t required, but it was traditional enough that if you missed one, you apologized and explained at the next one. That was where our informal interaction took place, an activity highly important in any healthy corporate organization but all too often ignored.

At Toledo nobody would have ever thought of dropping into someone’s office just to chat. Once in the saddle and off to work, we were all business.

One day at coffee we were celebrating Bob Phillips’ birthday. While passing out the cake, Roberta Waddell, Curator of Prints humorously prodded everyone to reveal their age. To our surprise, with the exception of Bill Hutton (Senior Curator), who was 50, we were all between the ages of 38 and 41, including Roger Mandle, who was the director then.

Surprised, we sat there looking at each other in silence.

Then Roberta grinned and said: “You know what’s happened, kids? They’ve turned it over to us!”

We laughed but had to fight back the tears. “It,” of course, was the collection.

“They” cast a long shadow indeed, and we could see their work on the walls and feel them following us around every day.

Given “their” example, how could one not do one’s absolute best? How could one possibly let “them” down?

I know of no other story that better explains what it felt like to work at Toledo.

To be a curator is not a matter of selecting things. Curation is, first and foremost, knowledge of and care for, a collection.

2014

Native Toledoan Nettie Poe Ketchum, born 1865, was a cousin of Edgar Allen Poe. She donated the Swiss Room to the Toledo Museum of Art in 1926. She died in Switzerland in 1950, bequeathing her estate to the TMA School of Art and the Toledo YWCA in equal parts. She had been impressed to learn on a visit to the art school in 1933, that that working women took art classes at the museum on certain nights and on other nights had activites at the YWCA.

The changing of the guards

The culture of the museum carries on. Generations later, there is still a sense of awe and camaraderie amongst the employees. They love the museum. The museum, with its collection, has always been and will always be (unless they sell it) the epitome of excellence.

The collection is the result of a $10 million endowment to the museum from the Libbeys in 1925. The fund would be worth maybe $3.66 billion today if it had only grown 6% annual interest and never had been touched for 101 years. But since it’s been used quite effectively all these years; while being conservatively invested, it is worth today about $34 million.

Edward Drummond Libbey and his wife, Florence Scott Libbey wanted to give the people of Toledo a gift. After all, Libbey made his fortune in industrial glass here, and he wanted to give back to his workers, their families, and all the people of the city. He did so in the most democratic way. He endowed a museum with art and art education, and made it forever free for all people to attend.

To make his gift last, Edward Drummond Libbey had an ingenious condition regarding the use of the funds. The condition was that for any money withdrawn, 50% would have to be spent on art. Working in perfect harmony with this plan, curators over time have purchased the very best art for the collection. Today this collection well-exceeds the $3.56 billion of our 6% estimated return on the original investment if it was never touched. It’s worth well into the double digit billions. The 57 masterworks that are currently on tour in New Zealand and Australia as a group are worth $1 billion or more.

The endowment’s 50% rule has transformed itself into a continual stream of new art for the cultural benefit of the people of Toledo, as it was a gift to the people, under the historic charitable trust of Edward Drummond Libbey.

The Museum in the Seventies

In the 1970s, when James Moore was there, the museum was well into the swing of it. Being highly culturally productive, it supported the local artist expressions, and provided an excellent art education to the public, including the exceptional program of the year-round city-wide Saturday children’s classes.

Toledo believed that curators were educators first. From the best colleges all over the country, the fellowship program brought together six or more talented young art history scholars a year to work at the museum. Along with gaining first-hand experience with the museum’s collection, fellows were required to teach children’s classes. What a gift the children’s education program was to Toledoans, myself included.

Perhaps 50 fellows came through this program during this decade, many going on to prestigious positions in the art world. For example, the Pulitzer Prize winning art critic of the Los Angeles Times, Christopher Knight, and the Director Emeritus of the Whitney Museum of American Art, Adam Weinberg.

Adding organically to the texture of the world’s arts culture, the museum gave to the city all of this, and did so, so leanly. The annual budget of the museum was about $1.34 million, or $10.59 million in today’s dollars. (Today’s budget is close to three times that, with none of that anymore.)

All this as the art collection grew.

The 21st century Battle of Toledo

After the untimely resignation of Director Brian Kennedy in March of 2019, and the year-long search for a new director, during which John Stanley was hired in the interim, Adam Levine, the youngest director ever, began his tenure. He started exactly when covid hit – in April 2020.

Adam Levine “leverages” the Libbey collection. He speaks openly about it. He is using the collection to transform the museum right down to the “physical studs.” He is not as much a curator as he is an excavator-turned contractor.

He calls it, “Transformation 2027,” a strategy slowly revealed to the public, with what started out as a need to update the HVAC system, with a bond issued by three different Ohio port authorities for $25 million.

Whereas the museum had always been supported locally, now it goes out of its way to collect donations from any and everywhere possible, strings or no strings. The new sources include anonymous donors, institutional grants, government-related funders of all kinds, and construction-linked donors. These new donors overshadow the long-time local family philanthropy, Toledo corporate giving, and broad membership support that for 125 years has kept the museum going quite successfully, and locally, carrying out Libbeys’ intentions and visions for the people of Toledo.

Adam Levine collected federal public funds during the pandemic meant to help support hurting institutions. He obtained a two-year variance on the Libbey Endowment 50% rule, so that the money earmarked to buy art could be used for the “care of art” instead. Was it to the best advantage of the trust and for the people of Toledo? Considering that he used the money to prepare paintings for shipment outside of the country so that he could leverage the art and finance his makeover of the museum, I would argue that the variance obviously was not in the best interests of the trust, which was to provide culture to the people of Toledo.

He took a $6M federal loan forgiveness in 2021. Who would blame him for taking the free money. But with it, he raised the operating budget fast and high, and there was no looking back.

His funding sources even cut into the precious Libbey art collection — in 2022 he sold three exquisite paintings by Cezanne, Matisse and Renoir for $59.7 million dollars. He did not buy art with it as it is stated in the will. He did not put it back into the Libbey Fund earmarked for art purchases. He created a brand-new fund the size of the “Libbey corpus” with the Cezanne and Matisse proceeds, out of sight from public scrutiny of the Libbey Fund.

Attendance never recovered after the pandemic

Data source: 2019–2024 TMA annual reports; CMA and AAM chart: google.

The museum staff grew by perhaps 50% or more since Adam Levine started. Whereas in 2017 the museum reports 150 employees, in 2025 we heard reports of 350 employees.

One might wonder, what was the point of the increase in staff, because the museum never recovered from the “pandemic rupture.” The attendance reported in the annual reports had been flat from 2021 through the last annual report published, 2024.

Toledo is a union town

One day in 2024, the employees of the visitor services, glass studio, research, education, curatorial and library departments started talking about forming a union. They loved the museum and were passionate about their jobs; they wanted job security. They could foresee the future and wanted to protect themselves. They were as unified a group of museum workers today as they had been throughout the museum’s history.

They formed a union, under the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), of about 100 workers, which was officially recognized in the spring of 2025.

A story about the formation of the union, Toledo Art Museum Workers Move to Unionize, was published by Hyperallergic on April 11, 2025.

Skye Sloane, a team leader for visitor services, told Hyperallergic, the reinstallation project is “a significant change to the institution that we all love, and we wanted to band together and feel sure and secure in our new jobs, benefits, and wages, before the project is completed.”

For a museum that supposedly prided themselves as having great employee relations, it seems that they suddenly became union busters. A few of the employees who were interviewed or who posed for the photo in the Hyperallergic article, among other employees who were vocal union supporters, are no longer working at the museum today – one year later.

Adam Levine’s idea of a museum sure has funny goals. In light of James Moore’s story about what a noble place it has been to work, Objective 3 of Adam Levine’s 2021 five-year strategic plan:

Become an Employer of Choice — Visitors will be “shocked and delighted to be welcomed by a diverse and empowered staff so clearly loving what they do and the institution they serve,” and visitors will also be “eyeing the posted job opportunities, hoping for a chance to work for an institution known widely for treating its staff so well.

You would think that an employer of choice would respect employees’ rights to form a union.

After all, Toledo is a union town.

But the globally ambitious New Yorker, Adam Levine, is obviously not from around here.

TMA chief people officer Jennifer McCary told Hyperallergic that TMA “respects the democratic process and remain committed to fostering a supportive and collaborative work environment for all employees.”

Yet reportedly TMA harassed the union organizers so much that these two employees among others were fired or had to quit.

Letting their guards down

Now, in 2026, as the guards tried to unionize, the museum terminated the guards only to rehire them through an outside company, stripping them of health insurance, retirement benefits, reduced hours and more.

A story about the the guards, TMA guards express hurt, surprise at outsourcing services, was published by Toledo Free Press on April 23, 2026.

The guards wanted to form a union. They filed a petition with the NLRB to do so. But they were immediately cut off at their knees – given notice that they were being terminated but that they could be rehired by the company called (ironically) “Safeguard.” Safeguard is the outside company that the museum had been using for patrolling outside the building and the parking lot. And now this outside company is in charge of the inside, and the workers who once worked for the museum have been taken down.

Frank, museum guard, at the entrance of the Glass Pavilion, 2014

The guards were probably the largest category of employees at the museum — I counted 75 names listed one year on an annual report. They are the frontline, the security, the ambassadors, the people that safeguard the art and connect visitors with the art. They are the most beloved employees at the museum, and they have been downgraded and degraded by an ever-ballooning administration that even hired a special chief people officer a few years ago to keep up with the growing staff and instill a culture of belonging (what a joke) — and look what they are doing now.

Adam Levine’s “Transformation 2027”

As Adam Levine tears the museum down to the studs, removing our art and shipping it all over the world for exhibitions and storing the rest in art storage facilities in various cities in the U.S., he is also destroying the museum’s own corporate foundational ecosphere built to care for the art.

It makes you wonder, is this going to land well, or are we presently witnessing the total implosion of our museum?

Hey Adam — that’s our Rembrandt! Can you please tell us where it is at this exact moment? And where is everything else?

Please sign the Petition to enforce Libbey’s will here.

Read more about the petition to enforce Libbey’s will on this page of artistsoftoledo:

About the Petition to Enforce Libbey’s Will

Tags Adam Levine, Adam Weinberg, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art School of Design

Artists of Toledo

About the Petition to Enforce Libbey’s Will

Post author By pennygentieu
Post date April 25, 2026

The Toledo Museum of Art has undergone major changes in recent years that raise serious questions about whether its current direction remains faithful to Edward Drummond Libbey’s original intent.

Attendance has fallen sharply since the pandemic and has never recovered, while expenses have greatly risen and the number of exhibitions has declined. In 2022, the museum sold three beloved Impressionist masterpieces, after which membership dues dropped significantly. Despite public assurances that the remaining works by Cézanne, Matisse, and Renoir would remain on view, the museum later sent its core Impressionist and early modern collection abroad for extended exhibitions in New Zealand and Australia.

Now, much of the museum itself has been emptied for a multi-year renovation. Galleries have been stripped to the studs, most sections remain closed, and artworks gifted under the Libbey Trust have been sent to storage facilities across the country while public access is greatly reduced.

This raises a simple but important question: does this still align with Libbey’s will, which requires that the collection be properly housed, preserved, and maintained for public exhibition in Toledo?

As citizens and beneficiaries of this public charitable trust, we ask the Ohio Attorney General to review whether the administration of the museum remains in accordance with ITEM XXV of the Last Will and Testament of Edward Drummond Libbey.

Data Portraits

financial and public-facing statistics tracking changes leading up to the museum’s current closure and reconfiguration, 2014–2026.

