Tag: Marcy Kaptur

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Artists of Toledo

TMA’s disgraceful national review

Wow! Read this: Toledo Museum: A Treasure Trove of the Best – But chasing the diversity, equity, and belonging unicorn, it might derail itself 
And this:  Toledo Is Great on Glass but Disses American History – Its glass collection is superbly presented, but American art is trashed as ‘white supremacist’

The Toledo Museum of Art is getting national attention — but not in a good way. Unfortunately the unflattering critique by art critic, Brian T. Allen in the National Review is right-on. The museum is using its stellar collection to promote a trite, tired and divisive political point of view, reducing great art to the level of mere illustration, targeting the lowest common denominator. Dumb, dumb, dumb!

It’s missing a few points though…. like perhaps the museum has gone all out with their inclusion theme as a smokescreen to cover the bigger picture. They want us to look over here at their diversity theme and not follow the money. Like the questionable sudden selling of the museum’s three great Impressionist paintings for over 61 million dollars and starting a whole new unrestricted fund with it. Taking from Edward Drummond Libbey’s bequest and defying his rules. And who exactly bought TWO of these paintings? Hopefully the Ohio Attorney General, in their current investigation of the Libbey Endowment Trust funds, will uncover it all.

The mayor is a dope

Toledo’s mayor, in a dollop of snark and a show of ignorance, said the museum catered to “Florence Libbey types,” which means a high-society dame, the kind who wear a tiara to weed the orchid patch. It’s safe to say he’s a dope. The museum’s not a colony of the country club. It has cultivated a broad-based appeal and affection. And a mayor shouldn’t trash the thing that adds the most class and cachet to his city. Toledo, after all, isn’t the Paris of Ohio. – Brian T. Allen, Toledo Museum: A Treasure Trove of the Best, National Review

Yes, the mayor of Toledo, Wade Kapszukiewicz, is a dope. And it is safe to presume that this line of thinking was fed to him by the museum’s newly appointed “Brand” department and manager — a man who lives in Colorado! Once you trash the beginnings of the museum, and the Libbeys, and the museum’s history — a museum built by progressive founders who gave the gift of the museum to all of the people of Toledo — the exact opposite of the image that the mayor of Toledo is promoting — it’s easy enough to trash the art inside of it and whisk it away.

As they destroy the museum’s legacy, they can easily sell off the museum’s masterpieces. If they can get away with secretly selling valuable paintings that were purchased with funds from the Edward Drummond Libbey Endowment, a publicly scrutinized trust fund, and move those assets into a secret private fund, or who knows what they do because the public no longer has access, they set a precedent and can keep doing it until the museum has no resemblance to the intentions of the founders.

If they were not going to buy art right away with the proceeds (as per the wishes of the Libbey trust) then why didn’t they simply put it back in the Edward Drummond Libbey Endowment Fund? I’ve read Libbey’s will in regard to the trust and there is absolutely nothing in it that would stop them from putting the money back into the endowment fund.

The wills of the Libbeys make it very easy for the Trustees to do what they think is best — but of course that freedom is predicated on the Trustees’ fiduciary duty. The Trustees are legally required to do their best to act in Libbeys’ stead, but it appears that they are breaching that trust. And they are dwindling the endowment away (check it out for yourself at the Lucas County courthouse — it’s public information) while the museum builds up a private fund. Is there a conflict of interest? Some of the same Trustees of the Libbey Trust are on the Board of Directors of the museum.

While they, to quote the article, “cater relentlessly to Toledans living within a two-mile radius of the museum” and “drag people from their homes to raise that percentage for what is, after all, an ego trip” (but never answer the emails of community members or respond to open letters on blogs, being the hypocrites they really are) they are actually stealing from the people of Toledo.

This happens because the mayor of Toledo, city council, museum board members, donors, members, etc., play along with them (after all, they go to the same parties and have the same lawyers) and they are all such dopes.

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Artists of Toledo

A Toledo picture

A Toledo picture…. Yesterday and today

What is a Toledo picture, exactly?

The museum’s first curator of European art, William Hutton called a “Toledo picture” a painting worthy of the Toledo Museum of Art, a museum that owns what is said to be the very best Peter Paul Rubens in the country. A Toledo picture is something that would “hold its head up” alongside the Rothko, for example.

