Former Maier Museum director will research selling art

The former director of Randolph College’s Maier Museum of Art has been granted a fellowship with the Smithsonian Institution to conduct research for a book on the practice of selling items from museum collections for profit.

Karol Lawson was one of three Randolph College employees to publicly resign her position last year over the school’s decision to auction four paintings to raise money, a practice known as deaccessioning.

In July, Lawson took a position at her alma mater, Sweet Briar College, as interim head of the art gallery. As a Fellow in Museum Practice with the Smithsonian’s Center for Education and Museum Studies, she’ll spend a total of eight weeks, split up between work holidays, at the institution in Washington, D.C.

“I’m kind of returning to the mother ship in a way — My first work at a museum was as a volunteer at the (Smithsonian’s) National Museum of Natural History,” she said.

Lawson is one of four recipients of the “highly competitive” annual fellowship, said Nancy Fuller, research program manager at the center.

“She writes a very thoughtful proposal about the importance of understanding the notion of deaccessioning, and how that relates to museum ethics,” Fuller said. “Our museum association’s code of ethics states that if you deaccession, the money is to be put back into the museum collections. So that’s what she’s looking into — how is that implemented or not implemented.”

Each fellow will receive $6,000, plus travel money as part of the program, Fuller said.

Lawson said her interest in writing on the topic was sparked by her experiences at Randolph College, but she plans to include many examples beyond that, too.

“The function of the book is really not to rehash that particular example,” she said. “… More, my intention, really, is to get people to think about this whole systemic issue. There’s been a whole procession in the past couple of years of museums removing things from their collections to raise money.”

That paired with the economic crisis leads to worries that museums may make deaccessioning a common practice, she said.

“We all need to be vigilant in making sure that that kind of a social contract isn’t violated just because it’s easy, just because it looks like the simplest, most expedient thing to do at the moment,” she said. “It really is, I sincerely believe, a matter of public trust for museums. Communities have placed this trust in us to care for cultural materials.”

The many resources and museum professionals affiliated with the Smithsonian also will be a valuable asset to Lawson as she researches varying thoughts and experiences on the topic, she said. Lawson hopes museum professionals and museum studies programs at Sweet Briar and elsewhere will use the book.

Lawson also is active with professional museum groups. Monday, she was notified of her appointment to a three-year term on the College Art Association’s Museum Committee.

In February, she is scheduled to give a lecture at the association’s annual conference in Los Angeles on how she and colleagues at Randolph College helped students understand the school’s situation involving the art as it developed.

Lawson also is co-author of “The Impermanent Collection: Lessons from an Academic Art Museum,” an article written with Laura Katzman, former director of Randolph’s museum studies program who also resigned in protest last year. Katzman now is an art history professor at James Madison University.

The article is scheduled for release in the January-February 2009 issue of Museum, a journal published by the American Association of Museums.

THREE PAINTINGS AWAIT AUCTION AT STORAGE FACILITY

More than a year after their initial proposed sale date and amidst a declining art market, three Randolph College paintings remain in storage awaiting auction.

“We will sell the remaining three paintings when it’s financially advantageous for the college,” spokeswoman Brenda Edson said. “Market conditions will dictate when that will happen.”

She said the college would not speculate on when that would be.

In May, the first painting auctioned, Rufino Tamayo’s “Trovador,” sold to an anonymous phone bidder for a record-breaking $7.2 million.

The other three paintings — George Bellows’ “Men of the Docks,” one of Edward Hicks’ “Peaceable Kingdom” paintings and Ernest Hennings’ “Through the Arroyo” — remain in a secure Christie’s fine arts storage facility in New York, Edson said.