The museum’s financial growth decoupled from public engagement and exhibition output – a disconnect between visitors and revenue.

Excessive Spending, Declining Visitors: Exhibition Activity, Attendance, and Financial Trends at the Toledo Museum of Art 2014–2026

Spending Up, Attendance Down: Trends 2014-2024

Attendance Did Not Recover after Covid

Failure to bring in visitors after the pandemic compared to the AAM national average trend and the attendance recovery of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Data source for TMA: TMA annual reports, 2019-2024; chart of Cleveland compared to American Alliance of Museums national average trend: Google

Membership Speaks – Museum Deaf

Sales of world-class famous paintings in spite of public outcry resulting in 25% loss of general membership. Funding by thousands of members is replaced by a handful of major donors

The IRS Form 990 filings show that membership dues fell sharply after the 2022 sale of the Cézanne, Matisse, and Renoir paintings. Membership revenue declined from $2,134,075 in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2022, to $1,598,939 in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2023—a drop of more than $535,000, or 25 percent.

At the same time, the museum’s “all other contributions” category—separate from government grants, Libbey endowment distributions, and membership dues—increased by $2,088,766, or 30 percent, rising from $6,966,931 in 2022 to $9,055,697 in 2023. The museum’s annual reports identify many of these new major donors as corporations, institutions, government-related entities, and anonymous contributors, suggesting a shift away from broad membership support toward a smaller group of large funders.

Substitution of Assets principle

As for the $51M net made from the sale of the paintings, why wasn’t the money from the sale of Libbey’s two paintings put back into the Libbey Trust Fund when art was not purchased with it right away, as put forth in Libbey’s will?

Public financial disclosures do not clearly indicate how proceeds from the sale of collection assets are used. This lack of transparency raises a reasonable question as to whether such proceeds remain aligned with the Libbey Trust’s purpose of supporting the acquisition and public exhibition of art.

Instead of returning the money to the Libbey Trust Fund, earmarked for the purchase of art, in order to show good faith and provide a transparent public accounting of such an unusual and controversial deaccessioning of extremely valuable assets in spite of public outcry, the money is deliberately kept out of public scrutiny. The proceeds could have been put back into the Libbey fund – there is no fund rule against it – the Libbey trustees and the museum trustees have plenty of leeway when it comes to being good stewards. Instead, the museum created a private fund, boasting that the new fund is even higher in value than the entire Libbey “corpus.” This begs the question: are they being good stewards of our museum, which was founded and based on Libbey’s vision and will?

In 2022, our three famous French Impressionist paintings were sold for $59 Million. And that was just the beginning.

The Toledo Museum of Art has never sought to have multiple examples by the same artist—fewer than 11% of the artists in our collection are represented by two or more paintings; masterpieces by Cezanne, Matisse, and Renoir will remain regularly on view on our walls. – Adam Levine, Important announcement from The Toledo Museum of Art; 04/08/2022 10:44AM

At the time of the sale, Adam Levine promised certain other paintings would always be on view. However, not even two years after the sale, we learn from Auckland, New Zealand that the entire substantial collection of Impressionist through 20th Century paintings was being shipped to New Zealand.

TRANSFORMATION 2027

The transformative paradigm shift:
leveraging our art for global elitism

Using our art to advance worldly outreach at the expense of ordinary Toledoans – the people that the museum was built for under the guidance of the will and trust of Edward Drummond Libbey.

Can he lie to us and that’s okay?

My guest editorial in the Blade on March 18, 2023 caused the phones to ring off the hook at the museum. For damage control, Adam Levine emailed the members, claiming that membership support is at historic levels — but we know now from Part VIII Line 1b of the subsequent IRS 99o filing that membership had actually dropped by 25%. He also asserted that the “exhibition budget nearly doubled” yet as I have shown in the data portrait on this page, the museum had only five shows in 2023 – a fraction of the pre-covid average of 12 shows per year. Budgets may have doubled, but not for Toledo. Apparently the increased budget was to create shows for New Zealand and Australia, in pace with a “transformative paradigm” development of an international footprint. (overt global ambition, even though Libbey created the museum for Toledoans and meant for the art to be shown in Toledo — not rented out to the world.)

Letter from the Director Tuesday, March 21, 2023 at 3:02PM, note that he is asserting to the membership that their membership support is at historic levels when in fact this letter was 10 months after the sale of the paintings and 25% of the membership dropped off during that fiscal year, which was nearly over. Membership dues revenue was lower that it had ever been in decades.

Actual decline of Libbey Endowment Trust Funds and museum telling us otherwise

Even as the Toledo Museum of Art has publicly framed its strategy as reducing reliance on the Libbey endowments, it has been drawing more heavily from it, both in percentage and in dollars.

March 9, 2021: The Blade: TMA announces strategic plan to build art collection

The plan, which was put together internally with input from the community and board, calls for financial changes that include increasing the museum budget from more than $16 million to $20 million, and decreasing the percentage the museum draws annually from an endowment fund that founder Edward Drummond Libbey established for the museum upon his death in 1925.

March 23, 2023: TMA to The Blade: “TMA Corrections”

More damage control by the museum after my March 18, 2023 guest editorial in The Blade. The museum asked The Blade to make numerous corrections, but not one was made because everything I wrote was factual or my opinion. Here’s one of their assertions:

“The draw from the Trusts has not decreased and remains at 5% of a rolling 12- quarter average.”

But in actuality it has been drawing more heavily from the Libbey Endowments both in percentage and in dollars.

The draw rate from the Libbey Endowment funds moved from normal to dangerous, increasing percentages of draws from the Libbey endowments while they get smaller every year.

The tall bars show the increasing draws taken every year, the short bars show the reduction in the funds’ value before being adjusted for inflation, which would make them decline every year, 32% between 2014 and 2024. Data source: 990 IRS filings, 2014-2024, of the individual Edward Drummond Libbey and Florence Scott Libbey Endowments.

In 2014, the combined Libbey trusts distributed $2.5 million, or 5.3% of assets—well within standard endowment practice. By 2024, that draw had risen to $3.6 million, nearly 8% of a smaller fund. The museum is now taking more than $1 million more each year from a smaller Libbey fund than it did a decade ago—a clear shift from preservation toward accelerated spending–to a level that, over time, can only diminish the fund it was meant to preserve.

In 2014, the combined Libbey endowments stood at $47.6 million. To simply keep pace with inflation, that total would need to be about $66.5 million by 2024. Instead, the funds stood at only $45.2 million—worth just $32.4 million in 2014 purchasing power. While the museum has been drawing more from the Libbey funds each year, the real value of the endowment itself has steadily eroded.

See charts on ProPublica for the Edward Drummon Libbey Endowment and the Florence Scott Libbey Endowment.

regardless of the truth that is public information when the IRS and Annual Reports are published, the museum gave false information at critical times about the membership and the rate of draws from the Libbey funds.

Is that okay to lie to the public, ever, but especially in light of the total transformation and paradigm changes they are making to OUR museum?

The Glass Pavilion

No longer for the display of the museum’s large and important glass collection — the purpose for which the building was built in 2006. but Adam Levine has decided that it will be used for other purposes. It is up for remodeling next.

The Cloisters

The Cloister Gallery was the heart of the museum. When the museum announced the closure of the newly renovated Cloister Gallery on January 30, 2025 with only three days notice, there was public outcry on the museum’s Facebook announcement post with thousands of reactions and hundreds of comments and post shares.

The Cloisters had just been renovated three years prior to this new closure — it was repainted, reinstalled with new casework, lighting and security measures. All this effort and wasted money — and millions more to dismantle and move it a few galleries over. Where is the money coming from, and why waste it to do this to a gallery that was just renovated and reinstalled in December 2021?

There was no mention in the March 2021 strategic five-year plan about literally tearing the museum down to the studs – how could this happen without advance planning, disclosure and the approval of the community? The Cloisters were a gift of the Libbeys to the people of Toledo.

Why won’t they tell us how much it costs to renovate the museum? They always have in the past

The museum is now under the control of big money – anonymous donors, out of town, special interests, raising the ceiling of the budget so that it is no longer ours. The art belongs to us — the museum belongs to us — Libbey made it clear in his will. The director is supposed to be a steward, not a contractor.

Read/download pdf of Item XXV of the Edward Drummond Libbey will —

ITEM XXV–LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF EDWARD DRUMMOND LIBBEY

Read/download pdf of Item XI of the Florence Scott Libbey will —

ITEM XI – LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF FLORENCE SCOTT LIBBEY

When a museum loses members but replaces them with a handful of large funders, who is it really accountable to?

this page is in progress…please visit again for updates

sign petition here

Artists of Toledo

Machen and Folks

Post author By pennygentieu
Post date March 25, 2026

Sorting Family, Faces, and Misattributions

William H. Machen, self portrait

Updated on March 30.

A painting now widely identified as William H. Machen’s mother is almost certainly not his mother. The identification does not hold up.

Photo from a story that appeared in The Blade on March 17, 2026, Library adds portrait painted by early Toledo artist. This painting remained in family possession for decades and was identified through oral tradition, illustrating how attributions can evolve over time.

My research on Machen over the past 17 years, including work with his descendant, James Machen made me think that this painting could not possibly be Machen’s mother, since she died at the age of 48. If left unexamined, misattributions like this reshape the historical record–quietly but permanently.

The painting shows an elderly woman: the lengthened upper lip, the deep folds around the mouth, the softened jawline. These are not the features of a woman in her forties. In a known portrait of Agatha Kuyk Machen, she appears to be in her prime.

Painting in question on the left compared to Agatha Kuyck Machen on the right, as represented in historical and genealogical archives.

And then there is the matter of the inscription in the middle left of the painting. A high-resolution detail of the inscription appears to read “G.B. Kuyk,” suggesting that the painting may not be by Machen at all.

Detail of inscription, “G.B. Kuyk,” suggests a different artist and a connection to Machen’s early training in Holland. Photo: Jeremy Wadsworth, The Blade. (high-resolution detail of painting in above photo)

The name points back to Holland, and to Machen’s early artistic training with his uncle, a renowned painter, G. Buitendijk Kuijk. Perhaps it depicts his mother, who would also be Machen’s maternal grandmother.

The reported date of “1872” appears to derive from a difficult-to-read inscription on the middle right of the painting. Rather than a clear, original marking, the area shows multiple layers of paint, with brighter strokes superimposed over darker forms. What has been read as “1872” may in fact be an interpretation of an obscured and possibly altered inscription, calling the reliability of the date into question.

Photo: Jeremy Wadsworth, The Blade. (high-resolution detail of painting in above photo)

There are other inconsistencies. Machen kept a journal of his paintings where he carefully documented his work. It is a rare and invaluable record. It gives us a framework against which new attributions can be tested—not simply accepted. In it, 2,545 paintings are listed from 1852 t0 1907, with a note by his son who archived it stating there are more paintings that are not listed. Machen died in 1911, so he might have painted 250 more. There was no entry close to being this work in 1872, the year stated in The Blade that it was painted. There is an entry for a copy of the “Portrait of the Artist’s Mother (deceased)” that was painted for his son Henry in 1873. But the size was small, 12 x 15.”

Entry from William H. Machen’s journal (1873), recording a 12 × 16 inch copy of his mother’s portrait. The dimensions do not correspond to the larger painting currently attributed to her.

Machen’s mother on the right. Machen’s paternal grandmother on the left, in the bonnet. Could the woman in the middle be the same grandmother, similar because they are dressed in white ruffled bonnets but perhaps share little likeness otherwise? See larger sized images below.