From Rubens to the burnt American flag

The Toledo Museum of Art used to be about art, but now it’s about community mobilization. They are building community centers outside the museum under the guise of bringing art to the low income housing projects. They don’t bring the residents to the museum because they say that the residents are put off by the museum’s opulence — they have to go to them. They have segregated our Toledo community into separate communities.

Meanwhile, they are rearranging the collection in our museum to what they think will better suit the people who live within the 2-mile radius who don’t come to the museum.

They sold a masterpiece right off the wall for $41.7 million dollars and put the money in a secret fund, not back into the Edward Drummond Libbey Endowment. We can only guess that it is perhaps because Edward is symbolic of colonization, or some rationale like that.

put yourself in their shoes

They remind us that the land underneath the spot where the museum stands once belonged to the native peoples of Northwest Ohio before the Libbey family claimed ownership of it. What’s more, Libbey came to Toledo from out east and used the sand of what was once the land of native peoples to build his industrial glass factory fortune. He made so much money that he funded the art museum. So therefore of course they would feel that they can do whatever they want with the museum. That makes total sense.

All of this looks good on a grant application – helping the poor – reclaiming native American rights – rejuvenating a tired old museum – a great cover while they ramshackle our great museum.

Canceling our membership and getting our money back
(oh yes we did)

My husband and I, former recent members of the Toledo Museum of Art, are not a part of the museum’s desired community, although we used to be welcome as members and visitors of the museum. We live outside the 2-mile radius, five miles away, inside the city of Toledo, but just too far away from the core.

We wrote multiple letters in the spring and summer addressing multiple issues that I have written about on this blog. Our important issues were never answered. So in September 2022 we wrote another detailed letter, this time to the membership department (not to be confused with the belonging department, because that department is exclusively for the desired communities they are rallying within the 2-mile activation radius of the museum.) We asked for our membership fee back.

Three weeks later, right before our membership was set to end, the museum sent us a check for the full amount of our membership fee. No apologies, no explanations, enclosed with a long-overdue Art Matters Magazine, and a note saying she hoped we like the new Art Matters, as if they managed to publish a new Art Matters especially for us. Must have been difficult for the new out-of-town employees to pull off. They haven’t managed to publish another Art Matters, and it’s March 2023. But soon they won’t have many members left at the museum who are like us, (they have everyone neatly categorized by zip code) and so they won’t need to publish an Art Matters at all. Just a prediction based on my experience.

Why are they so radical?

From what I can tell, it dates back to a Facebook post of the Toledo Black Artist Coalition (the group that picketed in front of the museum after Adam Levine came out with his infamous George Floyd memo stating that the museum should remain neutral in light of the national protests.) It was the fall of 2020 and Rhonda Sewell put a heart emoji on a post about racial reckoning rocketing through art museums (see below), and that museums have to change – a lot. Rhonda Sewell of the Toledo Lucas County Public Library, who once was a journalist at The Blade was not an art historian or a curator, or even a museum administrator, but five months later she inaugurated a new department at the museum, becoming the first director of a “Belonging and Community Engagement” Department.

November 18, 2020: Rhonda Sewell’s heart emoji on a Toledo Black Artist Coalition facebook post of a painting that is not in our museum, but the implication is that the Toledo Museum is elitist and racist.

The Department of Belonging and Community Engagement

Shit rapidly hit the fan — they closed the museum on a Friday in October to put on a private concert with John Legend that was supposedly for the kids in their outreach program but ended up being a private party for adults. Using the Great Gallery, where most of the Old Master paintings are displayed including the Peter Paul Rubens, they removed the paintings from the gallery walls, risking damage to the museum’s most valuable collection, and replaced them with contemporary paintings by Black artists. Information was initially released that it would be for the neighborhood kids they are doing outreach for. However, it was reported in the Sojourners Truth newspaper after the concert that only 40 children attended, who came from the seven different “communities” within the 2-mile radius of the museum. Along with 400 adults who had a party for themselves. Printing a full-page photo of their private concert in the 2021 annual report, the museum asserted that the museum would be doing more private functions like this in the future.

