Tag: Kerry James Marshall

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Artists of Toledo

Florence Scott Libbey (1863–1938)

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 Kobakers 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: those living within a 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 Beaux Arts white marble 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 having the two celebrations together?

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!

Florence’s will was clear: the museum was meant for everyone—free admission for “all conditions of life,” and musical performances 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.

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.”

And then comes the rebranding: the museum is now for all people, not just some. As if it wasn’t always. That message doesn’t honor the museum’s roots—it distorts them. It mocks the vision of Florence and Edward Libbey, who built this museum not as a monument to power, but as a community center for education. A museum for everyone. From the very beginning.

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. But the 72% white population of the city is expected to step aside. Art is about identity politics now and the European art has to go. They are teaching a new world order now.

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 for him to play with. He’s very 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 all sorts of 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! As if he is surprised about our intelligence! He can’t imagine other spaces where people of different backgrounds can come together and do such a thing! Well, Adam, Toledo even has a university (thanks to Florence Scott Libbey’s grandfather, Jesup Scott) — image that! People in Toledo of different backgrounds go to concerts too, they use the public library, and they even travel!

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.

That’s right Adam Levine, 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. People don’t want to go back to the Stone Age, to be forced to walk through your revised art history experiment. 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,” at the expense of our fine community, selling our art along the way. We are not your guinea pigs for your experimental labs. People want their fine museum back. We expect museum employees to be good stewards and care for the art and the museum to which they are entrusted, and so do the Libbeys.

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

Categories
Artists of Toledo

Adam Levine’s Toledo Museum of Art

An assessment of the offerings at
Adam Levine’s Toledo Museum of Art
two years into the five-year plan

In 2021, Adam Levine, the new director of the Toledo Museum of Art, announced that he was increasing the museum’s annual budget by $2 million while reducing the draw from the Libbey Endowment. The rules of the Libbey Endowment are such that the money must be used in whole or in part for the exhibition of art, with at least 50% of every dollar spent on the purchase of works of art for the purpose of public exhibition. To draw less from the Libbey Endowment means they are free to do what ever they want. They don’t need to buy art or have great shows anymore.

Just as we had been warned, the shows since then have been sparse and less spectacular. We’ve had Matt Wedel, regional mid-career ceramicist, and his “Phenomenal Debris” filling up the Levis Gallery Nov. 5, 2022 — Apr. 2, 2023, which, as the name suggests, was a real departure for the Toledo Museum of Art, and not in a good way. Meanwhile in the Canaday Gallery, in a redo of a show from two years ago, they decked out the Canaday with artwork in need of repair and solicited donations for the restorations, for the privilege of the donor’s name being briefly associated with the “adopted artwork.” The piece used in the promotion was a 1925 glass dress, representing Libbey himself, ironically, to raise money for restoration instead of using the museum and Libbey’s money to restore the dress. So tacky of them. The show was up an extra-long time, from Sept 24, 2022 to Feb. 5, 2023.  Now they give us a show about astrology and fortune-telling curated by the two new Brian P. Kennedy Leadership Fellows (formerly known as Mellon Fellows) who drew from the museum’s own collection. Feb. 3, 2023 — Jun. 18, 2023, because that is just what they think we like, after we endured the Supernatural traveling show in 2021.

Meanwhile, as evidenced by features in the sporadically published Art Matters Magazine and nearly every press release Levine manages to put out, they go on and on about their curatorial work writing wall text and rearranging galleries, as if they are preparing us for a terrible fright. Lately, they have been moving art around in the American galleries so that the artworks will talk to each other and tell us the TRUE meaning of being an American. Because, as they tell us, being an American changes all the time, and you need to listen to the paintings, look closely and see how they interact. Do they like each other? Can they get along? If you still don’t get it, read the wall text.

