Museums, Sponsors Too Cozy?

Corporate sponsors of art exhibitions traditionally count the returns on their cultural investments in terms of philanthropy, community goodwill and image improvement.

But times are changing, and one need look no further than the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s current exhibition, “Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention.”

The show of furniture, films, photos, documents and prototypes has been well received by critics and the public alike. But the bulk of the money required to assemble it and send it on an international tour didn’t come from a disinterested corporation that simply wants to be associated with innovative design.

Instead, the show has been brought to museums in Europe and the United States by two manufacturers of Eames furniture, along with other supporters. What’s more, several pieces of furniture exhibited in LACMA’s galleries, along with other Eames-designed products, are for sale in the museum’s gift shops.

There has been no public outcry about the propriety of the Eames show during its tour, and that, too, may be a sign of the changing times. But the sponsorship of the exhibition, and the fact that furniture identical to several pieces in the Los Angeles show can be purchased in the museum’s shops, has renewed a heated debate in the art world.

“What you have here is a problem with the appearance of impropriety,” said Gilbert S. Edelson, administrative vice president of the New York-based Art Dealers Assn. of America. “It’s a close question, but I personally have no problem with it. If [the Eames manufacturers’ contributions] make it possible for people in Los Angeles to see the works of some great designers, I think it’s lovely.”

As for selling Eames furniture in the gift shops, Edelson said that’s no different from selling other examples of modern design or handcrafted jewelry, which is standard practice at museums all across the country.

But veteran New York art dealer Richard Feigen sharply disagreed: “If the museum has a problem funding the Eames exhibition without the sponsorship of the company that makes the furniture, they oughtn’t to do the show. The conflict of interest is too blatant.”

And, he said, “when they sell things made by the company that is sponsoring the show, and particularly things that are represented in the show, they are confusing the public. I think it’s outrageous.”

In the past, art museums rarely displayed items considered part of the consumer world, least of all pieces still in production. Even at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, one of the very few art museums with an active design department, exhibitions usually feature historic pieces or adventurous prototypes. But now a greater appreciation of modern design and changing attitudes about corporate sponsorship are pushing the relationship between art and commerce into rockier waters.

The relationship becomes increasingly complicated as exhibition costs escalate, sponsors demand more bang for their philanthropic bucks and museums beef up their marketing operations. With New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art leading the way, shopping opportunities have increased enormously in museums around the world. Every major show seems to be accompanied by one or more shops selling note cards, T-shirts and coffee mugs imprinted with motifs from the artworks. But it is highly unusual for a museum shop to offer exactly the same items that are on view in the galleries.

Gary Kornblau, editor of Art issues., a Los Angeles-based magazine on contemporary art, said that even if the museum curator is completely independent of the sponsors and the shop, “the problem is, from the public viewpoint, the [Eames] show ties in with the gift shop.”

Although he doesn’t categorically reject corporate sponsorship of shows involving a company’s own products, Kornblau said that LACMA’s bureaucratic structure prevents the vigilant oversight required to avoid conflicts of interest.

“In a proper museum, the aesthetic criterion should come from the top down to every element, including the gift shop, the cafe, the outdoor displays and benches. That the Los Angeles County Museum of Art is selling Eames furniture in the gift shop is an indication that no one thought this through.”

Andrea Rich, president and director of LACMA, anticipated questions about the Eames show in the June issue of “At the Museum,” a monthly publication sent to LACMA members. Her letter, titled “The Museum and the Corporate Sponsor: A Delicate Balance,” noted that early corporate support of exhibitions usually stemmed from the personal interest of the company’s chief. “If it produced a positive public image for the firm,” she wrote, “all the better.”

But in the 1980s and ‘90s, corporate marketers began to make decisions about exhibition sponsorship. In doing so, they forged direct links between the company’s patronage and its business interests.

Rich described the new model of corporate sponsorship as a mutually beneficial partnership that does not compromise the museum’s standards. “A corporate sponsor has no involvement in the content of an exhibition [at LACMA] or the scholarship upon which it rests,” she wrote.

Keeping Content in Curators’ Hands

Katharine DeShaw--a veteran museum fund-raiser who joined LACMA a year ago as vice president for development--explained how the system works:

“Sponsors--whether they be individuals, corporations or foundations--have no control over the content or the scholarship of the exhibition” DeShaw said. “All the objects loaned to the exhibition are there at the curators’ request.”

It would be impossible to present a representative survey of the Eameses’ work without the furniture, she said. “This was a classic relationship where a leading design studio was very closely aligned with a very innovative corporation. They were hand-in-glove from inception, so of course [the manufacturer] is the logical place to go for support.”

Items sold in the museum’s shop are negotiated in a separate contract with the shop, she said. “I suspected that the store would be promoting a variety of design products, but I didn’t know what would be showcased until I saw the installation.”

The classic leather and molded-wood Eames lounge chair and a simpler wood chair are prominently displayed near the entrance to the main shop on the plaza at LACMA. Two molded-wood chairs, a folding wall screen, a small table and stools are available in a shop next to the exhibition, along with other Eames-designed products.

Sales of the Eames furniture are “doing very well” at LACMA, said museum spokesman Keith McKeown.

The show is organized by the Library of Congress, which has a large holding of Eames photographs, films, drawings and documents, and the Vitra Design Museum in Weil am Rhein, Germany, the premier repository of Eames furniture, prototypes and experiments,

The Vitra Museum is endowed by Vitra International, the German firm that supplies European and Middle Eastern markets with Eames furniture. Vitra International is a major sponsor of the show, along with Herman Miller Inc., the Zeeland, Mich.-based company that builds Eames furniture sold everywhere else. Herman Miller Inc. provided additional funding for the North American venues.

