Knee Jerking?

Every day it seems someone is publicly outraged about something. People channel their disapproval of an institution or person, dead or alive, into media campaigns to remove a name from a building, banish a statue from a public square, or fire those they declaim as responsible. There is no shortage of targets, reasonable or unreasonable.

Now, these so-called SJWs ("Social Justice Warriors") are coming for the museums. Specifically, they are taking aim at mega-donations that support major new projects and exhibits. The latest outrage campaign, against the family who made a fortune on the best known drug blamed for America’s opioid epidemic, has sparked new conversations about donation acceptance and recognition policies and how museums should balance gifts with potential controversies about their givers.

One purpose of these campaigns, aside from attainment of any specific objective, is public shaming.  Recent news articles have helped me understand this phenomenon. In the March 10^th edition of The New York Times there is a piece by Salvatore Scibona entitled “The Industrial Revolution of Shame.” His thesis is that new technologies have made it possible to expansively make and distribute products. The particular product Scibona fixes on is “our judgment of one another.”  

The writer expands: “ Media culture has found a sweet spot in the collective psyche – outrage.”  To which he adds: “Technology has so multiplied the outrages confronting us that they crowd out our ability to discuss much else.”  These perceptions allow me to examine one particular shaming campaign in a field with which I am familiar – museums.

Prominent photographer and activist Nan Goldin and her advocacy organization P.A.I.N. (Prescription Addiction Intervention Now) has embarked on a campaign against museums that have benefited from donations  from the Sackler family who, in return , have had galleries, buildings and programs named after them. The Sackler family founded Purdue Pharma, the maker of the addictive drug OxyContin, which is largely blamed for the horrendous opioid epidemic that has resulted in the loss of thousands of lives across the nation. Since the drug was introduced in 1996, sales have generated $35 billion for Purdue and $4 billion for the Sackler family, members of which still make up the majority of the Pharma board of directors.

The museums targeted by Ms. Goldin, on social media and by dramatic demonstrations on site, include New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, where there is a Sackler Wing and The Guggenheim, whose education department bears the Sackler name. The art museums at Harvard are also on P.A.I.N.’s target list. P.A.I.N.  demands that the Sackler name be stripped from the museums and for Pharma to fund programs combating the opioid epidemic. 

Prominent among the family’s museum naming and another campaign target is the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery at the Smithsonian in Washington DC.  Along with its neighbor The Freer Gallery of Art, it comprises the Smithsonian’s national museum of Asian art. The Sackler Gallery was founded in 1987 and named in honor of Arthur Sackler, whose foundation donated his superb collection of Asian art along with funds to establish the institution.

Arthur Sackler’s daughter Elizabeth has been vigorous in pointing out that a) Arthur Sackler died in 1990, six years before the invention of OxyContin, and b) his brothers Raymond and Mortimer bought out his share in Purdue shortly after his death. Yes, Arthur was a Sackler and yes, he was one of the founders of Purdue but he had no connection with OxyContin. So what is the rationale for demanding the removal of his name from the Gallery at the Smithsonian, which has stated it has never removed a name from a museum and has no intention of doing so in this instance? 

A statement by Dominic Esposito, a sculptor associated with P.A.I.N. provides an answer. He said “Sackler has gone from a legacy of arts and culture philanthropy to (one of) death and destruction.” Clearly that transition is the intent of the campaign, if not the clear result at present.  It is a public shaming effort designed to obscure the extended Sackler family‘s generosity to museums, hospitals and universities going back decades and to punish the family for its profitable association with OxyContin.

The likelihood of names being removed from structures or professorships is marginal, as there are contractual issues. The same would apply to return of funds. In the Smithsonian example, taking it to an absurd conclusion, I suppose there might be an asterisk placed next to Arthur Sackler’s name, much like how  Major League baseball record holders suspected of performance drug enhancement are listed:  "* Sackler Gallery not directly connected to Oxy-Contin."

