The Los Angeles Times weighs in on the fiasco facing the City of Long Beach and the Long Beach Museum of Art in this article, suggesting that the City’s plans to sell museum art to pay for a $3 million debt that the museum owes by September is reminiscent of a failed technique used by Josef Stalin in the early 1930’s. Times writer Christopher Knight takes particular aim at Mayor Bob Foster and Councilmember Patrick O’Donnell.
Writes Knight:
So if the city forced a sale from the museum’s most important collections, the bond money could probably be raised. Under a cooperative agreement, the city of Long Beach owns the museum and 1,400 works of art acquired prior to 1985, including the Wichner Collection.
The question is, to what end? Why would the mayor and city council want to punish the public, which effectively owns the art collection, by selling off some of its best and most profound work to pay bills? It’s a foolish, dare I say “Stalin-esque” short-term answer to a problem exacerbated by the bigger fiscal mess of the state and the nation.
Knight also points out that Stalin’s plan failed when the $7 million raised was quickly spent and Russia still found itself in the throes of the Great Depression. His solution? The City should allow the museum to refinance to cut down on its debt, and Knight also suggests that the economy will soon turn around – based on a study from Chapman University – which presumably would get the LBMA back on its feet.
Interesting take. But few are sympathetic to the museum after an audit last year revealed “improper” financial decisions that put the LBMA in this position in the first place. What do you think?