A Photo of the Great Gallery without Old Master paintings

Here is a photo I took of a great Toledoan, the first female Toledo city council member, in 1993, June Boyd with her great grandchildren posing in the middle of the Great Gallery on October 27, 2021. I just want to say here that I hope June Boyd’s book about the history of Black Toledo gets published soon, so that there will be an authentic voice of the history in which she plays such an important part.

Happy 110th Birthday

It went gangbusters thereafter for Rhonda at the Toledo Museum of Art. The museum opened on a Monday in 2022, for the first time ever, which Toledoans enjoyed. It was Martin Luther King Jr. Day, which happened to fall on the same day as the 110th anniversary of the opening of the museum. But the museum didn’t publicize that little fact – I was there and not any of the employees I asked on that day knew that it was such a special day in the history of the museum. It was as if the new Toledo Museum of Art hated the old Toledo Museum of Art so much that they couldn’t even say Happy Birthday.

Then they sold three famous paintings for $59 million, for diversity-sake, then raised their parking fee by 45%, to make the museum more inclusive.

They announced the purchase of new art, with the burnt American flag painting featured in a photo slide show in the article on The Blade.

They announced that they were building art making stations in federally funded housing projects and equipping them with teachers. Bravo, museum, it’s so generous of them to do the Arts Commission’s job and Lucas County’s  job and the City of Toledo’s job for them. This after the great educational program that they used to have for the general public for most of the 20th century has dissipated into hardly anything. It was a robust school that taught 2,500 public school children on Saturdays and college students along with adult community members during the week. It appears that they are siphoning what they used to offer to the entire community, to concentrate it outside the museum into federally funded housing projects and “communities” in just a 2-mile radius of the museum.

Meanwhile, our only remaining Cezanne that was promised to the Art Institute of Chicago’s major, international Cezanne show had been taken out of that show (while appearing full-page in the show’s catalog.)

They put on hardly any exhibitions, but they did mount two shows of artwork in need of restoration. The second of these shows was used as a fundraiser to raise money to restore art that the public could “adopt” for a short period of time with their name associated with it.

They featured a 1925 glass dress which to the Toledo community represents the Libbeys. The museum should have spent their own funds to restore it. Especially since they just received upwards of $500,000 from the Libbey Trusts for a Pandemic variance to use funds earmarked for buying artwork, for “direct care of artwork” such as for restoration, instead.

Freedom of Speech

The museum tried to get The Blade to retract my statements in my guest editorial, but I did not say anything that was not either factual or my opinion.

That’s how it rolls in the 419 area code of Toledo Ohio. And that’s how things like this can happen to the museum right under our nose.

I can write my blog on my website and I can post on my Facebook page. But on a Facebook group of 3,000 artists in Toledo, the Artists of 419, I haven’t been allowed to share my Artists of Toledo blog posts or make comments about things such as the recent launch of the Community Gallery. It took a guest editorial in The Blade to be allowed to make a post, but only of the editorial, all other attempts to share information were censored and blocked.

I’m just glad that I was invited by The Blade to submit a guest editorial, which was printed last Saturday, March 18, 2022 as a Saturday Essay.

It was June Boyd’s exercise of freedom of speech expressed in a Saturday Essay in The Blade that lead me to photograph her at the museum seventeen months ago. Her Saturday Essay was printed in The Blade on October 9, 2021, Let’s come together to save Toledo’s children, I wanted to meet her, so one day we got together at the Kent Library where I interviewed her and asked to photograph her.

I was researching Toledo’s mayor back in 1901, Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones at the time. Here’s the post I wrote: Whitlock, Jones and June Boyd. “Golden Rule” Jones’s house stood on the land on which the Toledo Museum of Art’s Peristyle now stands (I must also mention that his land was once held by native Americans before the colonization took place, but also it’s important to note that “Golden Rule” Jones gave away every dollar of his mayoral salary to the poor every month. Wish Adam Levine would.)

June suggested the museum as a good location for our shoot. We met there with her great grandkids, who were all decked out as if a stylist dressed them in matching sweaters that June got. (A photo would later be used on their Christmas greeting.)

It was the week following the John Legend concert, and the Great Gallery still had the contemporary paintings by Black artists hanging in it.