But coming to Toledo this summer just in time for Juneteenth is the enthusiastically inspired traveling show called Black Orpheus: Jacob Lawrence and the Mbari Club, June 3 – Sept. 3. It is co-curated by Brooklyn Museum’s young up-and-comer Kimberli Gant, who wrote an accompanying book about the Black American artist (1917–2000) and the 1960’s Nigerian art scene. Read about Jacob Lawerence here on this unrelated time-capsule of a website from the Whitney Museum in 2002, too good not to share.

It is interesting that it is Kimberli Gant’s family who originally owned the burnt miniature American flag piece that the museum acquired last year, purchased with funds from the bequests “by exchange” of dead patrons who happened to have been veterans who fought under the American flag in World War II. Would these Toledo veterans have approved of their money being used to buy a burnt flag? I bet it would break their hearts. The burnt American flag to-date has not been displayed to the public. But the wall text has been written – with great enthusiasm.

Will the museum be showing the burnt American flag piece? Or is it reserved for their “programs,” as the museum’s curator of contemporary art mentioned on Instagram? It must be exciting for the underpaid “contracted” museum teachers (mostly women who are not given health insurance) to pull out this 8×10 burnt American flag painting mounted on a 4-ply museum board and use it to inspire both young and old people at the “outside the museum walls” art-making spaces in federally funded housing projects.

The art-making spaces are funded by a local manufacturer of fiberglas insulation and roofing materials, Owens Corning, and the program is run by the Toledo Museum of Art. Since the museum no longer has their long-time Children’s Saturday classes that took place in the basement of the museum, in a school aptly named The Toledo Museum of Art School of Design, bringing together 2,500 children from all over the city of Toledo every Saturday during the school year, not to mention the many hundreds of adults it served during the week, and now the halls are empty, Adam Levine likes to boast that they have burst “outside their walls” with this new program that serves 18,000 people in housing developments within a 2-mile radius of the museum. Whether the residents want it or need it or like it or not. Everyone else in the city is out of luck because most of their efforts are funneled into the Lucas Metropolitan Housing Authority, the President and CEO of which, Joaquin Cintron Vega, happens to be a new museum board member, along with Brian Chambers, the CEO of Owens Corning who is also on the board, sitting pretty.

And speaking of Nigerian art, I wonder if the Toledo Museum of Art will be returning their looted Benin Bronze, or are they waiting out the storm, keeping it hidden while conscientious museums across the country are returning their looted art to Africa? Adam Levine must have figured that sooner or later the reports of returned looted art will be old news and used to wrap fish.

If we can only be patient, coming next year will be a show curated by the recently retired Toledo Museum Curator of European Art, Larry Nichols.

It was good timing that Larry Nichols retired right before the $59.7 million sale of the three French Impressionist paintings, two of which were sold to one buyer under suspicious circumstances. And now he’s back on a freelance basis, with a real show to help out the museum since they have not been able to come up with a good one on their own after hiring countless curators. (It’s not that they can’t, they just haven’t wanted to.) There will be a show with not just one, or two, or three, but four Caravaggios, and they will be conversing with the wanna-be Caravaggios in the museum’s collection. How exciting! Put it on your calendar — Jan. 20 – April 14, 2024. I can’t wait!

I’m glad the museum could give our venerable old art curator an outlet during his retirement. Somehow Larry Nichols managed to persuade four museums to trust the Toledo Museum of Art, to get the museums to loan to Toledo their valuable painting. What a lucky break after the Toledo Museum of Art reneged on their promise to loan our Cezanne Avenue at Chantilly to the Art Institute of Chicago for their major Cezanne exhibition, which opened two days before our museum sold at Sotheby’s our valuable Cezanne painting, The Glade to a secret buyer for $41.7 million, the same mysterious person also buying Henri Matisse’s Fleurs ou Fleurs devant un portrait for $15.3 million. (See page in the show’s catalog, Cezanne, that was printed right before the show.)

