Cleveland Museum Donor Intent Correction and More Thoughts

I should have known that anger was making me write my two Cleveland Museum posts too fast. The general violation of donor intent, is still very bad but their actions are considerably better than I stated.

First the facts---- The museum, (at this point)is not actually selling any works in it's collection to pay for it's expansion.

"To be able to proceed, the museum has chosen a highly unorthodox way out of its quandary. It has gone to court for permission to draw up to $75 million over 10 years from the interest paid out on two endowment funds and two outside, restricted trusts for acquisitions. A decision is expected by the end of this month."

Now my thoughts.

Dropping the morality of violating, donor trust, lets look at what they are doing.

Basically, the museum's leadership is taking a very high stakes gamble that by expanding the museum's size and profile, it can draw in enough visitors and supporters to secure it's fiscal health. An interesting and honestly, plausible theory. Companies and private individuals take chances like that all the time. (they used to do it with their own money) This is a major museum, with core collections in areas like Asian art that might very well attract a lot more people.

The big problem here, is that none of the people involved in making this gamble have real "skin in the game".

How high is the risk? Pretty damn high! They are planning to double their size while at the same time shrinking the endowment cushion set aside to support the museum's operating expenses in a state suffering near depression conditions. If they can barely swing the expansion costs what are the chances they can cover the costs of operating a much larger institution?

Now, let's look at the incentives these people are operating under.

Heads the gamble works and they get to play around in a much larger institution and raise their career profile. Will they get higher salaries for running a bigger place?

Tails--- it ain't their problem.

In fact, one of the main actors, Timothy Rub is scheduled to take up the directorship of the Philadelphia Museum, leaving the people of Cleveland with the risk he took on.

Here's my personal take. The institution is really engaged in an act of economic terrorism. Behind their decision is the same twisted logic that gave us the financial crisis- an attempt to secure their power by becoming "too big to fail".The funds for a somewhat more modest and rational expansion had been raised already. moreover, Cleveland is a city with tons of empty and underused warehouse and industrial buildings that might have been adopted and reused at what might have been a great savings making the city an example of innovative fruagilty instead of irrational waste.

The bigger they get, the more risks they take, the greater the impact they have on the Cleveland region; the greater chances are that people or more accurately politicians will ever allow the full impact of a screw up to be felt.If this thing blows taxpayers small businesses and any non profit without their profile will bear the costs.

Directors of non profits and politicians like Tom Murphy should be made to put some real skin in the game and be made to pay financially for the long term consequences of their decisions.

Disgusting Cleveland Museum Post Part Two

I think I'm not getting a job at the Cleveland Museum soon-- but honestly if this is how they operate, I don't want one.

It's likely this will extend into a three part post. Part one is here.

I want to preface my condemnation, by saying that yes, life can be complicated and dealing with the wishes of donors can be very complex. Time marches on, cities grow or fail, endowments fall and causes and issues change, leaving institutions to guess at how to adapt the perpetual wishes of donors to changing times.

However-- for an honest person trying to do the right thing, things are rarely as complicated as they seem. Basic principles do not change and discerning a donor's intentions is not that hard. I'm also very sypathetic to the circumstances and needs that can motivate people to do this- It still aint't right. How can you possibly expect people to make donations to charities if their expressed wishes are not followed?

The Hershey Trust did it right by gradually expanding the reach of it's mission with it's expanding it's assets while sticking to the donors wish to focus on a local community.

With the Cleveland Museum, the asset given was fine art, explicitly granted to the museum's permanent collection.

Logically one can break down the intentions of the donors by priority.

First-- They wanted the works preserved for posterity. I can take a guess they didn't donate them to be destroyed. If for example, the museum had run into problems that left in doubt their ability to protect the work, they had an obligation to get them to someone who could which might mean selling them.

Second---They intended the works to seen by the general public and did not intend the works to be put on the market and end up in a private collection.

Third----They strongly wished if at all possible that they remain in the Cleveland Museum's collection.

One needs to respect the donors as rational, and often very highly successfull human beings who put a lot of thought into their donations. If they had wanted to sell their art and donate cash to the museum-- that's what they would have done. They donated art for the museum's permanent collection. Violating or stretching donor intent should always be a last, not a first resort.

The details of this case, make it substantialy worse than the average and increasing common cases of small hard pressed institutions trying to survive. Culture Grrl has some great posts on this.