There is also a telling detail in the painting’s recent history. In communication with a member of the extended Machen family, it was noted that the work had been kept in an attic for many decades and was known primarily through family lore. That helps to explain how an identification might have shifted over time. As with many inherited portraits, names can attach gradually, becoming accepted without documentation.

It is amazing how quickly such a misidentification can harden into certainty — a newspaper feature, then a “google truth.” This post is an attempt to slow that process down, after contacting both the library and The Blade on March 21 and 22, receiving confirmation of my emails from both. On a search on March 25, and again as I search this morning on March 30, the mistruth publicly persists.

March 25 google search for Machen paintings at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library.

But really?

Hopefully it will get fixed soon where it matters — at the library, in the press, and on google, so this misattribution doesn’t totally get set in stone.

Here, I am gathering what can be documented: portraits of Machen’s relatives, their stories, along with his important paintings documenting Toledo’s history. Seen together, they begin to form a more coherent picture—not just of the artist, but of the visual world he came from.

The portrait now circulating as his mother may yet find its proper place. But for now, it raises a useful question:

Not just who is this woman?
But how do we know who we are looking at?

What follows is a working archive—Machen and his folks, as best as they can be known.

An inscription on the Machen family tree written by Edwin Machen Jr., courtesy of James Machen

The Machen family came to America, to Toledo, being French Catholic refugees escaping France to Germany to Holland — first, escaping the guillotine in France at the height of the French Revolution in 1793. Second, in 1847, leaving Holland for Ohio, when the two Machen brothers, Augustine and Henry left with their families for reasons of religious freedom after the Dutch government forced Catholics to join the Dutch Reformed Church.

Constant Theodore de Besse (~1763-1828) William’s paternal grandfather, who was saved from the guillotine and escaped with his family to Germany. They changed their name to Machen, derived from the wife’s maiden name.

Marie Marguerite Macaine de Besse (1764-1841) William’s paternal grandmother, from whose name the family derived the Germanized name of Machen.

Willem Kuijk (1782-1845), William’s maternal grandfather. painted by G. Buitendijk Kuijk. Photo: Museum Arnhem | CollectieGelderland.

Neeltje Buitendijk Kuijk (1779-1842), William’s maternal grandmother, painted by G. Buitendijk Kuijk. Photo: Museum Arnhem | CollectieGelderland.

Paintings by William’s uncle, G. Buirendyke Kuyke: his self portrait at age 20 (1825), Agatha Kuyke Machen and Augustine Ulysses Machen, William Machen’s parents (date of paintings unknown). These paintings were made in Holland before the families migrated in 1847 (Cleveland first, settling in Toledo in 1848).

Agatha Kuijk Machen (1807-1855), William’s mother

Augustin Ulysses Machen (1804-1854), William’s father

Painting by G. Buitendijk Kuijk of his wife and son. Note the chiaroscuro lighting and soft rendering of the faces, and the Dutch painting tradition of focusing on the dignity of everyday subjects engaging in concentrated activities.

Painting by G. Buitendijk Kuijk

Echoes of Dutch training carried into an American city still defining itself

Documented work by William H. Machen, representative of his known style and subject matter in Toledo:

Henry P. L. Machen (uncle of William who also brought his family to America with them.)

Elizabeth Machen, William Machen’s niece (1871-1884)

Patrick Short (William’s father-in-law), painting by William H. Machen

Mary Clark Short (William’s mother-in-law), painting by William H. Machen

Henry Machen, William Machen’s nephew (1873-1901)

Augustin F. Machen (1834-1893) William’s brother

Jim Machen showing William H. Machen’s Station Four, Jesus meeting his mother along the way, Stations of the Cross painted for St. Francis Parish in 1867. Photographed April 2, 2015, Jim made a set of digital restorations from my photographs of the fire-damaged paintings and donated the set to a church in the Philippines.

William H. Machen’s Station Four, Jesus meeting his mother along the way, Stations of the Cross painted for St. Francis Parish in 1867, my digital restoration of fire-damaged painting for Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Genoa, Ohio, 2021.

Machen’s house built by Augustin, William’s father, on Collingwood Ave. in Toledo. Photo c. 1875, courtesy of James Machen. William’s family and the uncle, Henry, are pictured.

Peter Navarre, hero of the War of 1812. Painted from life in 1866 when Navarre was 80 years old. Painting #313 in the artist’s Journal. Collection of the Toledo Lucas County Library.

The Blade 1999 photo used for James Machen’s online news obituary.

Toledo in 1852. Collection of the Toledo Lucas County Library.

Fort Industry, 1796, William H. Machen, Collection of the Toledo Lucas County Library.

Quail, a popular Machen subject.

Painting of Ten-Mile Creek, 1875, by William Henry Machen. The location is the onetime Central Avenue bridge, near where the Jeep plant used to be.

The Blade, April 27, 1948. William Machen’s painting (1875) of the site now marked at Central Avenue and Ten Mile Creek was one of several paintings exhibited at the Toledo Main Library in observance of the Machen centennial.

Turkey Foot Rock on the Maumee River. A later inscription on the rock reads: “On this rock according to tradition, Chief Turkey Foot of the Ottawa Indians rallied his warriors during the Battle of Fallen Timbers. Here he was killed and for many years tribesmen made offerings of tobacco on the rock to appease the Great Spirit.” This painting was in the 1948 Machen Centennial Exhibition and was owned by Mrs. Agnes McClarren, Winameg, Ohio.

Native American Memorial marker, 1994
In memory of all the American Indians who gave their lives at this place, including members of the following tribes.
Chippewa • Ottawa • Delaware • Potawatami • Miami • Shawnee • Mingo • Wyandot

Tags Machen, The Blade, Toledo Lucas County Library, William Machen

Artists of Toledo

When Stewardship Becomes Displacement

Post author By pennygentieu
Post date March 4, 2026

Edward Drummond Libbey (left) and Ibrahim Mahama (right). Composite image created for editorial commentary on cultural stewardship and institutional legacy.

What Toledo Is Losing: Stewardship Across Time

I find myself comparing Edward Drummond Libbey and Ibrahim Mahama. I began thinking about Ibrahim Mahama because my work along with my daughter’s work is currently part of an exhibition in one of the cultural spaces he has created in Ghana. More than a century apart, the two men each represent a different vision of how culture is built and sustained.

Ibrahim Mahama: Building for a Future He Will Not See

Ibrahim Mahama is a Ghanaian artist whose work engages collective memory and historical narratives deeply rooted in Ghana’s past and present. He has described his practice as a form of “time travel.” Internationally celebrated, Mahama has chosen to turn the profits of the global art market back into his home region of northern Ghana—building studios, research centers, archives, and public cultural spaces that serve artists and communities far beyond his own career.

Mahama’s work is often discussed in terms of materials, but its most consequential dimension may be institutional. Rather than withdrawing from Ghana after achieving international success, he has reinvested directly in place. His cultural spaces preserve memory, support research, and provide infrastructure for artists and the community.

Mahama does not dismantle cultural memory in order to innovate. He adds to it. His institutions are long-term civic commitments meant to outlast his own presence. They are built on the assumption that continuity itself has value.

Seeing what Mahama is building in Ghana made me reconsider what Toledo once understood a museum to be.

Edward Drummond Libbey and the Civic Ideal of the Museum

More than a century earlier, Edward Drummond Libbey made a remarkably similar decision. At the height of his success in the glass industry, Libbey endowed the city of Toledo with something radical for its time: a free, educational art museum meant to belong to the entire community. From its founding, the museum was free and educational, and civic at its core. It offered year-round Saturday art classes for children, college students, and adults. For nearly a century, it hosted the annual Toledo Area Artists Exhibition, a cultural touchstone that brought the local artist community together and helped launch countless careers.

Along the way, curators assembled an encyclopedic collection of art from around the world. The majority of the museum’s most valuable works were either gifted by the Libbeys or acquired through endowments they established. Edward Drummond Libbey and his wife, Florence Scott Libbey, articulated a clear governing principle: for every dollar spent on administration, an equal dollar should be spent on art. This balance was meant to keep the institution grounded in its purpose.

For much of the twentieth century, the museum thrived under long-serving directors who built steadily on this foundation. The Toledo Museum of Art was widely regarded as a model democratic institution—without having to announce itself as one.

Mahama reinvests success back into the community that produced it.

Libbey endowed permanence so art would remain available to those who lived with it. Different eras, different methods — the same ethic.

Continuity: How Stewardship Actually Works

Stewardship is the promise that what one generation builds, the next will care for and carry forward.

Cultural stewardship is slow. Its effects accumulate quietly over decades, often unnoticed while they are happening. Institutions like museums do not shape people through spectacle, but through repetition and presence—by being there year after year, generation after generation.

I understand this not only as an observer, but as a product of that system. I grew up with the Toledo Museum of Art as a civic constant, taking classes there from childhood through college. Art was not presented as exceptional or exclusive; it was simply part of life. That continuity mattered. It shaped how I understood art and culture as shared civic goods. Today, my work appears internationally, in an exhibition at the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art in Ghana built by Ibrahim Mahama. That connection clarified something for me: Libbey’s legacy was never just a building or a collection. It was people.

What changes when art stops belonging to a place
and starts working for an institution?

Stewardship vs. Leverage

What we are seeing now treats legacy as something to be leveraged.

Leveraging art is part of the museum’s 2021 Strategic Plan – “TMA’s exhibitions will depart Toledo to traverse the globe, providing the Museum and its hometown the visibility it once enjoyed.” As Adam Levine stated to The Blade in 2022, “now we have a cultural shift and a new framework for how we can leverage this extraordinary collection to service the community.”

Dozens of masterworks — many long understood as highlights of the museum — have been removed from Toledo’s walls and sent abroad. Toledoans lose access, continuity, and presence, while the institution gains visibility, prestige, and philanthropic reach elsewhere. Whether or not these arrangements are called loans, they function like renting out the collection — converting Toledo’s inheritance into institutional capital.

This shift has been accompanied by a new level of opacity. At a December town hall, the director refused to disclose the total cost of the museum’s reinstallation. “The benefit of being private,” Adam Levine stated, “is that I don’t have to answer that question.”

With the collection built over more than a century through Libbey endowments and local stewardship, worth many orders of magnitude more than the physical systems used to justify its absence, the museum is undergoing a complete transformation, right down to the physical studs. It’s not merely a change in exhibition strategy, it’s a change in ethics. A museum founded on the principle that art should stay, teach, and belong now treats mobility as virtue and absence as acceptable. The people of Toledo are asked to trust – without transparency – that this leveraging of their inheritance will serve them.

Frank, a museum guard at the Glass Pavilion, 2014

Stewardship Includes Labor

Tourists [will be] shocked and delighted to be welcomed by a diverse and empowered staff so clearly loving what they do and the institution they serve.” – 2021 Strategic Plan.

The irony.

For generations, the museum guards at the Toledo Museum of Art were not simply security. They were trained, knowledgeable, and deeply embedded in the daily life of the museum — often serving as the most human point of contact between Toledoans and their art.

Longtime interpreters and art ambassadors, the replacement of museum guards with a third-party contract service signals another quiet shift: away from relational knowledge and toward transactional presence.

Additionally, “visitor services” workers at the entrances are being replaced by kiosks. Labor is increasingly treated the way the collection is: something to be optimized, externalized, and leveraged.

When a museum distances itself from its workers, it distances itself from its public. And when labor becomes peripheral, the institution risks hollowing out the very relationships that once made it matter.

The Central Question

Would Edward Drummond Libbey have wanted his museum dismantled, its masterworks dispersed, and its educational core deemphasized and long-time workers replaced in the name of reinvention?