What was the hurry to sell our paintings? Was our collection used as a catalog by a collector who made an offer that had a time limit that made Adam Levine betray his commitment to the Art Institute of Chicago? How could Adam Levine have sold our Cezanne right out from under these circumstances and break a promise to an esteemed museum? It hurt the exhibition, it hurt the public, it hurt the historic record, it hurt our institution – it hurt everyone. It is his fiduciary duty to be a good steward and to honor the reputation and legacy of the museum.

The money from the sale of the French Impressionist paintings, the Cezanne and Matisse that came from the Libbey Endowment and the Renoir that came from Mrs. McKelvy’s French Impressionist collection, should have been spent immediately on art, or else it should have gone back in the respective endowments. But instead they started an entirely new financial instrument with the proceeds of the art, making a lot of money for the bankers.

I wonder what the $2 million per year increase in the museum’s annual budget is going toward? They hired two people to be in charge of “People” and “Belonging” (a Chief People Officer and the other is the Director of Belonging.) The shows, as noted above, have been bare minimal offerings. They’ve reduced their public education to a skeletal existence. They closed the museum on Tuesday as well as Monday (except for MLK Day, a new tradition), so it is now only open five days a week. They raised their parking fee by 45%, right after they sold the museum’s three famous French Impressionist paintings. There are huge gaps in acquisition numbers for the art acquired in 2022, keeping the public from finding out what they are buying. This, after they made such a big deal about what they were going to buy. As it is a public institution formed to exhibit art to the public – the public has a right to know.

Why did the museum hire a curator of ancient art, Carlos Picon, the director of the Colnaghi art gallery in New York, who is an ancient art dealer? Isn’t that a conflict of interest? Do the objects being bought now really speak to the museum’s so-called mission of collecting art that looks like us and are they filling in cultural gaps and expanding the narrative of art history? Or is it the same old fluffy stuff?

Adam Levine said in his 2022 Forbes interview for a feature story on beauty without bias, “The superpower that an art museum has is when something goes up on the wall, it’s considered good. We set the canon.” They’ve got the power, and they can do whatever they want with it.

In June 2021, the museum announced that a new gallery was being renovated that would be exclusively for solo shows of local artists. Then there was dead silence about it. It never materialized. After a year and no gallery, the donor himself, Bob Savage, told me that it was delayed because the museum couldn’t decide what to do. That’s how much they regard the local artist community, as if we do not “belong” or fit into their community/people/belonging plan. Then last week, on February 23, very quietly, Ohio’s Ninth Congressional District Invitational Art Competition high school art show opened the new gallery. No announcement of the gallery or the event was made to the public or to the artists of Toledo, but Ohio Congressman Marcy Kaptur, Representative of the Ninth Congressional District, was at the high school area art event named after her district thanking donors Sue and Bob Savage. So much for local adult artists as politics takes center stage at Adam Levine’s Toledo Museum of Art.

I remember writing to the museum board two years ago when their five-year plan was published in The Blade (see the first Blade article on this post). I wrote in response to the renewed community focus, and could they please bring back our 100-year old Toledo Area Artists Exhibition? The response was favorable and and Randy Oostra, the CEO arranged for me to have a meeting with Adam Levine, which took place two months later. That day, ready to give my spiel, Adam Levine surprised me with news that he said I would be the first outside of the museum to know – that they were renovating a gallery specifically for solo shows for local artists. One month later The Blade featured a news story (see above) a with a photo of Adam Levine, the donors that will pay for the renovation, and the mayor of Toledo. Then not a word was ever spoken or written about it, not on their website nor in social media, nor in their members magazine, then one mention, occurring in The Blade one year later in regard to the art making spaces in the federal housing projects, that those new art-makers may have a show at the museum gallery. Finally, nearly two years later, the gallery that was promised to professional local artists opened with a show for high school students. I feel sorry for those young artists because when they grow up, they will get no support from the museum, unless they live in the projects.

When the museum talks about community, local artists are not included. The art museum makes their own artists now.