Officials at both Herman Miller Inc. and Vitra International say that no one had to sell them on the idea of supporting the Eames show.

“Given our great passion for and commitment to the Eameses and the importance of the Eameses’ design to our legacy as a business, we have sought opportunities to support the exhibition,” said Mark Schurman, director of corporate communications at Herman Miller Inc.

Providing extra funds for the Eames show “evolved naturally from our relationship with the museum and from our business, which we started with the production of the furniture of Charles and Ray Eames in 1957,” said Rolf Fehlbaum, chief executive of Vitra International. “It was very logical for us to contribute to the exhibition.”

The Eames show arrived in Los Angeles in the wake of a national furor over “Sensation: Young British Artists From the Saatchi Collection,” an exhibition of works from advertising mogul Charles Saatchi’s holdings that appeared at the Brooklyn Museum last fall and winter. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani took offense at several works--including Damien Hurst’s dead shark floating in a tank of formaldehyde and Chris Ofili’s painting of the Virgin Mary decorated with elephant dung--and attempted to withdraw the city’s financial support of the museum.

But the subject of the debate shifted when it was revealed that Saatchi was the show’s biggest financial backer and that the museum had given him an unusual degree of artistic control. Some critics charged that Saatchi, who buys and sells vast quantities of contemporary art and maintains a large showcase for his collection in London, had staged the show to inflate the value of his holdings.

Was There Ever a Time of Artistic Purity?

The issues were aired in the media and at a mid-February conference, “Taking Funds, Giving Offense, Making Money,” at the University of Chicago. While some participants contended that the Brooklyn Museum had compromised its integrity to a private collector who might reap a profit, art historian W.J.T. Mitchell--who edits Critical Inquiry, the journal of the university’s cultural policy program--took a jab at what he called “the high moral tone” of the event.

“My own presentation at the conference centered around the line from ‘Casablanca’ when Frenchy comes into Rick’s Cafe and says, ‘I’m shocked, shocked to see that there’s gambling going on here,’ ” Mitchell said. “It struck me as incredibly disingenuous to think that there had been this time of purity [at museums in the past].”

The American Assn. of Museums--a 16,400-member, Washington-based organization that represents the national museum community--recently approved a new set of guidelines intended to help prevent conflicts of interest.

Currently voluntary, “Guidelines on Exhibiting Borrowed Objects” advise museums on the financing and supervision of material loaned by art dealers, corporations, auction houses and private collectors who stand to gain from public displays of art in which they have a commercial interest. If the association’s accreditation commission adopts the guidelines, it could deny accreditation to noncompliant institutions, making it difficult for them to get financial support from governments and foundations. Even so, the guidelines don’t specifically address relationships with corporate sponsors.

The Assn. of Art Museum Directors--a 175-member organization based in New York--has no policy on corporate sponsors either, said Executive Director Millicent Gaudieri. And museum officials say the territory is too varied to draft a single set of standards to fit all situations.

“No two sponsors are exactly the same,” said Emily Kernan Rafferty, vice president for external affairs at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “We are all experiencing a whole new phenomenon in regard to what sponsors are used to getting [in return for financing exhibitions].

“We can’t sit in judgment of other museums, but we know what the Maginot line is for us, what we feel comfortable with. The guiding principle for me is integrity. That’s the key word.”

The Met has presented exhibitions of Dior couture sponsored by Christian Dior and Faberge eggs and jewelry sponsored by Faberge, but it recently canceled plans for a show of Chanel designs because “it crossed the line of curatorial control,” Rafferty said. Chanel wanted to determine what items would be shown and how they would be displayed instead of simply sponsoring the show and leaving artistic decisions to a museum curator, as is customary.

The Met has been criticized for presenting exhibitions that advertise the sponsor’s products, even though the objects on view are historic and not available in the marketplace. But other institutions haven’t exactly steered clear of self-interested sponsorship.

On Oct. 20, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York will open a retrospective of the career of contemporary fashion designer Giorgio Armani. The official sponsor of the show is In Style, the fashion magazine. But the Armani company recently became a major benefactor of the museum--reportedly to the tune of $15 million, with $5 million already paid and the rest to come during the next two years. The Guggenheim, which has not disclosed the amount of the gift, has only acknowledged a long-term arrangement that will support capital projects and international programs, but not the Armani show.

Also coming up this fall, at New York University’s Grey Art Gallery, is “Face to Face: Shiseido and the Manufacture of Beauty, 1900-2000,” underwritten by Shiseido, a Tokyo-based cosmetics and design corporation.

The closest precedent for the Eames show is probably “Salvatore Ferragamo: The Art of the Shoe (1927-1960),” a traveling exhibition of 200 shoes, underwritten by Ferragamo, which appeared at LACMA in 1992. During the Los Angeles run, part of the museum’s store was converted into a Ferragamo boutique. Edward Maeder, then the museum’s curator of costumes and textiles, defended the exhibition as a retrospective of “the preeminent shoe designer of the 20th century” and of a local hero whose career began in Santa Barbara and expanded into Hollywood.

Some observers contend that current concerns about museums selling out to wealthy sponsors are overblown, if not absurd.

“I think it’s a little oversimplified to say we used to have disinterested philanthropy and now we have corporate interference or direct marketing,” said the University of Chicago’s Mitchell. “The fact is, you cannot have great art museums in this country, with this political and economic system, unless you have rich folks involved.”