Kimmelmann on "Kindred Spirits"

It was a sad day last week when New Yorkers lost one of the city's cultural treasures, Asher B. Durand's "Kindred Spirits." The 1849 painting of the artist Thomas Cole with the poet and journalist William Cullen Bryant standing on a ledge overlooking the Catskills is a landmark of the Hudson River School, and probably Durand's best picture. Sotheby's auctioned it off for the New York Public Library, which owned it for decades. The library sold it along with other American paintings to raise money for endowment and books. It had every right to do so, and responsibility to get a good return. But it was lamentable that a city museum like the Metropolitan didn't have a better shot at buying it, for which we can partly fault an auction that provided little time or opportunity for a public institution to compete with deep-pocket private collectors. A widespread popular indifference to our cultural heritage is also to blame, but that's hardly news. The question now is what to do next time. And there is an answer. The buyer was Alice Walton, a Wal-Mart heir and an American art collector, who reportedly paid more than $35 million for "Kindred Spirits" to become part of what is advertised to be a Walton Family Foundation museum arising some years from now in Bentonville, Ark., where Wal-Mart has its headquarters. It was rumored that Bill Gates, who also buys American art, was interested in the picture. This guaranteed a rich payday for the library and for Sotheby's. The Met teamed with the National Gallery in Washington on a losing bid. Aware that a New York museum didn't get "Kindred Spirits," the Walton foundation issued a statement after the sale about wanting "to work with museums in New York City to ensure that it continues to be shown there in the future." We'll see. That would be good. So far there isn't even a Walton museum for the picture to go to.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/16/arts/design/16kimm.html

Tags:   asher durand, henri rousseau, kimmelmann, kindred spirits, public library

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Posted on 5/16/2005 ( Permanent Link )
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