The campaign appears to be having its effect. Recently The Tate Gallery Group and the National Portrait Gallery, both prominent British museums with long associations with the Sackler family, announced they would no longer seek or accept donations from the Mortimer and Raymond Sackler branch of the family. Sackler gifts to Tate have amounted to about $5.3 million over the years. The Portrait Gallery has suspended a planned $1.3 million donation from the Sackler Trust. Significantly the Tate group stated: “We do not intend to remove references to (the Sackler) historical philanthropy. “

Meanwhile in New York City, the Guggenheim announced on March 21 it would also no longer accept gifts from the Sackler family, who donated $9 million to the museum between 1995 and 2015. The museum added it has no plans to change the name of the Sackler Center for Arts Education, as the designation was made by contract. 

Purdue Pharma , still largely owned by members of the Sackler family, is facing some 1600 lawsuits over the purported  connection of OxyContin to the opioid crisis. It is reportedly considering filing for bankruptcy to protect the company while litigation drags on. On March 25^th, Purdue settled, out of court, a claim by the state of Oklahoma for $270 million. Notably a large portion of the money will go to funding  an addiction and treatment center at Oklahoma State University.

P.A.I.N. asserts that the Sackler philanthropy was purposely designed by the family to mask the “blood money” derived from the sale of opioid drugs. But as several museums have pointed out, much of the philanthropy, and the family tradition connected with it, predates the sale of OxyContin.  But this is too fine a point for the P.A.I.N and it would dilute its objective: to besmirch the Sackler name and by association institutions that have accepted the family’s money. 

The museums that so far have decided to cease accepting Sackler philanthropy are bowing to negative publicity at the expense of any public benefit the uses of those gifts might have produced. While I don’t think It does any  good to second guess such  judgment  calls,  I do agree that the ex post facto removal of the Sackler name serves no purpose except the public shaming one. That outcome is already on its way to some success, given the recent actions by the Guggenheim and two British museums.

Finding positive aspects to this tragic situation is worth the effort.  The Sackler family is increasing its funding of opioid addiction treatment programs. And conversations are underway in the charitable sector over the balance between “mega” gifts and their sources. (The Metropolitan Museum of Art for instance is reviewing its donation acceptance policies). The public scrutiny of the relationship, by the way, is not new.  In the Gilded Age, the gifts of Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller were called into question citing their history of union-busting and ruthless monopolistic practices.  Yet their names today are in in the philanthropy Parthenon

.

As for the general public I would urge resisting the common “knee jerk” reaction to public outrage issues. I have often wondered how much electricity could be generated if somehow the knees of America were attached to a generating source.  Salvatore Scibona in his article in The New York Times suggests that rather than sitting in judgment, the observer should become more of a witness to allow a calmer opportunity for formation of a balanced moral response.  That way shaming is not the objective but rather working towards deeper solutions to the crisis itself –in this case  the devastation the opioid crisis has wrought on thousands of families and its effect on our national sense of self-worth.

Comments on this and any other blog post found in the archive (viewed to the left) are welcome at gplatt63@gmail.com.  And Happy Diamond Anniversary! This is my 75th posting since I started the blog eight years ago.

Plutocratic Housing

Recently billionaire hedge fund manager Kenneth C. Griffin set, as The New York Times (January 24 2018) put it: “ a new standard for conspicuous consumption by paying a fortune for an unfinishedpiece of property in the sky.”  The fortune: $238 million (later adjusted at closing January 23^rd to $239.958 million), the unfinished property: a 24,000 square foot penthouse at 220 Central Park South in New York City. The transaction is the most expensive residential sale in U.S. history. 

It’s not as if Mr.  Griffin lacks for housing. 

He already has a penthouse in Miami ($60 million) and a mansion in London ($122 million). He is based in Chicago where last summer he paid $58.5 million for a the top four floors of a building in the affluent “Gold Coast” neighborhood, in addition to the four other houses he owns in the city. He collects real estate as ordinary mortals collect stamps or bottle caps.