We must trust them and believe they have our best interests at heart, Leslie Adams assured us in 2014. The former president of the Toledo Federation of Art Societies got a one-person show from the museum in 2013 as the first, and as it turned out, the only, biennial solo show prize winner ever. Other TFAS former presidents and museum insiders were also rewarded when the museum corruptly abruptly canceled our prestigious Toledo Area Artists Exhibition that we had had for nearly 100 years.

It is a tragedy for the community that the Toledo Area Artists Exhibition was ended. For nearly a century, it helped countless artists achieve their goals, including three generations of my family. Check out the significance of the show by looking at the bios, clippings and obituaries of the many historic Artists of Toledo on this website. The shows played a prominent role in the careers of nearly every successful artist in Toledo. The demise of this annual show hurts our very DNA.

Brian P. Kennedy, director from 2011 to 2019, is oddly honored. The Mellon Fellow title has been renamed to “Brian P. Kennedy Leadership Fellow.” It’s too bad that one of the first two Mellon Fellows hired by Kennedy (Halona Norton-Westbrook) was involved in the corruption of the Toledo Area Artists Exhibition in 2014. It gave the Mellon Fellowship a bad name. But with the new name, what kind of role model for leadership is Brian Kennedy after he resigned from the Toledo museum just 18 months before the end of his 10-year contract to go to the Peabody Essex Museum, then he quit that museum after only 17 months? Of his leaving the PEM, Kennedy said:

After thirty years in museum leadership on three continents, this current unprecedented period of racial, social, economic and political turmoil has given cause for serious thinking and new perspectives on the profound changes that are happening in our world and I have decided to pursue a new challenge.

Which is extremely weird.

His departure caused a great deal of damage to the Toledo Museum of Art in 2019, because the museum was not prepared with an heir apparent. It led to the unfortunate situation we are in today. The board members ended up hiring the museum’s other Mellon Fellow hired by Kennedy – Adam Levine – who had left Toledo, but then came back for this. But after just a couple of years and this track record, what is going on?

The museum has traded connoisseurship for money and politics. Art can be political, but a public art museum cannot be, because that would be divisive and polarizing. The Toledo Museum of Art was built on the principle of community.

In summary, our museum was built with wide open doors inviting everybody to walk through them. Before it was reduced to a bare minimum, the museum had the best educational system of any museum in the country, serving every person in the entire city who had a desire to learn about art. It was the hub of a robust local artist community that for many years had monthly local shows, and for 95 years had the prestigious annual juried show for local and regional artists. Not to mention the great art collection.

The art collected by the museum was chosen by art connoisseurs for its quality and encyclopedic representation of the world, as opposed to now, where it is chosen to serve a political agenda or fill a quota. From early-on and throughout the past century, our museum had been highly respected and drew great leaders such as Otto Wittmann and Adam Weinberg. The museum always had many shows going on at once and events of public interest. They published newsletters, catalogs and magazines keeping the public informed of all their goings on.

The museum’s mission was to educate and exhibit art to the public.

Today the mission seems quite vapid. That is, to get other museums to notice us and want to be like us. “THE MUSEUM SEEKS TO BECOME THE MODEL ART MUSEUM IN THE UNITED STATES FOR ITS COMMITMENT TO QUALITY AND ITS CULTURE OF BELONGING.” Yet how do we look to other museums when promises are broken? It is hypocritical to appear so “woke” while holding on to a Benin bronze looted art, not exhibiting it, not sending it back to Nigeria, and not a word about it one way or another. Their mission statement reveals their emptiness and hypocrisy, just like their new ad slogan “Art brings Toledo together,” when it’s doing quite the opposite.

The museum should be serving all the people who live here. Local artists matter. Our museum should not be used as a social experiment or as a stepping stone for the director’s next career move. But then it all seems like a smokescreen while they sell our valuable and beloved paintings, and who is profiting from that? Just look at everything that is at stake – artwork that is worth billions collected over 120 years.

With their two million dollar increase in the annual budget for the past two years, they have so much less to show for it.

It’s OUR museum. Where is the oversight?

