Foundation Selling Off Art to Switch to Social Projects

The Lannan Foundation swept onto Los Angeles’ art scene 10 years ago with the aura of a white knight. Endowed with $100 million from the estate of a self-educated financier who was a voracious collector of contemporary art, the organization was dedicated to promoting his interest in the visual and literary arts. It quickly became a major force in national cultural circles, reinforcing the city’s status as a contemporary art destination.

But now the foundation--named after J. Patrick Lannan, who directed International Telephone and Telegraph for 36 years--has shifted gears, shutting down its museum-like space on the Westside and giving more and more of the money once spent on art to Native American communities.

In its latest move--after terminating programs that had put Lannan at the forefront of collecting and exhibiting contemporary art--the foundation is dispersing its collection and has launched a plan to sell part of it to raise additional money for Indian projects. Anticipating a mid-January announcement of the first round of the dispersal, critics are increasingly raising questions about the ethics of such a radical change of focus.

The foundation’s president, J. Patrick Lannan Jr., son of the founder, said the art is being sold to help finance a new campus for Sinte Gleska College, an Indian school in Rosebud, S.D., and to purchase land for two undisclosed Native American projects in Northern California and the Southeast. He declined to disclose the fund-raising goal for art sales, but pegged the foundation’s current commitments to the college campus and two parcels of land at $20 million.

The foundation’s increasing emphasis on Indian projects is a response to pressing needs, Lannan said. “If one group of congressmen kills the National Endowment for the Arts, another group may revive it,” he said. “If we miss these opportunities [to buy land in Native American communities], they will never return.” At Sinte Gleska, Los Angeles architect Michael Rotondi is designing a model campus for a college that has operated in makeshift facilities, he said.

The move has embroiled the foundation in a painful controversy that pits support for the arts against social services--and the apparent interests of its founder against those of his son. Although no one disputes the worthiness of causes now favored by the foundation, many art professionals say it has betrayed its professed commitment to contemporary art. Closing the exhibition space also deprives Los Angeles of the Lannan’s thoughtful, provocative exhibitions that served as a Westside counterpoint to the downtown Museum of Contemporary Art. Indeed, in the view of some observers, the white knight is wearing a black hat--or at least a white hat with a gray stripe.

Although the Lannan’s transformation is only the latest example of changes in a foundation’s mission after the death of the founder (notably, the Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pa., earned headlines a few years ago for mounting a traveling show of its collection, specifically against the directions of its late founder, Albert C. Barnes), the Lannan situation is instructive, said Los Angeles attorney Jessica L. Darraby, who specializes in art law.

“This should be an eye-opener for the Peter Nortons and Eli Broads of the world,” she said, naming two major Los Angeles art collectors who have established foundations. “If they want to control their legacy for posterity, the foundation structure may not be the way to go.”

The controversy also points up differences between art museums and foundations in regard to de-accessioning--or selling--art from their collections. Museums are bound by a formal code of ethics established by the Assn. of Art Museum Directors and requiring that the proceeds of art sales be used for buying other artworks or for the direct care of the collection. The Lannan Foundation has functioned much like a museum, but it is not bound by the same code.

As the foundation settled into Southern California, opening its exhibition space in 1990, it was widely praised for model programs of art collecting, exhibitions and nationwide grants. While its fortune grew to about $170 million, the foundation spent $2 million to $3 million a year on adventurous artworks--often buying unwieldy or controversial pieces that were unlikely to find a home elsewhere.

The foundation also doled out $1.5 million annually on exhibitions, art loans and building maintenance, and poured more than $1 million a year into grants for special exhibitions at museums across the country. Unfettered by the financial, political and bureaucratic constraints of public museums and commercial galleries, the Lannan seemed to fill a niche that could only be occupied by an enlightened private organization.

The collection being dispersed consists of more than 1,200 contemporary artworks. They include prime pieces by such major painters as Robert Motherwell, Clyfford Still, Agnes Martin, Brice Marden and Frank Stella, and renowned sculptors Donald Judd and Isamu Noguchi. The collection also contains unusually large bodies of work by Morris Louis, Robert Irwin, Wallace Berman, Chuck Close, Kiki Smith, John M. Miller, Gerhard Richter, Jackie Ferrara and Mike Kelley.

About 565 of the most significant pieces will be donated to museums, but some of the most valuable items--including paintings by Still and Richter--are being offered for sale to museums. The foundation declined to itemize the works for sale or to reveal the asking price, but sources at the museums say about 50 pieces are for sale.

Questions have arisen about the ethical propriety of a wealthy, tax-exempt foundation selling its art assets, thereby cashing in on the appreciated value of artworks purchased with tax-free funds, but the process is going forward. The first round of donations will be announced in mid-January; sales are pending.

Los Angeles’ Museum of Contemporary Art and Chicago’s Art Institute and Museum of Contemporary Art have been offered the first choice of both gifts and purchases. Each museum has submitted a prioritized list of desired works along with reasons for the selections. The foundation will coordinate the three museums’ choices and offer any remaining pieces to other museums.

The foundation was established in 1960 by Lannan, who made his fortune in Chicago and retired to Florida. After his death in 1983 and the settlement of his estate, his son took charge of the foundation and moved it to Los Angeles, where he lived at the time. He now lives in Santa Fe, N.M.

Although identified with the arts since its inception, the foundation is governed by “very general guidelines” that can be freely interpreted by the trustees, he said. “The Lannan Foundation has no strictures. We could be doing anything. We could support pet cemeteries if we wanted to.” His father did not specifically support Native Americans, but he was a liberal Democrat who believed in social justice, Lannan said.

In 1988, Lannan reinforced his father’s vision, saying the foundation was “committed to managing this legacy so as to fulfill our founder’s long-term goal of increasing public appreciation, understanding and support for the highest-quality visual and literary arts of our time.” Lannan argues now that although the foundation has in the last three years taken on new philanthropic commitments, it has not abandoned the arts.

Grant programs for visual and literary arts continue as before, and the foundation will support special art projects, including James Turrell’s “Roden Crater,” which is transforming an extinct volcano in Arizona into an artwork. Less than a year ago, proceeds from the art sales were designated for the construction of “Roden Crater,” but the foundation’s commitment to the project has become “more tenuous,” Lannan said.

Lannan said the museums will be happy with the foundation’s dispersal of the collection and that decisions are being made carefully to avoid a negative impact on the artists. “No works will be put up for auction,” he said.

Still, dropping major components of its art program has opened the foundation to charges of irresponsibility.

Peter Plagens, art critic of Newsweek, compares unloading a major contemporary art collection to getting rid of plutonium in a military arsenal. “Once you have it, you can’t just change your mind because there isn’t a cold war anymore,” he said. “You’ve got a hot potato on your hands. The stuff is radioactive. You can’t just lock it up in a warehouse and walk away.”

Responsibilities are incurred “when you buy art in a public way,” he said, referring to artists’ and dealers’ belief that works purchased by the Lannan Foundation would be in the care of an organization with a long-term commitment to art. “You can’t just change your mind and sell the art or give it away. Artists’ reputations suffer.” While artists benefit from being represented in prestigious collections, shopping their work around--even to respectable museums--tends to raise doubts about its value, he said.

Such “fickle” behavior also puts the foundation’s reputation at risk, he said. “What happens to the poor Indians in a few years when [the Lannan trustees] change their minds again [and shift their support to another cause]?”

Village Voice critic and former Lannan Foundation advisor Peter Schjeldahl offered another view of the program change: “It’s just rich people behaving as usual. If we get our hopes up over something like this, we should have our heads examined.”