Mr. Griffin who has net worth of  $10 billion has been philanthropic, reportedly donating to date $700 million.  Beneficiaries of his generosity include universities – his alma mater Harvard got $150 million in 2014 – and museums – The Museum of Modern Art received $40 million. However he has declined to sign the “Giving Pledge” organized by Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett where 150 billionaire signees so far have pledged to give away a majority of their wealth to charity.

Speaking of Mr. Buffett, the contrasts between this legendary investor and Griffin are striking, especially in the life style category. Buffett, whose net worth is estimated at $85.6 billion, continues to live in the same house in his hometown of Omaha, Nebraska  that he bought in 1958 for $31,500. He does have a house in California valued at $4 million (doghouse scale for Griffin) and reluctantly purchased a private jet he nicknamed “The Indefensible” for his corporation. He is 88 years old after all. So far he has donated $35 billion, much of it to the Gates Foundation.

A follow-up article in The New York Times of January 26 offers another contrast, generational and sociological. Brooke Astor (1902-2007), the New York socialite and philanthropist, was content to live in a 5000 square foot Park Avenue apartment. Her wealth, peanuts compared to Griffin’s, was inherited. David Rockefeller ( 1915-2017) and his wife Peggy’s  65^th Street town house was 10,000 square feet , but it was their primary residence where they raised their six children. I would venture to say that the real estate activities of Mr. Griffin would be viewed as distasteful to these old money philanthropists. Their personal acquisitions tended more to art and country estates.

This current period of vast wealth, with its yawning societal income gap, has been termed “The New Gilded Age.” Certainly the Vanderbilts and Carnegies liked their real estate too. The 54 room Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park NY, now a National Historic Site, was only lived in a few weeks a year by its owners Frederick Vanderbilt, and his wife Louise.  It was built in the late 1890s when, it must be emphasized, there was no income tax, which was not made law until 1913. Today the top marginal income tax rate is 37 percent, whereas between 1945 and 1980, during prime Astor and Rockefeller time, it was between 70 and 80 percent.

With the additional tax cuts promoted by President Trump, along with the assault on the Estate Tax (renamed the “Death Tax” by repeal adherents),  rates on the very rich may well drop even further.  So there will be even more cash for the billionaire to spend, some perhaps on philanthropy but also on “toys,” such as the $100 million + yacht complete with a certified Imax Theater recently purchased by Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder. Perhaps on board he will enjoy big screen replays of his football team’s dismal 7-9 season record in 2018.

Let me end this post with uplift, for as you have read I am not a fan of conspicuous consumption. If you are with me on this, this story from The Chronicle of Philanthropy may provide an antidote.

George Ellis, a small town doctor in the Midwest never forgot his time during the period of WW2 earning his M.D. at the University of Buffalo (UB ) School of Medicine.  After the war he moved to rural Indiana where with his wife as nurse set up a practice in his aunt’s house. He practiced medicine there for years, keeping in touch with the UB Medical School, attending reunions and striking up a friendship with the school’s vice president for advancement David Draper. Over the years, Draper visited Ellis in Indiana 50 times where they discussed how “Doc” Ellis might achieve his wish to help his beloved alma mater.

The Ellis couple was childless and lived simply in a two bedroom ranch house. They drove Buicks and Oldsmobiles. He drank bourbon (Buffalo Trace, of course) from a coffee mug.  When he wasn’t tending to patients the doctor spent time at the public library teaching himself about the stock market, researching and investing, with a small inheritance from his father as a starting point.  Along the way he set up charitable trusts. All the time his aim was UB Medical School and UB knew that.  But no one in his small city had a clue of his wealth.  He died age 87 in 2010.

In 2011 UB announced the receipt of an endowment of $40 million, established by a donor (Dr. Ellis) who wished to remain anonymous .His instructions were that his identity as the donor could only be made known after his wife’s death.  By the time his estate was settled in 2013 the donation had grown to $45 million. His wife died in 2018 whereupon the three trusts Ellis had established years before yielded another $11.8 million. The gift from Dr. Ellis to UB Medical ended up totaling $56.8 million.

