Harry Jaffe: A Brit and a banker arrive to revive the Corcoran
By: Harry Jaffe
Examiner Columnist
October 18, 2009
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| Paul Greenhalgh |
Washingtonians have watched a number of people come to town to save the Corcoran Gallery of Art. Not that the grand exhibition hall in the 112-year-old Beaux Arts building near the White House is in imminent danger -- but it has been in need of an identity and a business plan for a few decades.
Turns out the saviors might be a British artist and a banker from Ohio. But first, some art history.
Robert Mapplethorpe left his imprint on the Corcoran. His 1989 exhibition might have catapulted the museum to the top of the photography world; unfortunately, some congressmen found one of his works distasteful, a scandal ensued, and the stain remained for years.
Then came David Levy, a New Yorker who became director of the gallery in 1991. He was encouraged to resign in 2005 after a few missteps, artistic and fiscal.
What sunk Levy was his crusade to build a new wing designed by famed architect Frank Geary. The plan was a metaphor for the Corcoran's distress. It was to be a showy and costly project for a gallery that was steeped in history and short of cash. When the Internet bubble burst and blew holes in the bank accounts of potential donors, the Geary project vaporized, along with Levy.
Then came the questions:
Can a private art gallery that must charge admission survive in a capital city where the National Gallery of Art and other federally subsidized art venues are free?
What is the core mission of a gallery that has to compete with the national collections? Modern art, local art, photography?
The Corcoran trustees chose Paul Greenhalgh, a British painter and art scholar, to begin the gallery's revival in 2006. Greenhalgh mounted an ambitious modernism show less than a year after taking over. He immediately put the Corcoran on an ambitious but solid artistic foundation.
But who would fix the finances? Greenhalgh brought in Fred Bollerer.
The two had met when board members asked Bollerer to help with the turnaround. Bollerer had been in banking for 32 years, four with Riggs in the 1990s.
"I am really a problem solver by training," he tells me. The Corcoran had a few. He says: "Unless you have access to deep pockets -- Getty or the federal government -- the business model for museums is extremely challenging."
Greenhalgh made Bollerer chief operating officer four months ago. He's in the process of raising money. Rather than build the Geary wing, the Corcoran is looking to develop its valuable property along New York Avenue. It's trying to sell or develop the Randall School in Southeast and Fillmore Art Center on Wisconsin Avenue.
"We need to begin to build an ongoing income stream," Bollerer says.
For artistic focus, the Corcoran is tending toward photography. Building on its successful Annie Liebowitz show and others, it now has Edward Burtynsky's powerful depiction of oil -- from drilling to filling to falling apart.
See it, and you might trade your car for a bike.
E-mail Harry Jaffe at hjaffe@washingtonexaminer.com.
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