“Maybe it is a fantastic collection, but the museum is a public trust: nonprofit, tax exempt and government supported,” said Noah Kupferman, a former specialist at Sotheby’s who teaches a course called Fine Art as a Financial Asset at New York University. “It is supposed to be an independent arbiter of taste and art-historical value. It is not supposed to surrender itself to a trustee and donor whose collection stands to be enhanced in value by a major museum show.”
Rare gift for the public to take more than a peek into Dannou's extensive collection? Seized moment for the appreciation of the private collection's value in a time when museums "have to get creative" with all-expenses-paid shows? Albeit any other collection in the hands of Koons would probably end up looking private, this one raises questions of public trust and insider trading. Beyond Jannou's position as a trustee of the museum, his unequivocal remark that, "Some people may think some things. For me, it’s a nonissue. I know who I am and what I am doing" begs the question whether the museum has any say, and the even more shocking musing - does the museum still want a voice? Art and artists have long left the codes of the mummifying halls of history, the norms of the white cube, the acropolis of the art gods - to make golums and destory golums of their own - yet the art world remains art's community of practice. And in lean times, it is a community that debates as it watches the New Museum and many others nod to lined pockets... while Sotheby's recent auction estimates on Modern masters are outstripped in the $millions.
Is this brouhaha of political revolution? The evidence of a smooth economic takeover? They say, "Capital goes where it's wanted, and stays where it's well treated." (Walter Wriston, former CEO of Citibank). Perhaps the art world is not so different.
"In discussing the New Museum show, several museum leaders cautioned against what Thomas Campbell, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, described as “overly puritanical” judgments about “the delicate dance” between museums and collectors."
Is this post-modern multiplication of possibilities? Really new ideas for new art? Or the new face of the oldest idea?
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