Randolph College, the Lynchburg, Va. school that’s been thinking about selling off some of its art collection to raise money for its depleted general endowment, has gone beyond the thinking stage. The New York Times reports this morning that the college has consigned four works to Christie’s for its Nov. 29 auction. Those include Men of the Docks by George Bellows, which is expected to bring $25 to $32 million.
A terrible decision but not a total surprise. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS), an academic accrediting body, has warned Randolph that its finances are out of order. (It’s total endowment is around $140 million. The art collection housed at the school’s Maier Museum is estimated to be worth more than $100 million. You do the math.) SACS was planning another review by the end of this year that could have led to Randolph’s accreditation being suspended — a disaster for any school. Randolph meanwhile has gone to court to seek a judge’s opinion as to whether it could sell or share paintings that it purchased with funds from an alumna bequest. Those amounted to just 36 works out of its total of more than 3500, but some very choice ones, including an Edward Hopper.
People I’ve spoken to who were connected to the school’s dealings with SACS say that a sticking point has been SACS’ unwillingness to grant Randolph an extension on that next review of its finances. That might give the school more time to finish a sharing arrangement with Alice Walton’s forthcoming Crystal Bridges Museum — or any other museum in a position to pay millions for the right to share the Randolph collection. And that deal that would at least allow the school to take back its art on alternating years or some similar arrangement.
But that end of the year deadline is now just a few months away. So the school has rushed to market with other works. People connected to the school’s art committee, which has been looking for alternative solutions, were complaining to me yesterday that school administrators have kept them out of the information loop for weeks. Now we know why.
And over in the Elton John photo controversy, Sir Elton has asked the Baltic Center for Contemporary Art, the British gallery that was displaying a large suite of Nan Goldin photos owned by him, to take down the entire show. Last week the Center turned over one of the pictures, Klara and Edda Belly-dancing, to British police out of concern that it might violate child pornography laws.
And if by some stretch of somebody’s imagination it does? Then as Mr. Bumble says in Oliver Twist. “In that case the law is an ass.”