When I hear the lie that the Cezanne was in storage, such as I read in the comments to my editorial on the Artists of 419 Facebook page, this photo is the proof that that is false information. The painting was actually taken off the gallery wall and sold for $41.7 million. The museum has nothing to show for it today. It’s apparently in a secret fund, not back in the Edward Drummond Libbey Endowment from whence it came. The Endowment is open to public scrutiny, but according to what the director told members and the press, the proceeds from the auction are in a completely new fund, shielded from public scrutiny.

Money and Politics

Rhonda Sewell recently said, in regard to the museum’s new politically motivated DEAI plan (DIVERSITY, EQUITY, ACCESSIBILITY, AND INCLUSION), “What it’s saying is that now we are not only going to look at maybe one ethnicity or one race or one region for art history’s sake in our collection.”  As if the Toledo Museum of Art had ever been racist, until now.

UPDATE: adding here from my October 6, 2024 post about the Brooklyn Artists Exhibition — “It is interesting to note that Rhonda Sewell, who was initially hired in 2021 for the new post of “Belonging and Community Engagement Director” transitioned to another new bureaucratic museum post, that of “Director of Advocacy and External Affairs” in June 2023. This role is described as “forming and maintaining key relationships with legislators and policy makers at the local, state and federal levels.” Fascinating, since it was only a month before that the Ohio Attorney General embarked on an investigation of the Toledo Museum of Art regarding the circumstances surrounding the sale of three famous Impressionist paintings for $62 million in 2022 and the apparent breach of fiduciary duty by the trustees of the Edward Drummond Libbey and Florence Scott Libbey endowments – the Libbeys being the museum founders.”

Along with collecting millions of dollars in taxpayer grants, that’s apparently how they handled my April 2023 complaint to the Ohio Attorney General. Obviously it worked. So I made another —

URGENT FOLLOW-UP: RECKLESS DISPOSITION OF TMA’S CORE ART COLLECTION

Categories
Artists of Toledo

Marcy Kaptur, politics and art museums

Cezanne's Avenue at Chantilly decorates the Lucas County Glass City Convention Center, 2023

Marcy Kaptur is right. This country is run by wealthy people on the East Coast and West Coast, and they don’t relate to the vast working-class people of the Midwest. Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, who holds the record for being the longest-serving woman in Congressional history, said the floor of Congress had always been lively with debates on the issues, but now it’s just a theater playing to the media.

You might think Ms. Kaptur was talking about the Toledo Museum of Art.

The 2022 Burns Halperin Report

The 2022 Burns Halperin Report is a survey which illustrates an extreme lack of diversity among 31 American museums, specifically, art made by Black Americans and women. The Toledo Museum participated in the survey. The survey mentioned only a couple of East Coast and West Coast museums doing a good job adding diversity to their new collections. Although the Toledo Museum of Art has a good record, it was not mentioned.

The Artists of Toledo Report

The Artists of Toledo Report is a survey of the artists whose art was acquired by the Toledo Museum of Art between 2017 and 2022. The survey shows that the Toledo Museum of Art has been almost completely balanced regarding the diversity of the artists whose work was collected during the past six years, except for a 30% imbalance between non-American women and non-American men.

Just passing through…

Mr. Levine has laid out a road map for the museum to become what he calls the “model museum in the United States,” one whose collection reflects the demographic makeup of the country, and where people feel “a sense of comfort and psychological safety in every interaction with the institution’s brand on-site and off-site,” as he put it. Itʼs About Time.ʼ Museums Make Bids for Their Communities. New York Times, May 21, 2021

The Toledo Museum has never had to try so hard to be a “model museum,” the museum has democratically served the entire community since 1901. However, certain new museum directors passing through on their upwardly mobile path in the museum world have stripped our museum of its democracy. The current director, Adam Levine, is from New York. He plays to the East Coast and West Coast media with disingenuous rhetoric, seeking publicity by exploiting the diversity issue.

Never mind that the museum’s revered public art education program and local artist shows that went on for nearly 100 years have been eliminated.

The Big Middle

The Toledo Museum of Art is in Marcy Kaptur’s district. Like Marcy Kaptur, the museum has a solid progressive democratic foundation that serves the working-class. The Toledo Museum of Art used to have a formidable public art education program. It had a local artist exhibition tradition unlike any other museum in the country. The educational program and the local art shows served multiple generations of Toledoans. These are the roots of the museum, through which the collecting of diverse art has evolved naturally.

