“mahatma” by artist cryptik

Title: Measuring Critical Thinking: Results from an Art Museum Field Trip Experiment

Author(s): Brian Kisida, Daniel H. Bowen and Jay P. Greene

Publisher: Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness

Year: 2015

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19345747.2015.1086915

Topics: arts education, museums, field trip, visual arts, critical thinking

Methods: randomized controlled trial involving 8,000 elementary, middle- and high-school students assigned by lottery to attend a field trip and facilitated tour of the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, Arkansas. Researchers collected demographic information on the students and conducted a textual analysis of essays written by the students after the field trip responding to an image of a work of art. The essays were coded using a critical-thinking assessment rubric developed by the US Department of Education.

What it says: This study validates and expands upon the results of the authors’ 2013 Crystal Bridges study. The museum field trip was led by trained museum docent facilitating open-ended, student-led discussion about art work in the collections. Following the field trip, students completed surveys on their demographics, prior art consumption and production, knowledge of art, and attitudes toward cultural institutions. Students were also shown an image of a painting that was not part of the Crystal Bridges collection and given five minutes to write an essay describing what was going on in the painting, and what they saw that led them to that conclusion. In the first semester of the experiment, as discussed in the 2013 study, students were shown a representational work of art. Students participating in the study’s second semester were shown an abstract work of art.

All students assigned to the treatment group demonstrated stronger critical-thinking skills in their essays than those in the control group. However, across the board, some aspects of critical thinking as measured by the seven-section rubric were more evident than others; and measurements were not consistent between student responses to representational and abstract pieces. Specifically, students responding to the representational painting showed many examples of observations and interpretations in their written responses, whereas responses to the abstract piece were heavy on observation and light on interpretation. Instances of “problem finding,” “flexible thinking,” and  “comparisons” were less likely in response to abstract work.

However, as reported in the 2013 study, a relatively modest “dose” of arts education – one visit to the visual arts museum – produced a significant effect in the treatment group. Many of the students had never attended a school-based field trip before, and the authors note that students who reported prior exposure to arts education – including non-visual arts education – displayed stronger critical-thinking outcomes in general than students who reported little or no arts exposure. Female students and students from larger communities also scored higher on the critical-thinking rubric. Interestingly, students attending Title I schools showed significantly higher critical-thinking outcomes than their more affluent counterparts when responding to the representational artwork, but the differences were less pronounced for the groups responding to the abstract work.

What I think about it: The 2013 Crystal Bridges was rightly lauded for its scale, clarity, and thoughtfulness. This 2015 follow-up continues in that mold. Randomized controlled trials such as this one are considered a gold standard for research; the high level of inter-rater reliability among the researchers coding the student essays – who were not aware of any student characteristics (including whether they were in the treatment or control group) – leaves little to fault in the study’s design. There are limitations, of course: there is no way to know whether the effects on the treatment group last over time, for example, and whether they would remain consistent in an urban area that afforded residents more cultural opportunities. The difference in student responses to the abstract versus representational works of art also raises questions about the depth of conclusions to be drawn. Students were only given five minutes to write their essays, so the fact that they primarily stuck to observations and interpretations isn’t surprising; nor is it illogical that students working with the abstract piece offered fewer interpretations and more observations about the work. It would be interesting to see how the responses would have evolved if students were given more time to work on them. It would also be useful to know which elements of critical thinking were on display during the treatment group discussions at the museum. According to the authors: “The goal of the museum educators was to facilitate an open-ended, student-centered approach to discuss the works of art, encourage a deep level of engagement, and motivate students to seek out their own unique interpretations.” The extent to which students accomplished this, and the balance of observation versus interpretation in the discussions, may have depended on their abilities to respond to the essay prompt in a short amount of time.

Another question emerges: how much of the impact on students’ critical thinking had to do with the field trip and how much had to do with the arts-based nature of the experience? The authors note that “this research does not establish which components of the art museum experience were essential for increases in critical-thinking skills, or if these same effects could be generated from school-based arts exposure.” I wonder whether there were components that didn’t have to do with the arts at all. If students were guided to discuss a representational photograph, or to observe an environment for a science class, would such observational practice lead to similar results? And how much, if any, of the critical-thinking gains exhibited in this study might transfer over to other activities?

What it all means: Not many randomized controlled trials take place in arts education, so this one is heartening; perhaps it will serve as inspiration to other researchers interested not only in the impact of the arts on students, but how critical-thinking skills are cultivated in the first place. Despite its scale, the study leaves several questions unanswered. It does confirm that, in the short term, students who participated in a field trip to the Crystal Bridges Museum were able to respond to works of art in a more robust way than students who did not. As with the first Crystal Bridges study, the fact that this effect is most pronounced for Title I students examining representational work seems worthy of further examination.