"In its court filings, the museum did not argue (as did the Barnes Foundation, Fisk University and the National Academy) that it needed relaxation of ethical guidelines or donor restrictions because its very survival was at stake. It wants to use the money to help fund the second phase of its 200,000-square-foot Rafael Viñoly-designed expansion. The projected cost of the museum's ambitious capital project (which included construction of its East Wing, above, which opened in June) ballooned from $258 million in 2005 to $350 million as of mid-2008---just before the economic bubble burst."

A real Rubicon has been crossed here and something has to be done about it.

Part Three comming soon

Disgusting Move By Cleveland Museum Violates Donor Intent Part One

I've been far too overwhelmed to post on this IMO, very important topic earlier. This happens with subjects that piss me off or move me emotionally. I always feel, I should do a perfect post; wonderfully written with links and quotes from every scource and then pretty soon I just let it go. The pile of major insults against freedom and what used to be called the rule of law grows so big, you just don't know where to start. This will be a two part post.

As bad as attacks on the living are, they still might have a chance to defend themselves. The dead have no such chance and to violate their last wishes is vile crime at least to me.

Respecting people's charitable bequests can raise tough issues, the first of which I might describe as "the dead hand problem". Suppose for example, you were very, rich in 1830 and left all your money in an endowment for those suffering from Smallpox. The disease is gone, the endowment remains and one has to make a guess as to what the donor might have wanted. This is a very common problem.

Another issue that can come up is that an endowment or foundation can grow beyond what might be resonably used for the donor's stated purpose. A great example is the Milton S Hershey Trust.

"Established in 1935 by Milton Hershey, The M.S. Hershey Foundation was created to provide educational and cultural opportunities for the citizens of Derry Township. In the early years, The M.S. Hershey Foundation concentrated on providing educational opportunities through the former Hershey Junior College, The Milton S. Hershey Medical Center — a teaching hospital, and the former Hershey Educational and Cultural Center — an alternative to formal education. The Foundation also helped manage the sports and recreation programs of the Hershey Recreation Center at Cocoa Plaza before turning over operations to Derry Township.

Starting in 1970, the Foundation continued its mission to provide cultural and educational opportunities to the Hershey community by assuming operation of Hershey Theatre.

In the 1980s, the Foundation accepted responsibility for Hershey Gardens and Hershey Museum (now The Hershey Story). The Foundation also helped establish the Hershey Community Archives in 1985 and in 1990 took ownership of ChocolateTown Square community park. Most recently, in January 2009, the Foundation established The Hershey Story, The Museum on Chocolate Avenue in downtown Hershey as a welcome addition to furthering its mission.

Milton S. Hershey established the non-profit M.S. Hershey Foundation for the educational and cultural enrichment of Derry Township residents and visitors. When he set aside 5000 shares of company stock in 1935, he couldn't have possibly envisioned that in the 21st century, the Foundation would support five outstanding sites - The Hershey Story, Hershey Gardens, Hershey Theatre, Hershey Community Archives and ChocolateTown Square. As The M.S. Hershey Foundation has expanded its scope, so has the need for community support."

Here you have a high class problem. The Hershey Company grew to a point at which the shares left in the trust could do more than just provide for the school the money was left for. People then guessed that the donor wished the money to support the Hershey community and one now has all this great stuff.

Often it's sort of a gray area (but usually it's not) For example, The Buck Trust was an foundation left by a couple in California who explicitly stated the money be used to only support causes in Marin County.This attracted people in San Francisco, who felt it was "needed more there", and that this need gave them the sacred right to break into the cash box.

"The award Friday by Judge Homer B. Thompson ended the San Francisco Foundation's lawsuit to amend the will of Beryl Buck, which stipulated that the trust fund's money go only to charities in wealthy Marin County."

A whole lot of legal fighting has ensued.

Of course one of the most famous recent cases has to do with the $5 Billion estate of Leona Helmsley who she clearly left to animal welfare causes.

“Mrs. Helmsley’s Trust Agreement and Mission Statement were clear: Help dogs. And the Trustees have not done this. Instead they pursued their own agendas with Mrs. Helmsley’s money,” said Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States.

“Every person with a will or estate—and every charity that relies on bequest income—should be profoundly concerned about this misdirection of funds.”

The trustees point out that just part of the funds left by Mrs. Helmsley could be enough to empty all the animal shelters in the country. But, whatever one might think of the wisdom of this cause--the prime fact is that we have no moral right at all to decide for her. None of the bequests of these people be called in anyway unreasonable. They just might not be what we would have done.

The same disregard for donor wishes has happened with museums but few drop to the level of criminal hubris displayed by The Cleveland Museum Of Art.

Part Two soon