The Baltimore Museum Sold Art to Acquire Work by Underrepresented Artists. Here's What It Bought--

[demmiblue]

It’s rare for an announcement about traditionally dry museum policy to generate international press attention in outlets as diverse as the Guardian and the Drudge Report. But the Baltimore Museum of Art‘s decision to sell off seven works by white male artists to create a war chest to fund acquisitions of art by women and artists of color drove a traditionally hermetic discussion about museum practices into the mainstream.

Now, the museum’s closely watched decision is beginning to bear fruit. The Baltimore institution is announcing today the first round of acquisitions purchased in full or in part with the more than $7.5 million generated from its sale of works by Andy Warhol, Franz Kline, and other 20th-century masters at Sotheby’s in May.

The new additions to the museum’s collection include Jack Whitten‘s monumental mosaic 9.11.01 (2006), a response to 9/11 that incorporates ash and molten materials from the site of the tragedy. The Baltimore Museum’s director Christopher Bedford describes the work, which Whitten created over the course of five years after witnessing the attack on the World Trade Center from his studio, as “the most significant acquisition I’ll ever make for a museum.”



He thinks so much of the work that he predicts that in 100 years, it will regarded as highly as Matisse’s Blue Nude (1907), which is currently considered to be the crown jewel of the BMA’s collection. Bedford says he has been trying to acquire it for more than a decade, but Whitten only agreed to part with it shortly before he died, when the museum was planning a retrospective of his sculpture.

https://news.artnet.com/art-world/baltimore-deaccessioning-proceeds-1309481

[Scurrilous]

1. K&R

[Equinox Moon]

2. Thanks for the post. Baltimore has a woman transforming

that city. I don't know her name, but I heard on the radio that many other cities wanted her to help them with their city and she declined. She said her love and passion is to transform Baltimore. Do you know who she is?

[demmiblue]

4. Hmmm, I don't know who she is.

I would love to know her story if you by chance remember her name.

[Glorfindel]

3. K&R n/t