That’s “Rust Red Hills” (1930), by Georgia O’Keeffe above. Does it seem “conservative” to you? Does “conservative” even seem like a word that can be relevant to such a painting?
Welcome to the weird court petition filed by Valparaiso University in Indiana. The school wants to be able to get around the terms of a large testamentary gift that it happily accepted in 1953. Percy Sloan donated millions of dollars and hundreds of fine art works in honor of his father, Junius R. Sloan, a famous artist in the Hudson River School. His will directed that any art acquired with the funds must be “exclusively by American artists preferably of American subjects” and “of the general character known as conservative and of any period of American art.” The University wants to sell some of the most valuable paintings it purchased with Sloan’s bequest, including the one above, to fund the construction of new dormitories.
The university needs legal permission to violate the terms of Sloan’s donation, so its petition argues that the original purpose of Sloan’s gift is moot; it can be now used for improving the physical structures on campus. Beside, the school argues now, the O’Keefe paintings shouldn’t have been bought under the bequest’s restrictions because they are “representational” and insufficiently “conservative,” so selling them now won’t betray the donor’s intent anyway.
What a mess.
Judge Michael Fish of Porter County Superior Court is considering the university’s petition to break the charitable trust, and must also deal with a motion to intervene from Richard Brauer, 96, whose name is now on the campus museum where the paintings at issue are displayed. Sloan had no heirs, so Brauer is the only could block the university’s plans. He regards the sale as reducing the prestige and values of the museum that bears his name. He is is fighting the sale because he says that exposing students to great works of art should hold a higher priority at a university than buildings. “The masterpiece painting is a great painting, and it’s a great teacher,” Brauer says. “We’d lose three great teachers.”
The appraisal and art advisory firm Sterling Teel Capital argues in its support of the university’s petition that “Rust Red Hills” (and American modernist art in general) is not conservative because it is abstract and “rejects the mere transcription of a place.” Chicago art historian Wendy Greenhouse, in contrast, supports the effort to block the sale by arguing that “conservative” is “a highly relative term.” Gee, ya think? If the collection interpreted the word as it was understood in 1953, she says, it could legally exclude work by Native American or black artists.
Ah! “Conservative” means “racist.” Of course! Percy Sloan must have been a racist then? What a nice, respectful, grateful way for Valparaiso University to treat a generous donor!
It has been pointed out in the debate over the sale that Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, among others, claimed to admire Georgia O’Keeffe’s work, and they were conservatives. Or racists. Whatever.
The ultimate court battle is too polluted by foggy issues, definitions, and matters of standing to be of any use in determining the rights and wrongs of this train wreck, so I guess it’s up to me.
Ethics Alarms rules..
1. Universities always happily accept large gifts with severe limitations, confident that they can ignore the donor’s wishes eventually and that nobody will care or take measures to stop them. The practice is unethical: I have witnessed this phenomenon first hand.
As the capital gift fundraiser for Georgetown Law Center, I obtained a significant donation to renovate the crumbling front of the building from the family of a prominent alum, an admired judge. A plaque with a bas relief of his face dedicated the new structure to his eternal memory. Today there is no evidence of the man in that spot at all, as the building has been expanded and the area once dedicated to him obliterated.
If institutions accept a gift, they should clarify at the outset what its commitment is, and the government should hold them to it if no surviving family members will. Strictly. If the donor wants to allow flexibility for altered conditions or allow an expiration date on the terms, wonderful. If the institution isn’t willing to agree to the terms and won’t promise to abide by them in the future, then it shouldn’t accept the gift.
2. In this case, the term “conservative” is and was too vague and variable to support any coherent restrictions or policy. What was radical in 1953 is considered stodgy today. Even in 1953, everyone should have been able to see this dispute coming. Donors need to be responsible; Sloane’s lawyer should have advised him to clarify what he meant. It is unethical for people to try to manipulate others from the grave like this, or to cause future chaos by their carelessness and negligence.
3. Valparaiso is doing what it believes is in the best interests of the institution and its students, and its leaders should be allowed to make these decisions unimpeded.
4. If Brauer’s gift that got the museum named after him specifically gave him veto power over decisions regarding the collection, then his objection to the sale should be decisive. Otherwise, he should stop meddling.
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[More details about this case are here. This is a “gift link” so you don’t have to worry about the New York Times paywall, which I pay to get past so you don’t have to.]
Ethics Alarms 
I don’t think the definition of “conservative” comes into play. It wholly depends on whether the charitable trust allows the sale of art acquired using the funds (and if so, what restrictions might be on the proceeds from such sale).
It would seem to be a bit of money laundering if the sale of “non-conservative” art arguably improperly acquired with the funds, were then used to purchase non-art altogether.
The university even claiming that the art it wants to sell seems to be an effort to confuse the court. If the art passed muster at the time of acquisition, meeting the criteria of American origin and “conservative”, there doesn’t seem to be any legitimate basis for second guessing that assessment.
And even if it were decisively proven to be improperly acquired, the only ethical course would be to return the proceeds to the fund for future aquisitions or maintenance of the remaining collection.
First they came for statues of generals, paintings of founding fathers, now mountains! Where will it end?
Willem de Kooning, Woman and Bicycle, 1952–53. Oil, enamel, and charcoal on linen, 76 1/2 × 49 1/8 in. (194.3 × 124.8 cm). Whitney Museum of American Art, New York
I don’t see the bicycle.
Hah! May have been in an earlier version. He was famous for scratching off entire paintings and redoing them.
Willem de Kooning was a big deal in the early ‘fifties. I think this gives a little context on what “conservative” meant in the deed of gift.
de Kooning had issues.
I think Valpo’s argument that O’Keefe’s work is not “conservative” has some merit to it. Her work was representational but with a weirdly organic and sex organ overtone. I’d never seen this painting. For a southwestern landscape, it is remarkable in that it looks more like a pile of entrails than mountains.
The most aggravating dispute of this sort I think was the Ford donation of Henry and Edsel Ford Auditorium in Detroit. The land was on the waterfront and donated to ‘the people of Detroit’ so they would always have riverfront access. Fast forward and this is actually the last public access to the riverfront and the City of Detroit wants to sell it. They claim that the city IS ‘the people’. The judge, of course, agreed over the Ford family’s protestations that the gift was for ‘the people’ so they would never lose riverfront access.
I guess the lesson is: never donate anything to an institution that you intend to be displayed or accessible for more than 10 years. If you have something that is significant that should be available to people to view or use or experience, you need to keep control of it yourself. All universities, governments, and nonprofits will eventually destroy or sell it when it becomes convenient to do so.
Amen.
Valparaiso needs only to wait until the 96 year old petitioner dies in order to dispose of whatever part(s) of the gift it wants to with no restrictions on how the proceeds will be spent. If I were Valparaiso, I’d withdraw any plan to sell; as long as Mr Brauer is alive, he is the arbiter of whether this and other artwork is “conservative.” (How on earth did a lawyer drafting this caveat fail to realize how subjective “conservative” is?)
I’m not a fan of Georgia O’Keefe. My knowledge is limited to knowing she paints vaginas in all of her works, but the painting at issue doesn’t have any vaginas (that I can see) in it. I could be convinced that this makes the painting relatively conservative.
i could also be convinced that this is painting is of a lake in NW British Columbia on the Alaska Highway; I have photos that are stunningly similar. If only I knew where I put them.