And how would Ibrahim Mahama feel if the cultural institutions he is building today were stripped of their purpose a century from now and repurposed into something unrecognizable?

The most radical act a cultural institution can take is not reinvention but continuity—honoring the trust placed in it by the past while making room, carefully and responsibly, for the future.

These two men belong to very different moments in history, but both understood that culture does not sustain itself. It survives only when someone decides it is worth building — and worth protecting. The question for Toledo is what kind of stewardship it now believes in.

Mahama builds so culture can endure where it is made. Libbey endowed a museum so art would belong to the people who lived with it. That is the standard Toledo was given. And it is the standard against which this moment should be measured.

Within five years, changes were made at great speed—resulting in mass removals of artwork, off-site storage across the country, and a wholesale transformation of the museum’s physical space. I have documented this sequence here:

Timeline of Changes at the Toledo Museum of Art (2014–Present)

The Life and Death of the Museum: Photos

Fortune Magazine 1938: To Edward D. Libbey’s art museum – his enchantment draws 2,500 children every Saturday and 104 per cent of the population of Toledo in a year.

Education was the central mission throughout the entire Twentieth Century.

Map of Toledo (light gray) and the greater Toledo area (green) that the museum has always served compared to the circled two-mile radius of audience the focus for the reimagined museum.

A student of the first photography class offered in the children’s Saturday classes, photographing in the Impressionist Gallery with Cezanne, Renoir and Van Gogh, 1979.

In 2022, our three famous French Impressionist paintings by Matisse, Renoir Cezanne were taken off the wall and sold for $59 Million. And that was just the beginning.

The Glass Pavilion, which opened in 2006, was built expressly to house the renowned glass collection. It will now be used for a different purpose.

Headlines from 95 years of the Toledo Area Artists Exhibition, which ended in 2014.

The Cloisters, installed in the museum in 1930_, was closed on Feb. 2, 2025 to be dismantled and moved two galleries over, next to the Ancient Court, as to compress time as art is arranged chronologically.

Poets Bob Philips, Nick Muska and Joel Lipman before a poetry reading at the Cloisters, Toledo Museum of Art, 1979 and a reshoot in 2015.

The heavy words of Toledo Museum of Art’s inspirational word cloud shown at their symposium, Expanding Horizons: New Approaches in Display and Interpretation, July 2023

2024: The art museum is renovating. Glass art will be interspersed amongst other artwork in the main building, arranged chronologically. The Impressionist paintings have already been relocated to the Glass Pavilion. UPDATE: Feb. 7, 2025 — they are lending 57 of the impressionist and 20th century core art collection to New Zealand, and according to New Zealand, it’s because the museum is renovating! But they had already moved these paintings to the Glass Pavilion, built in 2006 — are they also renovating THAT building? Yes.

A schematic rendering of how the museum will look, shown to the public in November 2024. It was not received well.

The closure of the museum, 2025 – 2026 – 2027, in order to renovate “right down to the studs” and rearrange the collection chronologically. Art is being sent to art storage rooms across the country.

Some of the 57 Impressionist – 20th Century masterworks that were lent to museums in New Zealand and Australia in 2025 and 2026.

These 144 post-Civil War paintings were off view by April 2025.

The Crowning of St. Catherine, Peter Paul Rubens, 1631, Brian Kennedy standing in front of it on August 26, 2011, at the opening of the 93rd Annual Toledo Area Artists Exhibition. Brian Kennedy left abruptly in 2019, 18 months before the end of his contract.

The Crowning of St. Catherine taken down in December 2025. Photo: Toledo Museum of Art

The Great Gallery, dismantled in December 2025. Photo: Toledo Museum of Art. Where did the art go? To art storage rooms across the country. You might see some of your favorites when it opens again in late-2027, but then, you might not ever see your favorites again.

Meanwhile, at the SCCA in Tamale, Ghana…

Museum of Modern Art curator Smooth Nzewi looking into our collaborative generational project, “The Beyond,” at the Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA) in Tamale, Ghana. My daughter’s Vertigo Cube features peepholes to the past – Victorian interiors photographed by my great great grandfather in 1894. Photo: SCCA

Among our 21 photos on display at Ibrahim Mahama’s Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA) in Tamale, Ghana is my photo of the implosion of the Toledo’s Jeep Administration Building on April 14, 1979.

The perspective offered here emerges from long-term observation, archival research, and a lifelong relationship with the Toledo Museum of Art. Photos @Penny Gentieu unless otherwise attributed.

see also:

Timeline of Changes at the Toledo Museum of Art (2014–Present)

click on photo to view and sign petition

Tags 2014, Adam Levine, Amy Gilman, Brian Kennedy, DEAI, Halona Norton-Westbrook, John Stanley, Libbey, Libbey Endowment, Otto Wittmann, The Blade, Toledo Area Artists Exhibition, Toledo Museum of Art, Toledo Museum of Art School of Design

Artists of Toledo

Toledo Museum of Art’s symbolic generosity while its own institutions collapse

Post author By pennygentieu
Post date February 11, 2026

Sisters of St. Francis, photographed on campus years before today's announcement of the closure of Lourdes University. © Penny Gentieu

With Lourdes University on the verge of closing, the Toledo Museum of Art was busy generating national press for purchasing a painting from Talladega College in Talladega, Alabama—an acquisition framed as an act of institutional rescue.

Talladega College, a small Southern college with an enrollment of roughly 700 students, faced a financial crisis. The Toledo Museum of Art stepped in, purchasing The Underground Railroad for an estimated $5 million, a move widely reported as helping to save the college from closure.

In the New York Times article “To Avert Crisis, Talladega College Sells Its Art Treasures” (October 29, 2025), museum director Adam Levine stated, “My objective and the objective of the Toledo Museum of Art is to support Talladega College.”

The painting—a mural depicting freedom seekers fleeing enslavement in the South, standing in Kentucky and looking north across the Ohio River to Ohio—will feature prominently in the museum’s reinstallation. It will remain at Talladega for a period before coming to Toledo, reportedly no later than 2027.

In Forbes, “Art Imitates Life: Hale Woodruﬀ’s ‘The Underground Railroad’ Headed North To Ohio” (Nov. 1, 2025), Levine added: “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.”

Really?

What went largely unexamined in Toledo, even as national coverage praised the museum, was the uncomfortable local reality.

An actual Underground Railroad stop—the Lathrop House—is located in close proximity to Lourdes University, the very institution now being allowed to collapse quietly in Toledo.

While the museum was applauded for “saving” a college in Alabama, Toledo was losing one of its own.

This is a city with one of the highest poverty rates in the nation. Its residents are struggling. Its educational institutions are fragile. Yet the Toledo Museum of Art continues to spend aggressively—pouring money into a sweeping, expensive, unnecessary reinstallation that nobody wants—while a university in its own backyard faces extinction.

What would have been genuinely meaningful to Toledo’s population is not symbolic generosity directed elsewhere, but tangible support for the community that sustains the museum.

The situation becomes even more troubling when governance is examined more closely.

Adam Levine sits on the University of Toledo Board of Trustees, and the university has reportedly promised to absorb displaced Lourdes students. It strains credibility to suggest that leadership at Toledo’s flagship cultural institution was unaware of Lourdes University’s crisis.

More significantly, Thomas J. Winston serves as Treasurer of the Toledo Museum of Art Board of Directors and also served as Treasurer of the Lourdes University Board of Trustees for the 2024–25 term. Joe Napoli is a member of both the Toledo Museum of Art board and the Lourdes University Board of Trustees. Susan Conda, a major donor to the museum, also serves on Lourdes’ board.

These are not distant or symbolic roles. They involve direct fiduciary responsibility and institutional oversight.

If individuals with governance and financial authority at both the museum and the university could have weighed in to help preserve Lourdes, why was that support not forthcoming? Why was a $5 million intervention possible for a college in Alabama, but not for a university in Toledo under their watch?

Why did the Talladega College bailout make national news while Toledo residents learned of Lourdes’ collapse only when it was too late? Why was there no sustained local coverage, no public reckoning, no warning?

What is striking is not simply what was reported, but where.

The museum’s $5 million purchase was covered extensively by national outlets, yet received little sustained scrutiny in Toledo itself—particularly as a local university was sliding toward closure at the same moment. At the same time, there was no comparable local reporting that alerted the public to the severity or imminence of Lourdes University’s crisis.

Two major institutional stories unfolded concurrently—one celebrated nationally, the other barely examined locally.

Instead, there was no visible effort to help—and little public discussion in Toledo about why.

No emergency partnership.
No museum-led fundraising campaign.
No $5 million intervention for Toledo.

What there was, instead, was praise—national praise—for symbolism.

The Toledo Museum of Art, and those who govern it, chose national optics over local responsibility. They chose abstraction over accountability.

The story being told inside the museum walls may be about escape and survival. The story unfolding outside them is about abandonment.

And that is a story Toledo cannot afford to ignore.

Tags Adam Levine, Thomas Winston, Toledo Museum of Art

Artists of Toledo

Florence Scott Libbey (1863–1938)

Post author By pennygentieu
Post date May 17, 2025

Perhaps Toledo’s greatest artist of all, for what she created and gave to the people of Toledo

some works of art that Florence Scott Libbey contributed to the Toledo Museum of Art, and works bought with funds from her bequest in memory of her father, Maurice A. Scott

The Architect’s Dream, 1840. Thomas Cole (American (born England), 1801-1848), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 1949.162

If it wasn’t for Florence Scott Libbey, there would be no Toledo Museum of Art. The land it’s built on, the building, the additions, and most of the artwork in the museum is a gift of Florence Scott Libbey and her husband, Edward Drummond Libbey. She gave the gift of art to all Toledoans. She ensured that the museum would always be free, so that people from all walks of life could benefit from the collection of high quality art and the performance of great music in an outstanding Peristyle theatre in the East Wing.

Early Pilgrims of New England Going to Worship, George Henry Boughton (American, 1833-1905), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 1957.30

Florence Scott was born on January 11, 1863, in Castleton-on-Hudson, Rensselaer County, New York to Mary Brown Messinger and Maurice Austin Scott, who was born on September 23, 1830, in Ridgefield, Fairfield County, Connecticut. Florence comes from a long line of fierce Puritans, non-conformists who had the strength and gumption to pull up their roots in England in search of religious freedom. They arrived in the New World to build a better life, as hard and challenging as it was. They were pioneers. Six generations lived in Fairfield county, Connecticut, before they migrated to Ohio in the early nineteenth century. Florence’s grandparents, Jesup and Susan Wakeman Scott and sons Maurice, Frank and William contributed greatly to the development of the brand new city of Toledo. Toledo is profoundly fortunate for all that they contributed, including several city parks, the University of Toledo, and the Toledo Museum of Art.

Starrucca Viaduct, 1865. Pennsylvania, Jasper Francis Cropsey (American, 1823-1900), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 1947.58

Roman Newsboys, 1848. Martin Johnson Heade (American, 1819-1904), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 1953.68

In 1835, Jesup Scott purchased the land on which the museum would later stand in 1912. Over the years, the close-knit extended family lived in Maumee, Connecticut, and Castleton-on-Hudson, which is where Florence was born and raised. Florence’s uncle Frank Scott was an architect and world traveler, possibly explaining where Florence got her sophistication and love of art. She went to finishing school in Germany. In the 1880’s the Scotts moved into a new house built at 2449 Monroe St. marking the precise location that would soon enough be the entrance to the museum.

