intangible heritage – Abigail R. Gautreau

The Real Africa – Pilanesburg National Park & Game Reserve

When you tell people that you’re going to South Africa*, everyone wants to know if you’re planning to go on safari. A lot of well-meaning people chimed suggesting that I go to Kruger National Park, not realizing that Kruger is about an eight-hour drive from Johannesburg or that it’s the sort of place you need to visit for weeks. It’s definitely one of my dreams to visit Kruger, but it was never going to happen in the amount of time or budget I had for this trip. I did, however, manage to squeeze in a trip to Pilanesburg National Park and Game Reserve, which is less well-known but only a two-hour drive from Joburg.

Landscape with water at dawn — On the way to Pilanesburg (photo by author)

Pilanesburg is a beautiful park. It is situated on an ecological transition zone, which means that it is home to a broad array of African wildlife. We saw lots of impala, elephants, zebra, hippo, wildebeest/gnu, giraffes, and warthogs, along with some harder-to-spot animals like ostrich, a white rhino, and even a leopard. Though I’m no photographer and of course I forgot my camera in the US (typical), I got some nice shots on my rented iPhone, especially when I held it up to the binoculars, because I am nothing if not resourceful.

white rhinocerus grazing beside a lake — A white rhino, THANKS INGENUITY. (author’s image–as if anyone else would take credit for that)

A lone gnu — The lone gnu. (author’s image)

Although I had a great time enjoying the natural landscape and seeing the animals, the heritage preservationist in me kept wondering about the history of the park. A few years ago, a friend sent me an old (but excellent) article on the formation of Serengeti National Park.** The article described how the formation of the park included the removal of evidence of human life, except for tribes that were deemed sufficiently “primitive” to not disturb visitor’s chance to see the “real” Africa. The author describes the impact of this decision not only on the displaced people, but on those who were forced to remain “primitive” so they would not lose their homes and land. Beyond this, he describes how this affected the way visitors see the park and their ideas about what Africa really is. This last idea in particular is something that has stayed with me, though of course it’s hardly unique to Africa–Frederick Jackson Turner conveniently erased Native Americans from the landscape for his frontier thesis, and scores of people were evicted from their homes in Appalachia to make way for national parks. This idea was brought home quite strongly for me when my tour guide mentioned that she thought of this place as the “real South Africa.”

scrubland with mountains in the distance — The “real” South Africa? (author’s image)

The problem with this idea is that the landscape at Pilanesburg, just as at Serengeti, is manufactured. Before it became a park, this land was home to Zulu warriors, Boer farmers, and later the re-settled Bakgatla tribe during apartheid. The land has been inhabited by humans and hominids for millions of years, and these people evolved alongside the animals in the park. When it was converted into a game reserve, much of the evidence of human habitation was erased, barring one remaining official building which has been converted into a visitor center. The animals that live in the park were reintroduced as part of Operation Genesis in the 1980s.

The thing is, for all its natural splendor, this place is no less a managed landscape than a city. It is stunning, but is it anymore the “real South Africa” than Johannesburg or Soweto or Cape Town? So much of South African history is fraught and intense, and the specter of apartheid lingers because for half a century it dominated people’s lives and the landscape. A place like Pilanesburg can seem like an oasis from these hard truths; after all, there are no people here. But apartheid was here, too. It’s why the Boer farmers are no longer here; they sold their land to the apartheid government, which used it to create a homeland for the Bakubung tribe where they would be racially and ethnically segregated. Pilanesburg is not what South Africa used to look like–it’s what it looks like now, with all of the layers of meaning that exist in any cultural landscape, and that’s worth keeping in mind whether you are walking through an informal settlement or staring in awe at a leopard casually surveying his territory.

Leopard lying on a rock — Leopard on a rock, through binoculars

*After they ask about Ebola, of course.
**Neumann, Roderick P. “Ways of Seeing Africa: Colonial Recasting of African Society and Landscape in Serengeti National Park.” Cultural Geographies 2, no. 2 (April 1995): 149-169. (I cannot recommend this article highly enough.)

Same Song, Different Verse

If you’ve been keeping up with the bankruptcy situation in Detroit, you’re probably aware that the situation is pretty dire. The city is home to thousands of abandoned buildings, ranging from grand industrial and commercial buildings to private homes. The sprawling metropolis’ population has steadily declined since the mid-20th century, but it was laid particularly low by the Great Recession. In 2013, the city filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, arguing that its debts far exceeded anything the city could afford to pay. After a series of court cases, the bankruptcy was allowed. Since the decision at the end of 2013, the city has been in negotiation with its creditors over the terms of its bankruptcy, to be decided by a federal judge this year.

