Stuff this idea into storage
Published 2:20 pm Wednesday, February 22, 2012
If the state were to sell its art collection to help fund education, what would be next? Ask all legislators and higher education officials to pool their rare coins, gold chains and other jewelry to sell to GoldCo Unlimited, or some other liquidator?
On Monday, Herald reporter Theresa Goffredo detailed a bill introduced by Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Kent, that would auction off state artwork every two years, with the goal of raising a minimum of $5 million each time.
Keiser introduced the bill as part of the answer to the state’s roughly $1 billion budget gap, which is forcing cuts in higher education financial aid programs at a time when people wanting to go to college are being turned away because they cannot afford the cost. More than 26,000 students who qualified for the State Need Grant were denied last year.
Under her bill, 60 percent of the funds from auctioned art would go to State Need Grant program, and 40 percent would go back to the arts.
Keiser said her idea is an attempt to be creative, help students and give back to the arts.
What education needs, however, is permanent funding, not a biennial infusion of unknown quantity. (How was the $5 million figure determined?)
The assertion that the state has a 4,000-piece art collection it can sell is misleading. Most of it belongs somewhere.
Public art, acquired through Washington’s Art in Public Places program, is located at state agencies, public schools, colleges and universities and is bought through the state’s capital construction budget, Goffredo reported. The program exists because art is intrinsic to education and civic life.
The bill directs the Washington State Arts Commission to choose which artworks to sell. Keiser emphasized not every piece would be sold. (Just the masterpieces?)
Is it safe to assume Keiser doesn’t expect universities to sell their metal sculptures for scrap?
Rather than campus-identifying artwork, Keiser says much of what she is talking about is in need of repair or deteriorating in closets. Also, hundreds of pieces are in state offices, out of the public eye. The bill would include money to fix these pieces.
So would the arts commission visit college and civic campuses, sussing out the expensive art it could auction? (Just try repossessing a beloved piece of art from a school or city and see how that goes.) And then it would go through the closets for the lesser stuff?
The idea that even one auction, never mind one every two years, could possibly bring in $5 million seems creatively and overly optimistic.
Back to the drawing board.