A diverse crowd in front of the Toledo art museum, 1919.

Frederick Douglass Allen, born in 1886, is the earliest recognized black artist in Toledo. He was one of the first students of the museum’s public art classes. He showed in the first annual Toledo Area Artists Exhibition, and seven subsequent annual shows at the Toledo Museum of Art. I spoke to the Warren AME Church, where Frederick Douglass Allen was a member, about any history they knew of blacks and the Toledo artist community. I learned that the early black community had more urgent priorities to deal with when they migrated to Toledo, so the artist Frederick Douglass Allen was ahead of his time.

As for women, Nina Spalding Stevens, wife of the 1903–1926 museum director, George W. Stevens, served as the associate director of the museum. She also created the educational program. If there has ever been a bias against blacks and women at the museum, it would be difficult to find. The art classes and shows provided a level playing field for a diverse community of artists. Many scholarship recipients were blacks and women. The local solo shows have always been diverse. In the 1970’s the museum hosted two group shows for the “Black Artists of Toledo.”

In the 1990’s, with the first black Trustee appointed to the Toledo Museum of Art Board of Directors, an initiative was begun to add more diversity to the collection. To understand the museum’s collection of “diverse art,” one must first understand that “diverse art” is made by contemporary artists, and the Toledo Museum of Art barely collected contemporary art until the 1960’s. Today the museum board itself is quite diverse, with a track record for adding diversity to the museum’s acquisitions.

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 cannon.” Adam Levine quoted in Forbes, ‘Beauty Without Bias’ At The Toledo Museum Of Art, Feb. 28, 2022

In his arrogance, Adam Levine claims that museums are in the unique position to put anything on their walls and call it art, and because it’s in a museum it is considered good. How odd for the Toledo Museum director to suggest that collecting art at our fine museum could be turned into a political anthropology experiment. The connoisseurship of our curators is what has grown our collection. Our museum is about great art — not politics. It’s about skilled curation, and then letting people decide for themselves what they like. That Adam Levine brought in a Branding Department to redefine our museum, after ripping out the democratic soul of the local community from the museum, using diversity to attract the attention of other museums (and grant foundations), is such a conceit. How ironic that, with such a record for collecting diverse art in the past six years, our museum didn’t get even as much as a peep in the 2022 Burns Halperin Report. But then we are in the Big Middle, and nothing can take the museum out of it, so Adam Levine might as well be content with making our museum functional again for our own large Midwest community, as unexciting for him as that might be.

Our famous French Impressionist paintings thrown out the door.
Cannibalizing our museum

The biggest hoax on the community was Adam Levine selling our historic French Impressionist paintings while quoting Edward Drummond Libbey, “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,” as if Libbey would approve of the selling of our major Cezanne, Matisse and Renoir paintings. Adam Levine claimed that the sale was for “diversity,” when over the past six years, the museum has meticulously added an equitable ratio of Black Americans to Women to Other American artists acquired by the museum. He lied about data. He betrayed a peer museum in Chicago by reneging on a loan of our Cezanne painting for their show. He lied about the quality of the paintings being sold, and the intentions of the museum. Two paintings were sold to the same buyer for $59 million! Eight months later the Toledo Museum of Art does not have one artwork purchased with that money to show for it.

Impressionism speaking for our community

It is sad to see the museum’s French Impressionist paintings commercialized at the brand-new Lucas County Glass City Convention Center — including our only remaining Cezanne, Avenue at Chantilly, which is featured as anonymous wallpaper framing a multi-level staircase. This is the painting that was promised to the Chicago Cezanne Exhibition. Obviously, the museum and the Lucas County government believe that Impressionism speaks for our community. They are also using an uncredited Van Gogh for their two-story escalator alcove and a uncredited Monet on a large vinyl mural to decorate the second floor hallway. According to The Blade’s news story on the new Public Art, the convention center is “showcasing the museum’s collection.” Yet just eight months ago, the museum sold three original paintings from their small and valuable Impressionist collection that people came from near and far to see. That Adam Levine chose these paintings for the convention center, out of 30,000 possible choices, right after the unpopular and controversial deaccession of the Impressionist paintings, shows a frightening lack of honesty, integrity, vision, sensitivity and leadership.