William Livingstone House in Detroit, as photographed by Yves Marchand & Roland Meffre: http://www.marchandmeffre.com/detroit/

One of the key pieces in the debate is the fate of the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts. The DIA is home to an extraordinary collection, ranked as one of the top six in the United States. It holds the a Van Gogh self-portrait, the first Van Gogh painting to become part of an American museum’s collections, along with extensive collections of art from around the world. The DIA offers free admission to local residents (those who live in Detroit and three surrounding counties), something that is sadly increasingly rare.

The LA Times does a much better job unpacking the legal and political aspects of bankruptcy case than I am equipped to do, but the crux of the situation is that the city has been working on a “grand bargain” which involves the state, several private foundations, and the museum raising some $820 million to fund the municipal pensions that are on the chopping block. In exchange, the city will give the collection and the building to the affiliated nonprofit that runs the museum. This bargain allows the art collection to remain local and available while rescuing the pensions and benefits of city workers.

Detroit’s creditors, however, are less than pleased. Financial Guaranty Insurance Company has insisted that the collection is worth far more than $800 million, and want the entire collection to go on the auction block to repay Detroit’s debt. The infamous Koch brothers have weighed in, with their PAC Americans for Prosperity threatening to “make life difficult” in the next election for any Republicans who vote for the grand bargain, despite its popularity with Michigan residents on both sides of the political aisle.

Edgar Degas' The Violinist and the Young Woman, part of the DIA's permanent collection. Via wikimedia commons. — Edgar Degas’ *The Violinist and the Young Woman*, part of the DIA’s permanent collection. Via wikimedia commons.

It’s hard to see this story and not be reminded of all of the art and museum collections currently and previously under threat. The Maier Museum situation of course comes to mind, along with the Fisk University’s sale of its Georgia O’Keeffe collection to the Crystal Bridges Museum (founded by a Wal-Mart heiress). It’s also hard not to be frustrated by this trend of putting price tags on cultural heritage.

For me, access to cultural heritage is a key part of the democratic experience. There was a time when people believed that fine art was the exclusive purview of the wealthy and aristocratic, and that ordinary people could not appreciate such things. Museums like the DIA are the opposite of this notion. Those collections belong in a very real sense to every visitor who walks through its doors to visit them. For locals especially, the chance to see a collection like that of the DIA in their hometown is a chance to visit far away places practically for free. As globalization has contributed to a sense of same-ness, museums offer a place to experience the truly unique in person.

Detroit has suffered in the last ten years or so. The population has declined, and the built environment has suffered tremendously. To further gut the city’s cultural heritage by auctioning off its signature art collection would be a devastating blow, and to what end? So that wealthy creditors won’t have a bad quarter? To appease a pair of billionaires? Detroit has taken extraordinary measures to rebuild itself, with local businesses and government going to great lengths to encourage people to return to the city and revitalize it. In a way, it would be poetic if a city built on capitalist enterprise was destroyed by it, but there would be no beauty in that poetry, only a landscape whose abandoned buildings reflect the barrenness of its soul, and the first bleak signpost on a road many cities may shortly follow.

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away”.

“Ozymandias” by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Men of the Docks, Revisited: Part II

So, in my last post I discussed the context for the sale of George Bellows’ Men of the Docks and three other paintings from the Maier Museum at Randolph College. In this post, I want to talk about Men of the Docks in particular and the response to the sale.

Men of the Docks by George Bellows (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Part of why there has been such an uproar over the Bellows painting in particular is its place in the Maier collection. Men of the Docks was a key piece of the collection. The painting was selected by Louise Jordan Smith, R-MWC’s first art professor who later left her valuable art collection to the college. She and a German professor established “The Randolph-Macon Art Association of Lynchburg,” a coalition of students, faculty, alumnae, and local townspeople who raised the $2,500 to purchase the painting from Bellows in 1920. It was the first masterpiece in the collection. Men of the Docks was not simply another valuable piece in a large collection; it was one of the first, and it had special meaning attached to it due to the circumstances of its acquisition.

Deaccessioning is the process of transferring ownership of a museum piece to another institution or individual through sale or exchange. The deaccessioning of collections is a tricky topic, and several museum organizations who offer guidelines on the topic, including the American Alliance of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors. In general, pieces are considered for eligible deaccessioning if they do not contribute to collection; for example, if a museum specializes in 20th century abstract expressionism, and had a few pieces of American folk art, they might consider deaccessioning the folk art in order to acquire more abstract expressionist work. This is the other side of deaccessioning; any proceeds from the sale of collections should only be used to expand the collection, rather then put toward building maintenance or the general endowment.

Edward Hicks' A Peaceable Kingdom (image via cultureGRRL blog) — Edward Hicks’ A Peaceable Kingdom, one of the two paintings still on the auction block. (image via cultureGRRL blog)

Museums are stewards of heritage and art with tremendous cultural significance and often great monetary value. In order to protect their role as stewards, museums cannot treat their collections as financial assets to be cashed in on a rainy day. Donors who give their art or collections to museums usually do so in order to ensure that the pieces will be cared for and appreciated by future generations, otherwise they would simply sell the items themselves and keep or donate the profits. The concept of a museum piece is is that it has a cultural value that far exceeds whatever price could be put on it. I’ve talked about this idea in earlier posts, so I won’t dwell on it here.