I have told similar stories over the years I have been writing these blogs.  They were about quiet philanthropists unknown during their lifetimes, living simple lives, but driven by the need to help places or institutions they loved.  

There ought to be a Hall of Fame built dedicated to them. Perhaps it could even have an IMAX theatre to tell their stories.  The only thing conspicuous about them was the purity of their generosity and they should be honored.

The definition of the word philanthropy bears repeating. The Greek root, philanthropia, means love of man.  Philanthropy is the act of desiring to help humanity and is most often associated with providing financial support. I wish I could coin a word for the love of collecting real estate (suggestions anyone?). I further wish those who have that unnamed condition cure the urges by redirecting more of their vast resources to helping others.  Think of what the $238 million spent on the penthouse in the sky could do for those in need who live on the streets below?

Comments on this and previous posts (see archive to the left) are always welcome at gplatt63@gmail.com

How to Find Harmony in the Congress

Quite enough ink has been spilled, and lips flapped, about how our country is bitterly divided politically. I will not add to such analysis but will instead suggest a modest idea that might get us off on a better foot for 2019.

The 116^th Congress will convene January 3, 2019. All 435 Representatives will assemble in the House. They will be sworn in, their families looking on. There will be a prayer and then important business to transact, such as the election of the Speaker. But before that business, I suggest the House -  Democrats, Republicans -  pause to join together in song.

 

There are numerous studies that outline the benefits of singing. Some are scientific in nature.  It is widely believed that singing releases endorphins, the chemicals that affect the sense of happiness in one’s brain. Singing relieves stress by reducing muscle tension. These and other benefits are magnified by singing in a group.

A 2015 article in Open Science, a journal published by the Royal Society (UK) entitled  “Singing and Social Bonding” suggests evidence of “an ice breaker effect of singing,  in promoting fast cohesion between unfamiliar individuals, which bypasses the need for personal knowledge of group members gained through prolonged interaction.”  That certainly fits the situation in the ceremony of gathering and swearing in of a new Congress.  Lots of ice is ready and needing to be broken.

I call upon Speaker-In-Waiting Nancy Pelosi and the Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to demonstrate a simple act of bipartisanship and set the tone for a new Congress by agreeing to schedule group singing by all attendees at the ceremony on January 3, 2019. They might even  find making the decision a distraction from the government shutdown crisis. 

What to sing? An obvious choice is a patriotic selection. Not,  I say,  the “Star Spangled Banner.” Our national anthem, because of its wide vocal range, is difficult to sing for the ordinary person, thus the need for a trained soloist to render it before events. Cameras catching crowds at stadiums during its rendition will see some singing part of it, some lip syncing and some blank faces that want to shout “play ball” instead. If you want an example of a crowd getting into singing its national song, check out on YouTube 70,000 Welsh fans before a rugby match belting out “Bread of Heaven ” (Cwm  Rhondda).

.

The music for the “Star Spangled  Banner” was first composed for a British men’s social club in 1773. Called “Anacreon in Heaven” It soon became a popular drinking song, which may have it made its musical challenges less daunting to its original singers.  It became well known in the U.S. Amateur poet Francis Scott Key, inspired by the flag still flying at Ft. McHenry during a 1814 naval battle in Baltimore wrote the lyrics to fit  with “Anacreon” that ultimately became  our National Anthem. 

For the congressional group singing I suggest instead the patriotic song and hymn  “America The Beautiful.”  My reasons have to do the ease by which its lovely melody can be sung by amateurs and by its lyrics, which were composed originally as a poem in 1895 by Katherine Lee Bates, then a professor of English at Colorado College. She was inspired by the views she enjoyed from a visit to Pikes Peak (“O Beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain”).  It was later set to music originally composed in 1882 by a New Jersey church musician Samuel Augustus Ward .