Across the Salt Marshes, Huntington, abt 1905. Edward Jean Steichen (American, 1879-1973), Gift of Florence Scott Libbey, 1912.4

Auvers, Landscape with Plough, 1872-1877. Charles-François Daubigny (French, 1817-1878), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 2015.18

The Sickle, 1962. Jim Dine (American, born 1935), Gift of Florence Scott Libbey, by exchange. 2004.84A-B

Rooks in a Field, 1891. Laurits Andersen Ring (Danish, 1854 – 1933), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott and with funds given in memory of Sarnoff A. Mednick, 2016.13

Still Life with Oranges, 1818. Raphaelle Peale (American, 1774-1825), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 1951.498

Village Tavern, 1813-1814. John Lewis Krimmel (American, 1786-1821), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 1954.13

Scene from Spenser’s “Fairie Queene”: Una and the Dwarf, 1827. Samuel Finley Breese Morse (American, 1791-1872), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 1951.295

I should mention here that in 1888 Edward Drummond Libbey moved his glass plant to Toledo from Cambridge, Massachusetts after meeting Florence at a dinner party. They were married on June 24, 1890 at Florence’s home, the spot of the future museum. It was the social event of the season. Florence and Edward were not royalty, they were in fact everyday people, but because their hearts were big and they could do, and did do, so much good for the people of Toledo, they were elevated to the highest level of greatness that Toledo has ever seen. And rightly so. When Mayor Carty Finkbinder initiated the Toledo Civic Hall of Fame in 1998, guess who was the first inductee?

Italian Landscape, 1814. Washington Allston (American, 1779-1843), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 1949.113

Founded in 1901 with other like-minded citizens including artists, the museum opened in 1903 in a house provided by the Libbeys on the corner of Madison and 13th Street. Right away the museum was integrated into the community. Art classes began right away, including weekly children’s classes with 50 children. Later, after the white-marble museum was built on land donated by Florence, the School of Design was opened in an adjacent house on the property that was the former house of Florence’s uncle William. They had classes in drawing, painting, photography, pottery, needlework, lettering and home decoration. The museum gave hundreds of lectures a year and was a hot-bed of activity, designed “to bring our citizens the understanding of the principles and the benefits of art in their lives and in their work.” (Edward Drummond Libbey, 1921) The mission was both art education and the safe-keeping and exhibition of art. Then, during the Depression, the Peristyle was built, which employed countless Toledoans, thanks to the kindness and generosity of Florence Scott Libbey. She ensured in her will that the museum be free for everybody in perpetuity, and that the musical performances would be free or affordable for all walks of life.

Madonna and Child with Saints, probably 1759. Giambettino Cignaroli (Italian, 1706-1770), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 1971.6

Scene from Ariosto’s “Orlando Furioso” The Damsel and Orlando, 1793. Benjamin West (American, 1738-1820), Gift of Florence Scott Libbey, 1912.10

The Washerwoman, abt. 1733-1739. Jean-Siméon Chardin (French, 1699-1779), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her
Father, Maurice A. Scott, 2006.2

The Washerwoman, abt. 1733-1739. Jean-Siméon Chardin (French, 1699-1779), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her
Father, Maurice A. Scott, 2006.3

Van Campen Family Portrait in a Landscape, Early 1620’s. Frans Hals (Dutch, ca. 1581 – 1666), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, and the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, Bequest of Jill Ford Murray, and Gift of Mrs. Samuel A. Peck, Mrs. C. Lockhart McKelvy, and Mr. and Mrs. Frederick S. Ford, by exchange, 2011.80

Portrait of a Black Man in a World of Trouble, 1990. Kerry James Marshall (American, born 1955), Purchased with funds from the Jamar Art Fund of Marvin and Lenore Kobacker, the Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Barber Art Fund, the Mrs. George W. Stevens Fund, and the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 2022.22

A note about the Portrait of a Black Man in a World of Trouble –

Would Florence Scott Libbey like this little painting of a burnt American flag? Her ancestors helped build this country and fought in the American Revolution. Florence and Edward were upstanding American citizens who founded the museum. They would never burn a flag. Is the museum trying to make a point here? The museum also used funds from the Kobackers and the Barbers, who fought under the flag in World War II. This little scribble of Kerry James Marshall’s is hardly one of his best — it was not in his 2016 retrospective of about 100 of works at the Met. It was owned by the father of a Brooklyn Museum curator with whom the Toledo Museum was planning a Nigerian art show for the Summer of 2023. It was bought from an Ohio art dealer who listed it at an art fair in April 2022. The next year, the museum accepted a donation of a large number of prints from this same art dealer. An iconic Kerry James Marshall painting for the museum would have been nice, especially since they just sold three iconic Impressionist paintings for diversity sake making $61M. The former contemporary art curator wrote on Instagram that this painting would be used in their programs. Perhaps because it fits in a spiral bound notebook and is easy to carry to the museum’s new offsite art classes in the Projects, to condescendingly show the fledgling art students that the Art Museum bought this painting of a black man in a world of trouble. See, he burned the flag. So please come to the museum.

Head of an Old Man, about 1883. Frank Duveneck (American, 1848-1919), Gift of Florence Scott Libbey, 1923.19

John Ashley, 1799. Gilbert Stuart (American, 1755-1828), Gift of Florence Scott Libbey, 1912.12

Hester, Countess of Sussex, and Her Daughter, Lady Barbara Yelverton, 1771. Thomas Gainsborough (British, 1727-1788), Purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, and with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 1984.20

John Banister, 1798. Robert Feke (American, 1706/7-1752), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 1945.16

Mrs. Nathaniel Cunningham, 1730. John Smibert (American, 1688-1751), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 1948.19

Young Lady with a Bird and a Dog, 1767. John Singleton Copley (American, 1738-1815), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott, 1950.306

Lisa Jean, 1987. Henry Speller (American, 1900 – 1997), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, 2021.28

A Young Lady Named Georgia Alice Fixing to Get Married and Got on Her Wedding Dress, 1987. Georgia Speller (American, 1931 – 1988), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, 2021.27

A note about Lisa Jean, A Young Lady Named Georgia Alice Fixing to Get Married and Got on Her Wedding Dress, and the Souls Grown Deep

In 2019, the museum jumped on the nation-wide museum bandwagon to buy the self-taught art and quilts of a small community in Alabama from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation. The museum chose to further Florence Scott Libbey’s legacy by using her Bequest for many more pieces, see here. By buying these pieces from Souls Grown Deep, the museum agreed to their policy of resale rights, so it’s a financial arrangement as well. And note that every acquisition is not only purchased with the funds of Florence Scott Libbey in memory of her father, every one is also a gift of Souls Grown Deep.

What a wild contrast these works make for the collection of Florence Scott Libbey’s bequests. Would she like them? Or is her memory getting jerked around by the new leadership of the museum?

The School of Design has withered away to nearly nothing. While the museum bragged that it was “bursting out of the walls” with its classes in the Projects, the truth is that, for years, it had been quietly dismantling the real school — the one that served generations of everyday people. For decades, it was a respected, working institution with deep community roots and enormous potential for growth. But instead of nurturing that legacy, the museum shifted its focus. Today, its outreach is largely limited to its new pet demographic: Blacks living within the two-mile radius.

One thing is for sure, the portraits Florence bought for the museum have made much better artists of Toledoans. Toledo artists are particularly skilled at rendering the human form and capturing a likeness. For example, Leslie Adams, Chelsea Yonkman, Aaron Bivins, Michael Sheets, Richard Reed, Diana Attie to name a few. Ironically, the Libbeys started the local art shows at the museum, that Brian Kennedy, the museum’s 9th director, ended in 2014. The museum ridded itself of storing years of local artist purchase awards. As a result, this great collection of Toledo art has disintegrated into thin air. Then the museum buys this low quality self-taught folk art from a single region in the South. They have to build more storage just to store it — the sculpture, Trip to the Mountaintop, shown below, is 11 feet tall and 7 feet around. Adam Levine is quoted in a national publication that he is not only committed to showing these works, he’s committed to storing them too.

Woman Keeping Her Eye on What She Got, 2001. Thornton Dial (American, 1928-2016), Purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, 2021.17

Trip to the Mountaintop, 2004. Thornton Dial (American, 1928-2016), Gift of Arthur J. Secor, by exchange, purchased with funds from the Florence Scott Libbey Bequest in Memory of her Father, Maurice A. Scott and gift of the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, 2020.28

The Land Acknowledgment of 2023

The Toledo Museum of Art’s 2023 Land Acknowledgment after 122 years of Florence Scott Libbey’s continuous generosity:

The Toledo Museum of Art is located on the ancestral homelands of the Erie, Kickapoo, Ottawa, and Seneca. We recognize that many other native tribes have also conducted trade on and called this region their home including the Lenape, Miami, Ojibway, Peoria, Pottawatomie, Sauk, Shawnee, and Wyandotte. We at the Museum acknowledge and honor the past present and future lives of indigenous peoples in the Toledo area and thank them for their resilience as stewards of the land on which the Museum’s campus now resides.

Such a trendy token gesture, as if to apologize for the museum being built on the ancestral homelands of four separate native tribes, and the many others who roamed the region who also called it home. Is the museum going to give it back then? Rather thoughtless, too, because it fails to acknowledge the museum’s own ancestral donors who were the last of any people to live on the land on which the museum now resides. Does this glaring omission of recognition suggest that Florence Scott Libbey and her family did something wrong? Time will tell. They generously donated the land that made the museum possible, along with the art, the time, the leadership, and the money. They gave jobs to ingrates, like the ones who recite this overreaching yet insufficient land acknowledgment whenever they have a chance.

Likewise, on Martin Luther King Day in 2022, the museum opened on a Monday, believed to be the only Monday in its history to be open. It was also the 110th anniversary of the opening of the brand new white marble building of the Toledo Museum of Art. Did the museum celebrate that anniversary along with Martin Luther King Jr.? No way! They kept it secret. You have to wonder why the anniversary of the museum could not be celebrated on Martin Luther King Day. The museum has no pride? Self-hate? Or is it that they just can’t reconcile celebrating the both the Museum and Martin Luther King Jr. as if their purpose is directly opposed to the museum’s purpose? Perhaps they are not being good patrons of the museum?

As for respecting Florence Scott Libbey’s wishes for flowers to be put on the Libbey’s grave on Easter Day, Memorial Day and November 13, which is a requirement of the Endowment, (and it’s not really asking too much), just look at the unkept mess that was the Libbey grave on Easter Day in 2023!

The Museum was meant for everyone—free admission for “all conditions of life,” and musical performances were priced so anyone could attend. The school, the lectures, the art – it was a gift to the whole community, without barriers. That was the founding spirit of the museum: free and open to all, and they wanted everyone with them. They had to rebrand that?

Now, under Director Adam Levine, he talks of “problems with the beginnings of museums,” as if our museum shares the same legacy of elitism of other museums that he does not name. It couldn’t be further from the truth. Yet this flawed projection seems to justify what he calls a “complete transformation”—a revolution. Into what? We’re simply told we should want it. That we should love what he’s doing. That it will “put Toledo on the map.” As he sends our art away.

The new rebranding: the museum is now for all people, not just some. That message doesn’t honor the museum’s roots—it mocks the vision of Florence and Edward Libbey, who built this museum as a community center for education. A museum for everyone.

Off the Wall

It’s May 15, 2025 today as I write this page and none of these 144 iconic paintings are on view, most of these being the gifts of Edward Drummond Libbey —

57 Impressionist to 20th Century masterworks are being shipped to New Zealand as I write this. A secret loan undisclosed to Toledoans. Where are the other 87?