This is why the sale of Men of the Docks and the other three paintings has raised so much attention. Men of the Docks is a foundational piece in the college’s museum collection. According to the Maier’s own website, the collection features “works by outstanding American artists of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries”; a description that the Bellows painting clearly exemplifies. Beyond the fact that the painting should not have even been considered for deaccessioning, the proceeds from the sale are being used to bolster Randolph College’s general fund, not further the museum collections. The money from the sale of Rufino Tamayo’s Trovador went into the general fund. When questioned, current president Bradley Bateman indicated that the Trustees intend to go forward with the sale of both Edward Hicks’ A Peaceable Kingdom and Ernest Hennings’ Through the Arroyo. There is no reason to believe these sale proceeds will go anywhere but the general fund.

Maier Museum of Art (image via cultureGRRL blog)

Essentially, what’s happened is that the Trustees of Randolph-Macon Woman’s College mismanaged the college’s finances so badly that the only recourse was to open the college to men and sell off a portion of the art collection, the proceeds from which will go back to a fund managed by the people responsible for the crisis in the first place.

Randolph College’s response to the objections raised by those in the museum field has been somewhat disheartening. In addition to continuing on with the plan to sell the two remaining pieces, the college has gone so far as to claim that the Maier is not actually a museum.This should make for interesting discussions this fall in Randolph College’s Art History 261: Introduction to Museum Studies and Art History 315: Curatorial Seminar at the Maier Museum of Art.* Perhaps these courses would better be titled “Introduction to Asset Management” and “Commodities Seminar”?

It’s easy to see, then, why this action has drawn so much criticism from the museum field. While Randolph College had already been censured for its actions by the Association of Art Museum Directors, on March 12, 2014 the organization officially sanctioned Randolph College for its actions. (For commentary, see: this, this, and this.)

So then, what can be done? In the case of Trovador and Men of the Docks, nothing. There has been surprisingly little backlash against the National Gallery in London as the majority of articles focus on Randolph College’s poor practices. Randolph College has tried to focus on the fact that the Bellows’ painting will still be on public view, and alleges that this the start of a partnership the National Gallery. The college also claims that no other artwork will be sold; the college still owns a Georgia O’Keeffe (Yellow Cactus), an Edward Hopper (Mrs. Scott’s House), and a drawing by Mary Cassatt, so the remaining paintings are not insignificant (though quite valuable, which might put them in jeopardy). The problem here is that the college has already tried once to break the trust through which Louise Jordan Smith left her personal collection to the college.** Although the effort was abandoned, it is hardly reassuring to those interested in protecting the remaining collections or considering future donations.

The path in front of Main Hall at R-MWC. (author's image) — The path in front of Main Hall at R-MWC. (author’s image)

For many alumnae (though of course not all), the decision to admit men and sell the art has been a one-two punch, insult on top of injury. The Trustees have adopted a party line that brooks no opposition. More disturbing still, to me and the unscientific smattering of alumnae I’ve spoken to, is the way the Trustees and the college have dismissed the alumnae who feel betrayed by all of these actions as “bitter.” If it is true that some alumnae contacted SACS and put the college’s accreditation into question, that is not an action I agree with. At the same time, the Trustees have hardly shown themselves to have the best interest of the legacy of R-MWC at heart, nor have they made any effort to mend fences with the alumnae. During the year or so following the decision to admit men, I sent the college letters and emails asking them to reconsider or explain the situation. I never received a reply, though I did continue to receive requests for donations.

In the days following the announcement of the decision to go co-ed, many of my classmates and fellow alumnae were asked whether we would prefer that the college no longer exist. The question seems moot now. Randolph-Macon Woman’s College has become a footnote in the history of Randolph College. The sale of the art, especially Men of the Docks, has only underscored how fragile the legacy of my alma mater truly is, and by extension, how important and fragile all cultural heritage is.

The story of the “Maier Four” and Randolph College is not unique. In 2009, Brandeis University came very close to closing its Rose Art Museum or at least selling off part of its collections. Fisk University broke up a collection given by Georgia O’Keeffe and sold work to the Crystal Bridges Museum in Arkansas. It’s too late for Men of the Docks and Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, but it is not too late to take a serious look at how we value our cultural heritage and the institutions that safeguard it for the future.

*Course names based on Randolph College Catalog for 2013-2014.

**Incidentally, before deciding to sell the four paintings, the college first attempted to break the trust through which Miss Louise (as she was known) donated her collection. This is further elucidated in Meredith Minter Dixon’s And When I Go (pages 62-63).