Who gave them the right to take away the fundamental qualities of our museum, sell our art, demean our founders, kill our local traditions, invade our museum, live off our stellar reputation like blood-sucking vampires, and take our museum in a new direction all their own? Who are these people?

Categories
Artists of Toledo

Toledo’s broken promise to the Cezanne Exhibition in Chicago

Cezanne Exhibition, Art Institute of Chicago
May 15 – September 5, 2022

While the Toledo Museum of Art does nothing — there has been no Art Matters quarterly member magazine since January, no Robert and Sue Savage Community Gallery as promised to us in May 2021, no blockbuster shows in the Canaday or Levis exhibition galleries that mostly have been empty, except for a couple of uninteresting shows —  the Art Institute of Chicago is having its third blockbuster exhibition since the pandemic began in 2020 — El Greco, Monet, and now the most important Cezanne retrospective in 16 years.

We saw it. It was great. It gave me a renewed understanding as to why Cezanne is called a painter’s painter, why he is considered the father of modern art, and why he is so highly regarded, even among the new generation of artists.

Wondering if the curators had asked to borrow one of our Cezannes for the show, we found the answer in the published catalog – a beautiful definitive book aptly titled Cezanne. There in the book on page 154, reproduced on a full page, was our Avenue at Chantilly, Catalog #83 listed for the Chicago show. On the acknowledgement page, among 70 other museums, the Toledo Museum of Art is thanked for making their work available for display in the exhibition.

But for the past several months since this show has been up, Avenue at Chantilly has been hanging in Gallery 35 at the Toledo Museum of Art, and not in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Cezanne Exhibition! Wondering if I had somehow missed our painting at the Chicago Cezanne show, I called the Toledo Museum of Art to check to see if it is on display in Toledo, and I was assured that it is indeed on display, in Gallery 35.

I wonder if the reason why it is not in Chicago is because the Toledo Museum of Art made an abrupt decision to deaccession our other Cezanne painting, The Glade, after the museum committed our only other Cezanne to the Chicago’s Cezanne retrospective. Weren’t we assured that deaccessioning was a thoughtful, long process? Apparently not in this case, as the book went to press in 2022 (or very late 2021, as the book was dedicated to one of the curators who died in November 2021. )

It seems that our museum felt so much guilt about their rash decision to deaccession the painting that they broke their commitment to their peer museum and pulled it from the exhibition after the book went to press.  As Director Adam Levine informed Toledoans on April 8 when he announced the shocking deaccessions of not only their only other Cezanne painting, but of their other Matisse painting and a Renoir bather, the museum’s only other Cezanne painting and Renoir painting and Matisse painting would always be on display on the walls of the Toledo Museum of Art.

What would make the Toledo Museum of Art break a promise to important colleagues and peer institutions — the other museums in the United States that they so much want to make an impression on in their 5-year plan, to be a great example of a museum that all other museums would look towards as an example of how all museums should be?

Quotes from the Toledo Museum of Art’s 5-year plan —

The Toledo Museum of Art will become the model art museum in the United States for its commitment to quality and its culture of belonging. 

By authentically connecting quality with belonging, TMA can become one of the museums in this country from which others learn.

TMA’s transformation will be heralded by the press and will set the bar for museum peers. 

How does that make Toledo trustworthy or how can they ever expect to be a good example to other museums? Will other museums be willing to loan paintings to Toledo in the future after this, if Toledo ever has the wherewithal to put together a traveling show?

World-class exhibitions that speak to 21st century issues will draw Northwest Ohioans and out-of-towners alike, with tourists shocked and delighted to be welcomed by a diverse and empowered staff so clearly loving what they do and the institution they serve. TMA’s exhibitions will depart Toledo to traverse the globe, providing the Museum and its hometown the visibility it once enjoyed.