The museum makes its own art now. Living off of its great reputation, it runs on fumes.

“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, 11th Director of The Toledo Museum of Art, quoted in a Forbes interview in 2022.

“Our audience is changing dramatically – our average age of a visitor has dropped by almost 20 years over the past four years, and our visitation is more diverse than the Metropolitan Statistical Area.” Adam Levine, City Paper May 9, 2025

DEI took over the museum and all of a sudden the museum is a condescending love-fest celebrating every holiday for Blacks, Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, and the disabled. Everyone else is expected to step aside (unless they are gay or mentally ill). Art is about identity politics now and the European art has to go.

These usurpers plan to transform the museum “right down to the studs.” They don’t have contractors lined up, they don’t know where the money is coming from, but they have already taken the post-Civil War European and American art off the walls.

“Our audience uses the museum as a place to expand their horizons – which is an incredible thing,” said Adam Levine, a New Yorker outsider who is now the 11th director of the museum (the 4th in the past 15 years.) He is ripping it apart as if it is a toy. He’s into surveys, checking everyone’s age, sex, race, religion and address, and the reason why they like to visit the museum. He found out that many different people in Toledo like to expand their horizons at the museum. As if it hasn’t been that way since the Libbeys built the museum for us. He can’t imagine other spaces where people of different backgrounds can come together and do such a thing. But Toledo even has a university (thanks to Florence Scott Libbey’s grandfather, Jesup Scott). People in Toledo of different backgrounds go to concerts too, they use the public library, and they even travel. And he thought we were dumb.

Toledo Museum of Art embarks on ‘Transformation 2027’

“Change is hard for people, especially when people are used to something,” said Levine, who must have paid a PR firm $100,000 for that line, using Libbey funds.

People don’t like having their art taken away that was given to them by Florence Scott Libbey and Edward Drummond Libbey, and they don’t like their heritage erased and replaced. We don’t want to be told how to think. We don’t want our great museum torn apart by outsiders who endeavor to make a global name for themselves, an “example for other museums to follow,” selling our art along the way. Museum stewards should care for the art and the museum to which they are entrusted, and not just use it for their hyperactive experiment.

Edward Drummond Libbey would be livid knowing what they are doing to their gift of an art museum meant for the people of Toledo — They gave it to all people, not just the few who live in a two-mile radius.

Libbey is a role model for capitalists. He gave back to the community. Many might argue that he should have given to the poor instead of building an art museum.

It is an old argument, but the world needs museums as much as it needs soup lines.

More importantly, how one gives back to the community is an individual matter in our society. Libbey was blessed that his passion for art, love of glassmaking, community vision, and hope in education came together in a single project. His focus was on children and education, which benefited society. Libbey approached philanthropy differently than most other capitalists. He wanted true community involvement in his giving. He didn’t just give Toledo an art museum, he made Toledans part of the building. He made the museum a community center for education. Art and industrial art education were part of the museum’s mission. Libbey found encouragement, not just in the number of visitors to the art galleries, but in the number of students enrolled in training at the museum. He even promoted visits by workers and industrial designers to infuse art and manufacturing into the curriculum.

The museum today remains a spiritual legacy to Edward Libbey. Walking through, you can sense his spirit and direction. The glass collection is a tribute to the glass industry, and a living example of the fusion of industry and art. The diversity of the collection is striking in itself and reflects the central role of art that Libbey envisioned. The museum is still inviting, as Libbey had envisioned. It is in every aspect an art museum for the average person.

––Quentin R. Skrabec, Jr. Edward Drummond Libbey, American Glassmaker, McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2011

Tags Adam Levine, DEAI, Kerry James Marshall, Libbey, Libbey Endowment, Toledo Museum of Art

Artists of Toledo

TMA’s $25M Port Authority Bond Scandal

Post author By pennygentieu
Post date March 9, 2025

The Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, led by TMA Board Secretary Thomas Winston, approved an $11M bond (part of a $25M total with Cleveland-Cuyahoga $7M and Columbus-Franklin $7M) for TMA’s HVAC system, exceeding the building’s $23.16M value (now $27.9M post-2024 tax hike). Vice Chair Sharon Speyer sits on both boards. This “port authority facility” funds a shift from Libbey’s “art for the people” to global elitism, as 57 masterworks head to Auckland.

The museum went to the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, asking them to install Port Authority Facilities into the museum in the form of an HVAC system. The port authority agreed and posted a bond for the museum as a part of their .4 mill operating levy that was passed by voters on November 5. More money came from the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority and the Columbus-Franklin County Finance Authority for the total of $24.89 million for a new HVAC system.

The approved amount was even more than the property value of the museum building itself, $23.16M (now $27.9M post-Sept. 2024 tax hike).

How does the cost of an HVAC system exceed the value of the museum building itself? And why would the museum get the Port Authority involved? Why do they even need to replace the HVAC system when they recently paid Air Force One $605,020 in 2019 to replace the temperature controls?

Interestingly, the Secretary of the Toledo Museum of Art Board of Directors, Thomas Winston, is also the President and CEO of the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority. The Vice Chair of the Toledo Museum of Art Board of Directors, Sharon Speyer, is on the Board of Directors of the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, among other interested parties, including a banker. In addition, Sharon Speyer recently retired as Regional President of Huntington Bank, the bank that is underwriting the bond. Hmm…

We’ve been told that the museum is undergoing renovations, but if the AC costs this much – payments guessing to be around $2M per year for a 30-year term, where is the money coming from for the rest of the “improvements,” “remodeling” and “reinstallation?”

The recently renovated Cloister gallery gets disassembled (unbelievable, and will cost millions) to be moved just 40 feet to the northeast. New technologies and seating for every gallery, with art shifted around and arranged chronologically. The Glass Pavilion, which cost $30 million to build in 2006, will be repurposed (also unbelievable) as the glass gets removed and scattered amongst the art in the main building arranged by date.

The museum, being cagey, did not acknowledge the $25M “port authority facility” arrangement when asked in February about the cost for moving the Cloister Gallery for the news story, Patrons pay tribute to Cloister Gallery, Laurie Bertke, Toledo Free Press, Feb 8, 2025

The museum did not provide details about the cost for moving The Cloister. The spokesperson wrote that TMA is privately funded and the project is one small part of the larger reinstallation that is being funded through individual and corporate philanthropy.

Oh, really?

What will fall through the cracks during this seismic shift?

The Impressionist gallery will be replaced with the history of glass in Toledo and the Libbey Glass Co. – a boon for the City of Toledo but a lousy consolation prize for its citizens. I’m sorry Toledoans but we’re taking your paintings. But here’s something to make you feel proud about living in the Glass City. You get to know all about the 19th century history of the glass industry AND the museum history. It’s not quite the famous Impressionist paintings you love and expect to see here, but trust us, museums have a magic power to put anything on the wall and it will be deemed great and you will love it. “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, 2022)

Remember the sale of the three French Impressionist paintings for $60 million in 2022, and the promise for new art from it, which never happened? From paintings gifted by Edward Drummond Libbey, they took the proceeds and made themselves a separate, private fund with it, duplicating the size of the Libbey Endowment, instead of putting it back into the Libbey Endowment, thereby both distancing themselves from the founder and keeping the money secret from the public. My guest editorial in The Blade published on March 18, 2023 called for an investigation.

I got flack from the establishment for this editorial, and I wasn’t allowed to share it on FB groups. The museum even tried to get most of my editorial retracted, but in the end, they couldn’t change one word because everything I wrote was either factual or my educated opinion. It is notable today that the TMA budget is actually $5M more now ($23M), when in 2021 they projected it to be only $2M more ($20M). Soon it will be $7M more, with the port authority assessment–a 40% operating cost increase in just 5 years. They don’t have much in recent exhibitions to show for it, and that includes the current show, “In a New Light,” specially hung paintings from their own collection that is presently being dismantled four months before the end of the show. It is my opinion that their dive into politics is a smokescreen for what is really going on, praying on Toledo’s modesty and blind trust to allow them free rein. That new branding on which they spent a fortune? It wasn’t made with Toledoans in mind.

A promise broken

A promise was made to always keep the remaining Impressionist paintings on the walls, but now a secretive loan to Auckland of 57 masterworks for a show called “A Century of Modern Art” breaks that promise, as they pull works off the wall and changing the end date of “In a New Light” with no explanation. They don’t care how this looks to the locals.

If our mission is to integrate art into the lives of people, then rehanging our collection is only half of the equation. The reinstallation offers us a chance to go back to the conceptual as well as the physical studs, rethinking the museum experience for the 21st century. We are developing exciting plans on this front that we believe can create different paradigms for engagement. –Adam Levine

trading public funds for private prestige—
undermining its independence, veering from its roots

Such a massive export under the guise of renovations: 57 of Toledo’s most valuable paintings, Impressionist through 20th-century “offering a sweeping survey of the visionary painters who transformed modern art.” (Wow, wouldn’t we love to get to see that show?) This loan, which I believe is over four times larger than any other loan has ever been from the Toledo Museum to another institution (such as 12 to the Frick in 2002 for the celebration of TMA’s centennial), is on a par as if the Louvre was making the loan, a world-famous museum that has 7,500 paintings, not a mid-sized museum with only 750 paintings. These museum “stewards” are trading Toledo’s heritage for global prestige. They want to be a “global player” at the local public’s expense. Local government loves the free publicity. And of course, The Blade plays along. Libbey’s gift of art for the people is being taken from away from the people to be used for political exploitation, corporate greed – public assets serving elite networks and lining corporate pockets instead of serving the modest Toledo public as Libbey’s gift was intended – it is an utter betrayal of Toledo’s soul.

The founders’ vision was for a museum that “took art away from exclusive capitalism and gave it to the people.” But the new director takes art away from the people and trades it in for global elitism based on opportunistic capitalistic greed.

Tags Adam Levine, Libbey, Libbey Endowment, Lucas County Port Authority, Otto Wittmann, The Blade, Thomas Winston, Toledo Lucas County Port Authority, Toledo Museum of Art

Artists of Toledo

Open letter to Sara Jane DeHoff, Chair of the Board of the Toledo Museum of Art

Post author By pennygentieu
Post date February 16, 2025

The heavy words of Toledo Museum of Art's reinstallation inspirational word cloud shown at their symposium,
Expanding Horizons: New Approaches in Display and Interpretation.

Subject: Urgent Follow-Up: Further Concerns Over TMA’s Disposition of Core Artworks and Lack of Transparency

Dear Ms. DeHoff,

I hope you are well. I am writing again as a deeply concerned citizen regarding the troubling decisions at the Toledo Museum of Art, and to follow up on my February 10 email—which, like my previous correspondence, has not received a response. I have reached out on numerous occasions, yet my genuine inquiries continue to be met with silence and, more recently, outright censorship.

I am particularly disturbed by recent developments regarding our museum’s core collection.

I recently learned through a news report from New Zealand that TMA is loaning 57 Impressionist and 20th-century paintings—many are gifts from Edward Drummond Libbey and are featured in the museum’s “Masterworks” book—to the Auckland Art Gallery while TMA’s building undergoes renovations.

What is especially ironic is that Auckland is currently celebrating the recent bequeath of the art collectors, Julian and Josie Robertson with an exhibition called “The Robertson Gift: Paths through Modernity” Feb 9, 2024 – Feb 1, 2026, a collection of 15 paintings valued at $190 million.

Yet by interjecting the TMA loan into the mix, the Auckland Gallery is, in effect, dwarfing the impact of the Robertson Gift, since just two or three paintings from the Toledo collection are worth more than the total Robertson bequest that Auckland professes to be so honored to be given, and the Toledo show, “A Century of Modern Art,” consists of 57 bigger, better paintings.

