The Higgins closing, some thoughts.

[xiphias]

(Also posted to my Facebook)

Anyone know any reporters in the Worcester area? There's something about the Higgins story that just . . . feels wrong. There's something there that's giving me vibes that remind me of the Rose Art Museum stuff at Brandeis a couple years ago, where it turned out that people were planning on looting and selling the collection for personal profit -- they were found out, stopped, and the Rose is still doing fine.

Yes, the Higgins Armory museum building is an albatross. Yes, it's always been shaky financially. So it's not impossible that this story is exactly as presented, but, like I said, it FEELS off. The WAM acquisition is only about 250 of the core pieces of the collection -- the collection is over 2000 items. Sotheby's has already been contacted about auctioning off the rest of the collection; it's turned out that other items in the collection have already turned up in catalogs. The director who just announced the closing has apparently been misrepresenting the museum's finances to the board for years; at the current operating budget, the museum ought to be able to continue running for another five years just by spending down the endowment, so why aren't they doing that?

Where does the endowment go at the end of the year, where does the money from the Sotheby's auction go, where does the money from the current catalog pieces go?

The Worcester Art Museum has a smaller endowment than the Higgins does -- how is WAM going to use the collection?

There's a story here, I can just feel it.

Comments

[quietann.livejournal.com]

I agree.

I did read that what is left of the Higgins endowment will go to the WAM to help support the collection there.

Other money -- interesting question. If it goes anywhere it should go to the WAM.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

More detail here, perhaps?

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

Yep, that's one of the posts that I was thinking about.

[ron_newman]

The law requires that if you dissolve a nonprofit that has assets, those assets need to go to another nonprofit with a similar purpose. (WAM would qualify.)

[ron_newman]

As for the Rose Art Museum, wasn't Brandeis planning to close and sell its assets to finance other parts of the university -- not for 'personal profit' ?

[cos]

Post this to bluemassgroup.com?

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

I suspect, based on what I have heard and read, that the previous director was not the person who should have been in charge and carried out some rather bad investment policies and may have misled the board a number of times.

The current director evidently shuffling the non-displayed part of the collection into the auction houses long before the announcement/decision of the board is suspicious to say the least.

Unfortunately there are only a very small number of investigative reporters around these days in reality to look into things like this.... and I have zero contacts at this point in the press any more.

[(Anonymous)]

The remaining endowment and the proceeds from the auction will go to the Worcester Art Museum, which will enable WAM to renovate a library into a proper gallery for the armor collection. The WAM has a larger endowment than the Higgins had, not sure where you got the impression it was otherwise. The pieces being auctioned, by the way, are about 500 non-museum quality pieces that have never been part of the exhibit.