In Christopher Knight’s May 6, 2022 COMMENTARY: AN OHIO MUSEUM IS HOLDING THE BIGGEST SALE OF ARTWORK YET. IT’S UNCONSCIONABLE, he interviewed Director Adam Levine, who told him that market realities made the difference in pulling the trigger right now on the deaccession of the paintings.  What would the market realities be, I wonder, that would make the Toledo Museum of Art renege on a commitment as important as lending Avenue at Chantilly to Chicago’s seminal exhibition on Cezanne?

Strangely, two of the paintings that were suddenly deaccessioned – the most valuable ones – were bought by the same buyer at the auction on May 17, as reported in Barron’s the evening of the auction. Could it be that there was a collector who told the museum they would buy the paintings, now or never, and the museum didn’t care about anyone – the public or their peers?

It is a gross thought that Toledo Museum of Art might be cannibalizing itself. They have tarnished their reputation among peers by reneging on a promise while lying to the public about the reason for the deaccessions. Edward Drummond Libbey did not advocate that the museum have only one example of a great artist’s paintings. The paintings were not “mediocre.” Adam Levine invoked a Libbey quote to support the sale: “Let the multitudinous array of the mediocre be relegated to the past and in its place be found the highest quality, the best examples and the recognition of only those thoughts which will stand for all time.”

That so-called mediocre painting brought $41.7 million at the auction proving its greatness. What’s more, our Toledo museum did not need the money! Chicago owns 9 Cezanne oil paintings, Detroit owns 5 Cezanne oil paintings, Cleveland owns 3 Cezanne oil paintings, now we own only 1, and that painting was supposed to have been in Chicago’s Cezanne Exhibition, but it wasn’t, after it was promised and after that promise was memorialized in a book. Our museum let down a national community from seeing it! The museum let Toledo down, because Toledoans would have felt proud to see our painting hanging in the show, but instead this makes us feel shame and embarrassment for living in Toledo. 

Just another lie when Toledo gets credit in the book for being in the show.

Perhaps Adam Levine doesn’t mind breaking promises – he certainly doesn’t mind lying to us – when our museum still gets credit in an important Cezanne book for being in the show – why not pull it out of the show — it was too late to make corrections — the opportunity of selling our other Cezanne painting — was it to a demanding secret buyer who just couldn’t wait four months until the show was over, was that the “market reality” that was just too good to pass up?  One can only speculate, but an investigation needs to be conducted to find out the truth.

Adam Levine had a fiduciary duty to preserve our valuable collection for the future, and he should never have reneged on a commitment to lending our Avenue at Chantilly to an important public show. The Art Institute of Chicago is the true example of what all museums strive for — this show is the third blockbuster they have put on since the pandemic. Our museum, under Adam Levine’s leadership has done nothing but sell off our great French Impressionist paintings.

We should save our museum and save our city’s reputation by changing course now with new leadership at the museum.

EDITORIAL – TOLEDO MUSEUM OF ART SHOULD KEEP ITS TOP TIER

The Blade, Editorial Board, April 25, 2022 

Selling off Paul Cezanne’s Clairière (The Glade); Henri Matisse’s Fleurs ou Fleurs devant un portrait; and Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Nu s’essuyant simply makes no sense. These and other proven lasting works draw people to the museum from near and far.

Every museum director retains the right to pursue their own paths as Adam Levine is doing. Yet the museum is an integral part of Toledo’s art culture. The museum is not in a vacuum. While privately maintained, the museum does represent Toledo to the outside world.

Categories
Artists of Toledo

August open letter to the museum

A lot of brave Americans fought and died under the American flag…Toledo is Jeep country, after all. Have some respect.

Open Letter to the Board of Directors of The Toledo Museum of Art:

For the museum to buy a burnt flag to hang on the museum’s wall, telling us they are collecting art that reflects our community, is disgusting.

Here is my blog post about how this acquisition is deeply offensive because the deceased donors from whom the funds were pulled to purchase it were veterans and a burnt American flag deeply dishonors them. Those donors are Marvin and Lenore Kobacker, Mr. and Mrs. Robert J. Barber, three of which had served under the flag in World War II.