Meanwhile, back in Toledo, the museum-going public is witnessing the shoving aside of the treasured Impressionist masterworks as the museum gets them out of sight, a core collection of gifts from Edward Drummond Libbey, and an important promise that has been broken.

Seems like all around the world, the gifts of generous museum donors are being dishonored.

In 2022, the day Director Adam Levine announced the sale of the beloved three famous Impressionists paintings, in the very same email*, he promised museum supporters that the other Cezanne, Matisse and Renoir paintings would always remain on view on the museum’s walls. Now to send these paintings away under the guise of renovations when the museum boasts of 280,000 square feet of gallery space is a real betrayal, and alarms are going off that something is seriously wrong with the museum’s stewardship.

Moreover, when I asked the museum for the complete list of the 57 paintings, Adam Levine dismissed my request, telling me that “this information of course will be public domain since the works will be on display in New Zealand!” (That is, if I want to hire a detective.) He said that sharing the full list would “just be used to sensationalize” my concerns. I should be talking to him directly instead of talking about this publicly, he said, in an attempt to shut me up.

This total lack of transparency, the efforts of censorship, coupled with sudden actions by the museum make me wonder, will we ever see these Impressionist paintings hanging on the walls of the Toledo Museum of Art again? After all, in just a few short years, the museum has sold three paintings, moved the other paintings from the prominent galleries in the main museum to the Glass Pavilion across the street, and now is sending this large collection to the other side of the world without any announcement, leaving museum supporters to find out from a news article from New Zealand; bringing light to a broken promise and the museum’s total lack of transparency, all while the community is stunned over the closing of the Cloisters, and unbeknownst that the Impressionist paintings are on their way out. All of this underscores suspicion.

Considering that the museum is under the spell of DEI (DEAI) and promotes the idea that people want to see themselves on the walls, it seems that these French paintings have been banished because they are too European for the demographics of the two-mile radius of the museum that the museum is using to advance their radical DEI agenda. Maybe it’s all a guise to sell the valuable paintings, who knows?

Adam Levine certainly has minimized the importance of the Libbey Endowment to the museum by selling the three paintings in 2022 for $59 million and making a private fund out of the money. The museum has lost all credibility of being trustworthy – the one thing a museum must NEVER lose, as at the Toledo Museum of Art the current leaders are the custodians of the wonderful gift of cultural heritage that came from Edward Drummond Libbey and Florence Scott Libbey.

It is telling is that at the very same time of the January 29 announcement in New Zealand that didn’t reach the Northern Hemisphere until a week later, TMA announced the closure of the Cloisters on January 30, with only three days’ notice, announcing it on Facebook, spurring hundreds of impassioned comments from the community.

The Cloisters, consisting of ancient columns, capitals, and arches that were sourced from 12th to 15th century medieval sites in southwest France to evoke a medieval monastery cloister, collected and permanently installed into the museum over the span of five years, was the highlight of the east and west wing expansion of 1933 and symbolizes the heart of the museum. It was just renovated and reopened in 2022. But now it’s excised and relegated to the far east wing next to the Ancient court, replacing four nice little gallery rooms, just so the museum can put everything in alphabetical, oh, that is chronological order, a conveyer belt style loop design forcing visitors to look at art through a specific political prism. It sounds frankly hideous; hardly an idea worthy of gutting the museum. Adam Levine plans to use what’s left of our superlative collection for his radical ideology that he plans to use to set as an example for all other museums to follow.

The plans to dismantle the beloved, fragile historic Cloisters and move it to the Wolfe Gallery were never publicly disclosed beyond whispers to select visitors and internal sketches shared with other museums at the 2023 symposium. And now, after the closure of the Cloisters, the museum states that the Cloisters will be moved to the footprint of the current Galleries numbers 3, 4, 5, and 6.

I ask that you ensure that our public heritage is not sacrificed at the whim of the current museum director who doesn’t seem to like the museum and wants to change everything about it, right down to the “physical studs” of the building itself, as he was quoted saying in a recent Channel 11 news article.

If our mission is to integrate art into the lives of people, then rehanging our collection is only half of the equation. The reinstallation offers us a chance to go back to the conceptual as well as the physical studs, rethinking the museum experience for the 21st century. We are developing exciting plans on this front that we believe can create different paradigms for engagement. –Adam Levine

There is nothing in the 2021 five-year plan about gutting the museum and redoing it down to the studs. Back in 2018 there were plans to renovate and money was collected for that but the plan seemed to be abandoned when the museum announced their five-year plan in 2021. What happened in-between was that the director Brian Kennedy resigned just one year short of his contract, leaving the museum in the lurch. After a year or two Adam Levine was hired. But right away Adam Levine made the blunder of telling people that the museum would stay neutral during the George Floyd demonstrations. Having to walk back his statement, ever since then the museum has been practicing self-flagellation — the DEI (DEAI) came in and made sweeping changes to the museum administration, adding layer upon layer of bloated bureaucracy, and here we are now, at the sacrificial alter offering up our entire museum, the gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, witnessing it becoming a shadow of its once self.

A collection created by donor funds and connoisseurship collecting, now it’s done by identity politics, federal dollars, and the turning of the back on the founders by a director who stated publicly in a 2022 Forbes interview:

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

Levine sold a Cezanne, Matisse and Renoir with the excuse that the museum never intended to have multiple examples by the same artist in their collection. But that is not true. I researched it – see my list of multiple paintings by the same artist; of the roughly 800 paintings in the TMA collection in 2022, 57 are by the same artist. Collecting these paintings was clearly intentional.

The Toledo Museum of Art has never sought to have multiple examples by the same artist-fewer than 11% of the artists in our collection are represented by two or more paintings; masterpieces by Cézanne, Matisse, and Renoir will remain regularly on view on our walls. –Adam Levine

He cut ties with the founder Edward Drummond Libbey by selling gifted paintings for $59 million and not putting that money back into the Libbey Endowment but instead into a private fund. (see, April 8, 2022 email to museum supporters.)

The three paintings being sold will provide the Museum with more than $40 million, greater than the total corpus of the current Libbey Funds supporting our art purchases. We will use these proceeds to create a new acquisition endowment –Adam Levine

Contrary to this statement made in the Feb. 8, 2025 Toledo Free Press article, Patrons pay tribute to Cloister Gallery, he IS using taxpayer funds to put the wrecking ball to the museum that we know and love.

The museum did not provide details about the cost for moving The Cloister. The spokesperson wrote that TMA is privately funded and the project is one small part of the larger reinstallation that is being funded through individual and corporate philanthropy. –Doreen Cutway, museum spokesman and senior public relations manager

The museum went to the Toledo-Lucas County Port Authority, the President and CEO of which is also the Secretary of the Toledo Museum of Art Board of Directors, Thomas Winston, asking them to install port authority facilities into the museum in the form of an HVAC system. The port authority eagerly agreed and posted a bond for the museum as a part of their .4 mill operating levy that was passed by voters on November 5. More money was asked from the Cleveland-Cuyahoga County Port Authority and the Columbus-Franklin County Finance Authority for the total of $24.89 million for a new HVAC system.

The museum has received many millions of dollars from Ohio and from the federal government in recent years, all grants are public record on the corresponding Ohio and federal websites. Grants that are hurting the fundamentals and founding principles of the museum.

The museum is probably taking advantage of the generous NEA Arts & Artifacts Indemnity Program to insure our 57 artworks for a billion dollars or more to send them off to New Zealand. Otherwise the loan wouldn’t be feasible. And if that program is stopped, in the current political environment while our paintings are abroad? Oh well, it’s mostly the work of old white men anyway.

As I noted above, in asking for the complete list of 57 renowned paintings going to New Zealand, Adam Levine refused to share it, saying he was afraid that I would use it to sensationalize my concerns. What is left for me to sensationalize? Adam Levine has provided all the sensationalism himself already.

I respectfully urge you, as Chair of the Board, to address these issues publicly. The Toledo Museum of Art is a treasured institution built and endowed by the Libbeys as a gift to the people of Toledo, and decisions of this magnitude must be made with full transparency and not just pushed on community using tactics like censorship and gaslighting. I ask that you halt the destruction of the Cloisters, cancel the loan to New Zealand and rehang the Impressionist and 20th century paintings. And then find new leadership that will provide proper stewardship and keep our museum intact.

Thank you for your time and attention to this critical matter. I look forward to your response.

Sincerely,

Penny Gentieu

Again, I’d like to point out Adam Levine’s statements in his April 8, 2022 email about the sale of the Cezanne, Matisse and Renoir:

The Toledo Museum of Art has never sought to have multiple examples by the same artist-fewer than 11% of the artists in our collection are represented by two or more paintings; masterpieces by Cézanne, Matisse, and Renoir will remain regularly on view on our walls.

For the record, here is a list of 16 of the 53 artists of the 57 artworks going to New Zealand, major works for which information has been released to the “public domain” as Levine put it, as reported in the Auckland press release. The artists in bold have only one painting in the TMA collection. There are 37 other artists (4 artists have more than one artwork in the show) and the museum refuses to make those names public at this time. But with this list of 16 names only, it seems like the entire museum collection of Impressionist to Modernity may be shipped off. What would Edward Drummond Libbey and Florence Scott Libbey think of that? What does the public think?

Cezanne
Degas
Helen Frankenthaler
Édouard Manet
William Merritt Chase
Modigliani
Berthe Morisot
Monet
Pablo Picasso
Pissarro
Robert Rauschenberg
Renoir
Vincent van Gogh
James McNeill Whistler
Gauguin
Mondrian

Adam Levine rationalized the sale of the three impressionist paintings by saying that it was never the intention of the museum to have multiple examples of the same artist, that fewer than 11% of the artists in our collection are represented by two or more paintings; here is a list that I made of multiple paintings by the same artist. It’s obvious that the purchase of multiple paintings by the same artists was intentional.

Tags Adam Levine, Auckland Art Gallery, Brian Kennedy, Libbey, Libbey Endowment, Mary Wolfe, Sara Jane DeHoff, Toledo Lucas County Port Authority, Toledo Museum of Art

Artists of Toledo

Urgent Follow-Up: Reckless Disposition of TMA’s Core Art Collection

Post author By pennygentieu
Post date February 6, 2025

Regarding the much-loved highlights of Toledo Museum of Art’s internationally-renowned collection being sent overseas

The objection is not that TMA is lending one or two paintings, the objection is that 57 is a huge number of beloved masterpieces to be taking away from public view and sending to the other side of the world — 57 — outrageous! And why didn’t the museum publicly announce this loan of an extreme number of paintings being sent to New Zealand for a special exhibition?

Cezanne Degas Helen Frankenthaler Édouard Manet William Merritt Chase Modigliani Berthe Morisot Monet Pablo Picasso Pissarro Robert Rauschenberg Renoir Vincent van Gogh James McNeill Whistler Gauguin Mondrian

Sent by email on February 6, 2025:

Dear Charitable Law Section, Ohio Attorney General’s Office,

I write as a concerned citizen to follow up on my previous correspondence regarding the Toledo Museum of Art’s (TMA) reckless decisions concerning its core cultural assets. In addition to the issues raised earlier—namely, the planned dismantling of the historic Cloisters, the demolition of the Wolfe Gallery, and the repurposing of the Glass Pavilion (a $30 million structure built in 2006 specifically to house its renowned glass collection)—breaking news from New Zealand now reveals further alarming developments.