Pass the remote, please

Recently, a new communications manager was hired at the museum who lives in Lansing Michigan. Her message to the people of Toledo was that Toledoans want to see themselves on the walls. The irony of an out-of-towner telling Toledoans what they want to see at the museum! The museum has a new department — Branding — and the director of the Branding department lives in Colorado. The Curator of Antiquities, Carlos Picon, is an art dealer in New York. (no kidding!) The African Art Curator, Lanisa Kitchiner, is the Chief of African and Middle Eastern Division at the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Why is our museum director turning the controls over to the East Coast and the West?

We can be thankful to Marcy Kaptur for working so devotedly for our Midwest community for the past 41 years. We are extremely lucky to have her fighting for us in Congress for all these decades. The Toledo Museum of Art has had seven directors during those 41 years. (If only we could have cloned Otto Wittmann, the museum’s fourth director, who grew the museum for 30 years.)

Marcy Kaptur is the real deal. With Marcy Kaptur, as with the Toledo Museum of Art, you won’t know what you are missing until it is gone.

Another “real deal” is Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones, mayor of Toledo 1897-1904, whose house stood where the Toledo Museum of Art Peristyle stands today, and who inspired Marcy Kaptur so much that she wrote her college thesis on him. See my post from 2021 to put into perspective the progressive beginnings and democratic legacy of the Toledo Museum of Art: Whitlock, Jones and June Boyd

Categories
Artists of Toledo

If “Golden Rule” Jones was mayor today

Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones is ranked the fifth best mayor in the history of the United States.

If Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones (mayor of Toledo 1897-1904) was mayor today….

He would answer my emails!

But that’s not all….

For good use of the pandemic federal “rescue grant,” he would help Toledoans with their gas and electric utility bills, since the pandemic made the costs go up so high.  He would already have given us municipally-owned broadband.

He would make parks safe for children again — the same parks (and more) that he started in his first mayoral tenure.

He would do all he could to stop the spiraling high murder rate that is killing our children.

He would pronounce “Home Rule!” to Lucas County Commissioners to stop their quest on taxing 117,000 city homeowners for ditch clean up that the people of Toledo already take care of quite well without the county’s interference…

He would eschew cronyism and make sure that all construction maintenance jobs for the city are triple-bid, not issued with the routine “emergency” status that most jobs are labeled today. Sam “Golden Rule” Jones would support free enterprise and competition between contractors, without the public’s top dollar doled out to government “friends.”

If Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones were mayor today, he would govern with a conscience.

In the old days, he kept saloons open on Sundays despite pressure from the churches because he felt the working class needed a place to relax on their day off, just as the upper-class enjoyed their smoking rooms.

That didn’t make him popular with the clergy, in spite of his great moral municipal experiment.

Excerpts from Toledo mayor (1907-1912) Brand Whitlock’s memoir, Forty Years of It.

Back then, Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones occasionally sat in for judges to hear cases. He’d find any excuse to keep people out of jail, because jails were dangerous. He put an end to the incarceration of the homeless.

Prisoners were hung up in the bull-rings for thirty days, lowered to the floor only to sleep at night; “such things have gone on and they are going on today, but nobody cares.”

“Golden Rule” Jones was a wealthy industrialist. He gave his mayoral salary away personally each and every month to people in need.

He wasn’t popular in politics, in fact, he was a man without a party. The politicians tried their best to get rid of him, but the public loved him. When he died his untimely death, the entire city came out to mourn his loss.

“Golden Rule” Jones’ house was situated on the very site of the Peristyle Theater at the Toledo Museum of Art, the concert hall that was built in 1933. The Toledo Museum of Art shares Sam Jones’ illuminating spirit — the old museum director, George Stevens, in his own way, was quite a bit like Jones, and his spirit carries on at the art museum. To give one small example, the museum opened its doors on a traditionally closed Monday on January 17, 2022 to honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. It was a warm embrace in a cold city.

In the interest of history and synchronicity, 110 years ago on that day, on January 17, 1912, the newly built Toledo Museum of Art on Monroe Street was opened to the public. After Edward Drummond Libbey opened the doors, Jones’s successor, Mayor Brand Whitlock, presented the museum with the key to the city.

Former city councilman June Boyd with some of her great grandkids (above). June is on a mission to make Toledo safe for children. Good luck, June! Below, “Golden Rule” Jones’ house, situated where Peristyle now stands.

If Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones was mayor today, and if I sent him an email, he’d have the courage to answer it. The root word of courage is Love. What a strange concept for the government, courage is love.

But it worked before – it could work again. After all, there is a good reason why our beloved Sam Jones has gone down in history as the fifth best mayor of all time.*

*The American Mayor: The Best and the Worst Big-City Leaders, a scientifically compiled survey of mayors by a panel experts, published in 1999.

Categories
Artists of Toledo

Whitlock, Jones and June Boyd

June Boyd with her great granddaughter, Leilani, photographed at the Toledo Museum of Art on October 27, 2021. “I’m a fighter and I’m looking to provide a better future not only for my family, but for all these little children I spend time with.” June Boyd, Second Wind, Interview by Rev. Donald L. Perryman, PhD, Sojourner Truth, Sept. 18, 2019 (Note that baby Leilani came along after the publication of that interview two years ago. She now has a new great granddaughter, one month old, so when June Boyd says she wants a better future for the kids, she means business!)

June Boyd

June Boyd is one sharp octogenarian. Two years ago, she ran for city council at age 84. She’s a great grandmother raising two of her great grandchildren. She’s an activist for children and is fighting the blight and violence she has seen grown out of control in Toledo.

After 60 years in politics, June Boyd is very wise. She has experienced many firsts in her long Toledo history. When she was just two years old, she moved to Toledo with her mother from Georgia to the shiny new Brand Whitlock housing project on Junction Avenue behind the Toledo Museum of Art. It was a great place to live, with all the modern appliances. The first generation growing up at Brand Whitlock reads like a who’s who in the history of Black Toledo.

June Boyd was the first African-American to graduate from St. Ursula Academy high school, in 1953. To get her enrolled in the what was then an all-white girls Catholic school, in 1948, her mother called and asked if they would take black girls. The nun answered, “I don’t see why not!” When Ned Skeldon, president of the Lucas County Board of Commissioners, put out the word in 1959 that the county board would like to hire African-Americans, she was the first to be hired, and she worked for Skeldon himself. She paved the way for many black women working in politics. In 1993, she along with Edna Brown were the first two black women elected for Toledo City Council.

She did not win the election in 2019, but still works her agenda in the community to improve conditions for children in Toledo’s central city. She writes letters and gives interviews. Lucky for us, she keeps on keeping on, and she does it for the kids.

“I recall Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz stating it was his intention to hire 30, 40 and 50 year olds in his administration totally excluding senior citizens or anyone over 50 who just might have the wisdom and knowledge to address the foregoing,” Letter to the Editor from June Boyd, Sojourner’s Truth, Sept. 30, 2021

Toledo sadly lacks the wisdom and knowledge of what once made it great. The city eschews the hiring of senior citizens or anyone close to being a wise elder. Memory of the past is the first to go in times of corruption, and we are living in corrupt times.

The Toledo Museum of Art is built on the same ground on which Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones had once lived.
Golden Rule Jones

Who knows about Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones? He was the Mayor of Toledo from 1897 until he died in 1904.

Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones is ranked the 5th all-time best mayor in the United States. Jones built Toledo’s first city playgrounds and public swimming pools.

Jones was a millionaire who gave away his entire mayoral salary every month to needy people. He built the Golden Rule Park for his employees and gave them instruments for their newly-formed Golden Rule Band. He gave his workers 8-hour work days, paid vacations, health insurance and Christmas bonuses. He made his fortune in the oil business, a consequence of the oil monopoly that would not be broken up until five years after his death. Rich through ugly monopoly at age 43, Jones had an existential moment where he saw clearly that he had to live by the golden rule. Thus, he was elected mayor.

Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones died of a sudden illness at age 57, but he had a protege – the young lawyer and novelist, Brand Whitlock.

Brand Whitlock

Whitlock was an artist and intellectual at heart, without much interest in money. He served as Mayor of Toledo from 1906 to 1914, when President Wilson appointed him minister/ambassador to Belgium. He then served overseas throughout the Great War until 1921, when he moved to the French Rivera to write his books. He died in Cannes at the age of 65. Two years later, in 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt named Toledo’s magnificent new housing project, the “Brand Whitlock Homes.”