Additional issues I wish to address:
  1. What about the remote stewards (workers) of our museum? Since when are the people who run the Toledo museum too good to live here? Along with the spokesman about the sale of the French Impressionist paintings, John Stanley, a retired temporary consultant without an art degree who came from New York who I am pretty sure does not live in Toledo, I’m referring to the Communications Manager who lives in Lansing, the Brand Director who lives in Boulder, the consulting curator of African Art, Lanisa Kitchiner, who works full time for the Library of Congress in Washington DC (who doesn’t have an art history degree), and the consulting curator of Ancient Art, Carlos Picón, who is the director of the Colnaghi art gallery in New York and an ancient art dealer. I wrote a blog post about it, about our authentic story, and about the museum’s treatment of the local artist community. The Remote Control of Our Museum Culture.
  1. What about the $54 million from the Cézanne and Matisse deaccessions that had been purchased with the Edward Drummond Libbey Endowment Fund? Shouldn’t that have gone back to the Edward Drummond Libbey fund to be used on new acquisitions? Where did that money go? Is it in a new endowment as stated by Adam Levine in his April 8 announcement of the deaccessioning of the three French Impressionist paintings? If so, what is the name of the fund? And if so, why is it not back in the Libbey fund, and what financial institution handles that fund?
  1. Will the museum and/or board members be making an investigation into the sale of the Cézanne and Matisse paintings that sold at auction collectively for $59 million to the SAME buyer, as reported in Barron’s Magazine (but not in The Blade for some reason)? What are the odds? Since this puts a cloud of corruption hanging over the museum in regard to the possibility that the sale was prearranged with the buyer, the museum and board should investigate and make public the buyer to clear the museum’s reputation, if that would be the case, since our museum should be beyond reproach. What valuable paintings will be the next to hit the auction block? These outrageous deaccessions of valuable historic paintings that were literally taken off the museum walls and sent to the auction house, an action rationalized by the museum director’s lies to the public, and the huge amount of money made by the sale – that for us not to know who bought the paintings, or whether or not the sale was prearranged, is unacceptable. Is our collection being used as a catalog for future collectors? It’s a good way to hide backroom deals. It’s a good way for our museum to be robbed of its great artworks.
  1. Why has the radius of the museum’s community outreach and interest shrunk to only 2 miles, when the area that the museum serves is vastly larger? In 2014, the museum claimed that their reach was a 150-mile radius, when they increased the area of the Toledo Area Artists Exhibition to reach out to the major cities such as Detroit, Cleveland and Columbus. Before that, our community was defined by the 95-year old annual show as being 17 counties in Northwest Ohio and two counties in Southeast Michigan. The two-mile outreach defined now is not even 1/6th of the city of Toledo, not to mention the other many counties surrounding Toledo. Why isn’t the community equally represented on the Belonging Committee? In the museum’s latest manifesto about plans for community “belonging” there is nothing at all about the new local artists gallery that was heralded in The Blade in June 2021, for which Robert and Sue Savage donated $200,000 to renovate a gallery space that would have their name on it. A photo was taken with the mayor, director, and Robert and Sue Savage to memorialize the commitment.   Are artists not a fundamental part of the art museum? Why aren’t local artists invited to “Belong?”  

In summary, there should be a special oversight looking over our museum right now. Our museum does not belong to outsiders, nor to just a fraction of the community, it belongs to ALL of us, the entire Toledo community. The people who run the museum ought to live here! That people who run the museum are “too good” to live here robs our city of culture, progress and money. Our museum is not a vehicle for outsiders to mold into something for their own personal benefits and gains. They are ripping us off! Conflicts of interest should be disclosed on every level, from the purchase to the sale of artworks, to the business relationships of the board members with the museum; from communications involving the museum and the press, to the curation of our community stories. There must be full disclosure for every move the museum makes. The people who run the museum have a fiduciary responsibility to our Toledo institution, and lying to the public is a breach of their fiduciary duty.

Thank you for your time. I hope you are having a good summer.

Sincerely,

Penny Gentieu