Reports from across the world indicate that TMA is loaning 57 Impressionist and 20th-century paintings—many being gifts from Edward Drummond Libbey and described as “the much-loved highlights of Toledo Museum of Art’s internationally-renowned collection”—to the Auckland Art Gallery in New Zealand while TMA’s building undergoes renovations. Notably, most of these paintings had already been moved to the Glass Pavilion one year ago, and this decision to send such core works overseas has not been publicly announced on TMA’s website or through any press release. Given that TMA houses 280,000 square feet of gallery space and these works form the core of its collection, their removal not only deprives the local public of access to many of their most beloved paintings but also puts these invaluable works at significant risk. How are these works insured? Is TMA relying on the NEA’s Arts & Artifacts Indemnity Program or another mechanism to safeguard artwork potentially valued at up to $1 billion? Is it safe in today’s climate to depend on federal funds for such crucial protections?

Furthermore, this move is particularly alarming in light of the Auckland Art Gallery’s current major exhibition, “The Robertson Gift: Paths through Modernity.” This exhibition, which displays art movements very similar to those represented by the loaned TMA works, is effectively duplicative—ironically underscoring the historical and cultural significance of donor gifts while highlighting TMA’s pattern of secretive decision-making. Adding to the dismay is a stark reminder of an April 8, 2022 email from Adam Levine, in which TMA assured the public that “masterpieces by Cézanne, Matisse, and Renoir will remain regularly on view on our walls,” emphasizing that fewer than 11% of the artists in their collection are represented by multiple works. Clearly, these current actions contradict that promise.

It is outrageous that TMA now plans to relocate the historic Cloisters—featuring authentic 12th- to 15th-century columns gifted by Edward Drummond Libbey—to the site currently occupied by the Wolfe Gallery, at an estimated cost between $2.5 million and $10 million. This move risks irreparable damage to these fragile, centuries-old artifacts. Equally troubling is the decision to demolish the Wolfe Gallery—a space renovated just 13 years ago with a $2 million donation from Frederic and Mary Wolfe, two esteemed patrons who have since passed away. Such actions blatantly disregard donor intent and raise profound ethical and financial questions regarding TMA’s management.

Moreover, the repurposing of the Glass Pavilion is equally disturbing. Designed and funded specifically to house TMA’s world-renowned glass collection, plans now call for removing much of that collection to be integrated into the main museum. This decision not only undermines the Pavilion’s purpose but further endangers priceless works of art.

The lack of transparency surrounding these decisions is deeply disconcerting. The public was only informed of these drastic changes days ago with the sudden announcement of the Cloisters’ closure—a clear indication that museum leadership deliberately sought to avoid scrutiny.

I respectfully urge your office to investigate whether these actions align with TMA’s legal obligations regarding charitable gifts and responsible nonprofit governance. The pattern of secretive, reckless decision-making displayed here is eroding public trust in cultural institutions and endangering priceless works of art.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this critical matter.

see here for a description of the Cloisters that they closed and are moving — The Crumbling of the Cloisters

Tags Adam Levine, Libbey, Libbey Endowment, Mary Wolfe, Toledo Museum of Art

Artists of Toledo

The Crumbling of the Cloisters

Post author By pennygentieu
Post date February 2, 2025

Poets Bob Philips, Nick Muska and Joel Lipman at a poetry reading at the Cloisters, Toledo Museum of Art, 1979 and a reshoot in 2015.

What’s happening to the museum? Core collection getting sent off to New Zealand while slated for being in a show at the Glass Pavilion and the Cloisters getting dismantled — a total shock and all at once!

pages from Toledo Museum of Art Masterworks, published in 2009

On January 30, 2025 the museum announced on Facebook that it would be closing the Cloisters on February 2, until sometime in 2027. You had to dig into the comments to find out that they plan to dismantle it and move it two galleries over.

The Cloisters at the Toledo Museum of Art was a gift of Edward Drummond Libbey.

Although it underwent an expensive and extensive restoration and renovation three years ago using donor funds, now the museum plans to move it a few galleries over. Now it will be closed for three years.

Relocating the Cloisters requires careful planning, engineering expertise, conservation efforts, and logistical coordination. It will be a massive undertaking with risks to the artifacts’ preservation and historical integrity. It will cost millions of dollars.

WHAT FOR?

The Cloisters gallery was carefully assembled to recreate the feeling of a medieval monastery using authentic architectural elements, including the columns, capitals, and arches. These pieces were salvaged from European sites and brought to Toledo, where they were integrated into a new, custom-designed space.

The columns, capitals, and arches were sourced from various medieval sites in Europe. Dating from the 12th to 15th century, two different rows of columns representing the Romanesque era came from Languedoc-Roussillon in southern France near the Pyrenees. One from the Benedictine monastery of Saint-Pons-de-Thomieres, and another from the monastic priority of Espira-de-l’Agley. Another came from the late Middle Ages, the Gothic style from the cloister of Notre-Dame-de-Pontaut, a Cistercian monastery in southwestern France.

Ninety five years ago, the Toledo Museum of Art’s curators created a floor plan and structural layout that would allow the columns to be displayed in an authentic-looking cloister setting. The arrangement richly evokes a medieval monastery cloister, where arcaded walkways surrounded an open courtyard.

Since the columns were not originally designed for this space, engineers reinforced them with modern supports. Some columns may have been cut, restored, or modified to fit the proportions of the museum. The stone elements were mounted on modern bases to provide stability.

Each column was positioned carefully to align with the capitals and arches above. The museum likely used mortar and hidden steel reinforcements to secure them while maintaining an authentic historical appearance.

The surrounding stonework and flooring were designed to blend with the medieval elements, enhancing the historic ambiance. Lighting and display techniques were added to highlight the carvings and textures of the ancient stone.

The wishing well, a central feature of the Cloisters, was also a salvaged artifact. In medieval cloisters, wells were essential for water collection and often had religious or symbolic significance. It was installed as a focal point, inviting visitors to interact with the space in a contemplative way.

What the move will be like

Moving the Cloisters at the Toledo Museum of Art would be a complex and delicate process due to the historical, structural, and logistical challenges involved.

The columns, capitals, and arches are centuries old and made of fragile stone, which may have cracks or weaknesses from age. Disassembling them could risk damage or breakage, especially since they were modified and reinforced when installed in the museum. The hidden supports and reinforcements that stabilize the structure may make removal difficult without causing unintended damage.

The solution to that is to conduct a structural assessment using 3D scanning and imaging technology, carefully documenting how the pieces were assembled before dismantling. They need expert stone conservators to ensure safe handling.

The columns and arches are made of heavy stone, which requires specialized lifting equipment and precise handling. Moving them intact would need custom crating and heavy-duty transport methods.

They will need to use cranes, forklifts, and specially designed supports for moving and reinforce fragile parts with protective padding and structural braces.

Each column, arch, and capital fits together in a specific way. If pieces are lost or damaged, it could compromise the historical accuracy of the reassembled cloister. The original mortar and reinforcement materials may not be reusable, requiring careful restoration.

They will need to create a detailed reconstruction map of how each piece fits together, label each piece precisely before removal, and consult architectural historians to ensure the authenticity of the reconstruction.

Changes in temperature, humidity, and lighting at a new location could accelerate the degradation of the stone. Moving might expose the artifacts to vibrations, pollutants, or handling-related damage. They will need to maintain climate-controlled storage and moving conditions.

The cost will be well into the millions.

Pre-Move Planning & Conservation ($100,000 – $500,000)
- Structural analysis and 3D scanning.
- Conservation assessment and documentation.
- Expert consulting fees (architects, historians, and conservators).
Dismantling & Packing ($500,000 – $2 Million)
- Careful removal of stone columns, arches, and decorative elements.
- Custom crating and reinforcement for transport.
- Specialized labor (stone masons, engineers, museum professionals).
Transportation & Insurance ($250,000 – $1 Million)
- Secure climate-controlled shipping.
- Heavy machinery for lifting and transport.
- Insurance coverage for high-value historic artifacts.
Site Preparation & Reconstruction ($1 Million – $5 Million)
- Preparing the new site (foundation, structural supports).
- Reassembling pieces using conservation-appropriate materials.
- Custom lighting, climate control, and visitor accessibility adjustments.
Contingency & Unexpected Costs ($500,000 – $1 Million)
- Unforeseen damage or repairs.
- Additional permits, legal fees, or repatriation claims.
- Extended project timeline costs.

Total Estimated Cost: $2.5 Million – $10 Million+

Cost to Toledo’s history and culture: Immeasurable.

On January 30, 2025 when the museum announced the closure of the newly renovated cloisters with only three days notice, there was a public outcry on the museum’s Facebook post with thousands of reactions and hundreds of comments, for example:

Announced in the Toledo Free Press article dated February 8, Patrons pay tribute to Cloister Gallery, the new location, to Galleries 3, 4, 5 & 6.

WHY?

For this schematic sterilization?

Update April 2026:

Tags Adam Levine, Libbey, Libbey Endowment, Mary Wolfe, Toledo Museum of Art

The changing of the guards

The Museum in the Seventies

The 21st century Battle of Toledo

Attendance never recovered after the pandemic

Toledo is a union town

Letting their guards down

Adam Levine’s “Transformation 2027”

Data Portraits

The museum’s financial growth decoupled from public engagement and exhibition output – a disconnect between visitors and revenue.

Spending Up, Attendance Down: Trends 2014-2024

Attendance Did Not Recover after Covid

Membership Speaks – Museum Deaf

Substitution of Assets principle

TRANSFORMATION 2027

Can he lie to us and that’s okay?

Actual decline of Libbey Endowment Trust Funds and museum telling us otherwise

March 9, 2021: The Blade: TMA announces strategic plan to build art collection

March 23, 2023: TMA to The Blade: “TMA Corrections”

regardless of the truth that is public information when the IRS and Annual Reports are published, the museum gave false information at critical times about the membership and the rate of draws from the Libbey funds.

The Glass Pavilion

The Cloisters

Why won’t they tell us how much it costs to renovate the museum? They always have in the past

When a museum loses members but replaces them with a handful of large funders, who is it really accountable to?

sign petition here

Sorting Family, Faces, and Misattributions

March 25 google search for Machen paintings at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library.

But really?

What follows is a working archive—Machen and his folks, as best as they can be known.

Echoes of Dutch training carried into an American city still defining itself

What Toledo Is Losing: Stewardship Across Time

Ibrahim Mahama: Building for a Future He Will Not See

Edward Drummond Libbey and the Civic Ideal of the Museum

Continuity: How Stewardship Actually Works

What changes when art stops belonging to a place and starts working for an institution?

Stewardship vs. Leverage

Stewardship Includes Labor

The Central Question

Meanwhile, at the SCCA in Tamale, Ghana…

Perhaps Toledo’s greatest artist of all, for what she created and gave to the people of Toledo

The Land Acknowledgment of 2023

Off the Wall

What will fall through the cracks during this seismic shift?

A promise broken

trading public funds for private prestige— undermining its independence, veering from its roots

Regarding the much-loved highlights of Toledo Museum of Art’s internationally-renowned collection being sent overseas

Cezanne Degas Helen Frankenthaler Édouard Manet William Merritt Chase Modigliani Berthe Morisot Monet Pablo Picasso Pissarro Robert Rauschenberg Renoir Vincent van Gogh James McNeill Whistler Gauguin Mondrian

The Cloisters at the Toledo Museum of Art was a gift of Edward Drummond Libbey.

What the move will be like

The cost will be well into the millions.

WHY?

Update April 2026:

What changes when art stops belonging to a place
and starts working for an institution?

trading public funds for private prestige—
undermining its independence, veering from its roots