Whitlock and Jones served during 15 years of the Progressive era. Their spirit was similar to that of the Toledo Museum of Art, founded in 1901, the foundation of which embraced his time and literally, his space. It was right beneath the Peristyle.

Brand Whitlock by Israel Abramofsky – a gift to the mayor from the young artist, who befriended him, and as mayor, Whitlock wrote Abramofsky a recommendation for his study in Paris.  Samuel “Golden Rule” Jones
The real deal

Golden Rule Jones made the City of Toledo livable — he sought to turn love into municipal policy, feeling that “each person could reach a kind of perfection just as plants reach perfect beauty.” By building parks, playgrounds, public swimming pools and the zoo, he helped children and families thrive.

Jones advocated for municipal ownership of utilities, to do away with the corruption of “closed backroom deals” made by city council members and their buddies. A good utilization of municipal ownership today could be city-owned broadband that would cover the entire city. Imagine the savings as well as the access. Like healthcare for all! Ha ha!

Jones and Whitlock fought for “home rule” to protect the rights of the city against the state. It’s a right we need to have our city invoke today in regard to the county’s over-reaching ditch petition, which appears more like a closed backroom deal between the city and the county, and now we the citizens of Toledo need to be protected from them!

For a while, Toledo became a better place to live, all because of the innocent, pure vision of Sam Golden Rule Jones. He was the real deal. The entire city came to his funeral, he was so loved.

Brand Whitlock Homes over the decades, torn down in 2012 and replaced by Collingwood Green, mostly senior-living.
Broken playgrounds at Gunckel Park and Ashley Park, 1978. Kids protesting, 1978. Photos © Penny Gentieu
Losing connections

Today when we hear the name, Brand Whitlock, instead of it conjuring up this great progressive mayor and novelist, we tend to think of the failed Brand Whitlock housing project instead. The Brand Whitlock Homes were once was great, then pushed down the memory hole. June Boyd remembers.

A happy childhood at the Brand Whitlock Homes is the reason why June Boyd advocates so diligently for Toledo’s youth —

“We need a total overhaul: Swayne Field could have a bowling alley; Warren Sherman could have a skating rink; there are dozens of vacant land that could be putt-putt golf and go-karts for our kids. I personally have to drive my grandchildren a long way to get the go-karts they love. Why do we not have them in the central city which would not only create employment, it would be a boost to our neighborhood, and something we could teach our young to appreciate.” Letter to the Editor from June Boyd, Sojourner’s Truth, Sept. 30, 2021

How about more police, to police the outrageous crime spiking in Toledo? How about cleaning up the central city blight? Can’t the city make parks and playgrounds safe? Why such a low percentage of police in our community compared to the 8.8 million population in New York City, a city with nearly twice as many police officers per capita than Toledo, and less per capita crime?

“There are many adults around here who graduated from school and they are illiterate, and then you wonder why they can’t get any jobs, and not to mention the drug problem, the homelessness, the abandonment and the fact that people have gotten so beat down until they don’t have any encouragement to do anything else.” June Boyd, Second Wind, Interview by Rev. Donald L. Perryman, PhD, Sojourner Truth, Sept. 18, 2019

Groundbreaking ceremony 43 years ago today, on October 31, 1978, for the Wayman Palmer YMCA.  Wayman Palmer, _?_, Sandy Isenberg, _?_, Bill Copeland, _?_. Photo © Penny Gentieu
The Wisdom of elders

It means a great deal to know someone as wise and experienced as June Boyd and to be able to benefit from her perspective. I asked Ms. Boyd if she could identify people in this photo I shot at this groundbreaking ceremony on October 31, 1978. She gave me three names. Who else could do that — she was there 43 year ago, and she is still here with us. Although two men, Wayman Palmer and Bill Copeland, are not. How great June Boyd is for her wisdom alone! If only she had won city council instead of her opponent who won, who actually got arrested a year later for fraud along with three other city council members — talk about corruption!

“It’s time to pay attention to the children. Teachers, ministers, grandparents, and responsible parents, notice what children are doing. If they have a gun, where did it come from? If they are neglected, they become pawns for adults who want to take advantage of them for their own profit… We must take an interest in our youth… Do something!” June Boyd, Let’s come together to save Toledo’s children, The Blade, Oct. 9, 2021