As contrasted to the militaristic nature of the Star Spangled Banner (“rockets’ red glare, bombs bursting in air”) America the Beautiful, as its title suggests, celebrates the beauty of our vast land (“…for purple mountain majesties. Above the fruited plain.”)  In its clearly patriotic emphasis it also several times calls upon the Almighty for help: “America! America! God shed his light on thee.”   Surely that appeal would be welcomed these days, especially in the House Chamber.

All four verses should be sung (when was the last time you heard or tried any but the first verse of the National Anthem?) as they have important messages for this ad hoc choir. Consider these excerpts: 

“ America, America, God mend thy every flaw, confirm thy soul in self control. Thy liberty in law”

“And crown they good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea” 

The singers may need some initial encouragement so I suggest finding a chorus in support. To avoid partisan bickering over which one or where it’s from,  let’s settle on the glee club from The U.S. Naval Academy from nearby Annapolis. But its participation must not take the place of everyone in the chamber singing together.

 

I guarantee a robust rendition by all.  And maybe this way there will be a few minutes of harmony in the U.S.  House of Representatives. 

Comments on this and other posts to be found in the archives to the left are welcome at gplatt63@gmail.com

Slow Down! An art museum's solution...

It doesn’t need to be said: we are all going too fast, in our cars, in our lives, in our frenetic need for access to information. From Paul Simon’s lyric “Slow down, you move too fast, you got to make the morning last…” (1966) to Wordsworth’s “The world is too much with us; late and soon, getting and spending, we lay waste our powers” (1807) poets have long chided us for our desire to accelerate and acquire

.

One art institution is making a counter statement. Glenstone, the creation of wealthy collectors Mitch and Emily Rales, is a museum of world class contemporary art that opened in 2006 on their 230 acre property in Potomac MD and which, after months of work, has been dramatically expanded. It now features five times its original gallery space, new landscaping, outdoor art installations, walking trails and an online reservation system, very busy since the re-opening of Glenstone in October.  In fact, presently the earliest reservation you can get is for February 2019.

Why? The Rales couple purposely caps Glenstone’s admission-free attendance at 400 per day.  They want to provide a contemplative experience for their visitors.  This attitude is counter to the populist approach museums have had for years. Throw the doors open and y’all come. Even with steep admission prices, such as the Met and MOMA, the galleries, especially for special exhibitions, are jammed. But aside from the fact that you “got in” how much time and visual access do you have with the art displayed? I experienced the infamous “Mona Lisa Moment” cited recently by the Washington Post’s critic Phillip Kennicott at The Louvre some years ago. If you’re lucky, you might get a glimpse of the iconic painting by peering over the shoulders and raised cameras of hundreds of visitors jostling for position.  

Kennicott equates the careful pacing of the Glenstone experience to the Rales’ interest in the growing “slow art” movement, in which some curators and designers are looking to offer visitors a chance for “sustained attention” to works of art. For instance the new indoor galleries at Glenstone were designed to offer 300 square feet in which to move about, as opposed to the average of 32 square feet at the Guggenheim in New York. What’s more, there are no stanchions or barriers between the art and viewer to impede the feeling of connection and immediacy. 

It should be noted this special experience is due to the Rales’ great wealth and generosity. It is a small institution compared to the behemoth METs and MOMAs, with huge curatorial, administrative and maintenance staffs and facilities that need constant feeding.  Nevertheless, the Rales are asking: what comes first - the attendance numbers/income or the visitor’s experience?

The October opening of the new Glenstone received widespread national media attention and praise , hence the backlog in securing a reservation. I look forward to December 1 when Glenstone  (at www.glenstone.org)  will start accepting online reservations for February forward.  But we all better act fast, to guarantee a  reservation  for a slow experience.

p.s. while waiting for December 1 and the Glenstone reservations to open up try the video site  Slow TV premiered by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation.  As an antidote to the action hero milieu in the media so popular today, there you can experience, in its entirety, a 9 hour train ride carefully filmed solely from the engineer’s cab.  

Comments on this post and others in the archive to the left are welcome at: gplatt63@gmail.com