• A federal judge recently ruled that Pandora must continue to pay ASCAP, which represents song writers and publishers, a 1.85% composition royalty. It was a (not entirely clean) victory for Pandora, which was arguing against a rise to 3%. The Future of Music Coalition has a good primer on the issue. (Note that the royalty paid to record companies for sound recordings is much higher – above 50%, in some cases – and it is this larger royalty that Pandora cited last week in increasing the cost of their premium service.)
• FMC similarly offers a concise but thorough summary of the Congressional testimony debating the “notice and takedown” copyright enforcement system for hosting sites like YouTube.
• Amtrak’s writers’ residency is getting some amusing pushback from conservatives that points to some deeper issues regarding its role as a national service.
• Advocacy for publicly-funded arts agencies has a new platform: Stand for the Arts, an online initiative funded by Ovation TV, champions the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, and Americans for the Arts’s Arts Action Fund.
• Is that the pitter-patter of li’l artist feet in the distance? A female musician predicts Obamacare will prompt a “creative professionals baby boom,” and offers ideas for how the music community can better support it.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Vice President of Paul G. Allen Family Foundation Susan Coliton resigned last week after 15 years with the foundation.
• Judi Jennings, executive director of Kentucky Foundation for Women, is set to retire June 30, also after 15 years of service. Barry Hessenius has an exit interview with Judy.
• The Bay Area’s Kenneth Rainin Foundation announced the promotions of Shelley Trott and Katie Fahey to Director of Arts Strategy and Ventures and Associate Program Officer for the Arts, respectively.
• The beleaguered Minnesota Orchestra faces continued challenges following the end of a 16-month player lockout: President and CEO Michael Henson announced he is stepping down, prompting the resignation of eight board members and speculation regarding the possible return of the orchestra’s former music director Osmo Vanska.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• The Ford Foundation now has an artist on its board of trustees: Lourdes Lopez, artistic director of the Miami City Ballet and strong arts education proponent.
• More family foundations – nearly a quarter – are choosing to spend down their assets during the donor’s lifetime.

IN THE FIELD

• In a decision that has perplexed many, the San Diego Opera announced that this season will be its last after nearly fifty years of performances. Subsequent to the announcement, the organization gave itself a two-week reprieve in a last-ditch attempt to raise money.
• Big Brother is watching the opera: Lincoln Center, Alvin Ailey, the Public Theater, and five other NYC arts stalwarts have joined Audience 360, a new alliance that will share ticketing and customer information across the group. As many as forty institutions are expected to join when Audience 360, one of more than twenty such big-data organizations across the country, is launched in June. The information is expected to be useful for government advocacy in addition to marketing.
• The BBC has hired National Theatre director Nicholas Hytner and Royal Court artistic director Vicky Featherstone as part of a new push to infuse arts programming across the media organization “like never before.” The new initiatives will include filming live arts events and a miniseries following young orchestra musicians, among others.
• Netflix’s CEO has come out in favor of a strong form of net neutrality after a deal with Comcast cleared up customers’ performance issues. Meanwhile, Apple and Comcast are exploring a TV streaming partnership with sterling connectivity, which would fulfill Apple’s hopes of playing in the TV space.
• The full story of how the reclusive Cornelius Gurlitt wound up with a 1,280-piece trove of Nazi-looted art – which he is now returning to the original owners.
• Bookstores in Manhattan may be a dying breed; bookstores in Brooklyn are thriving.
• Have a great idea for a creative placemaking project but no time to get off the ground? Take advantage of National Arts Strategies’ Creative Community Fellows Program, which includes a week-long retreat with fellow cultural “entrepreneurs,” a distance learning track, and an opportunity to pitch to funders and/or create crowdfunding campaigns. Applications are due May 7.

BIG IDEAS

• As Netflix-style aggregation of content spreads from music and movies to books, magazines, and newspapers, “almost all the value in media has come from bundling.” Consumers like it because it offers centralized curation and lower transaction costs than hunting-and-gathering individual items; providers like it because it can give them more data. (Whether it’s good for creators, of course, depends in large part on how the proceeds are split with the provider.) But don’t get too excited – it turns out that existing legal agreements may prevent Netflix itself – or anyone else – from offering anything approaching a comprehensive slate of films before 2020.
• Meanwhile, total revenue for recorded music has fallen each year of the millennium; at $8 billion a year, it is now less than half of its (inflation-adjusted) 1999 peak. Venture capitalist David Pakman argues that the only way to reverse this trend is to lower the price of streaming services to $3-4 per month, bringing the annual cost closer to more consumers’ historical willingness to pay.
• The Wu-Tang Clan’s new double album will be released in an edition of one, which will tour museums before being sold for millions of dollars.

RESEARCH CORNER

• To what degree do family and peer groups influence our perceptions of the label “artist”? Researchers parsing data from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project found a sizable chunk of people creating artistic works do not self-identify as professional artists. Those with artists in their families, or those who attended arts-focused schools, were more likely to use the label. Can’t help but wonder about the degree to which socioeconomic status plays a role in this…
• …since a new analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data paints a portrait of the artist as a model of downward mobility. Creative types tend to grow up in relatively affluent households and to make less money than their parents, to a much greater extent than those in other careers. Let’s hope some things are more important than money, since art schools are the most expensive in the country after taking financial aid packages into account.
• The Arts Education Partnership’s database of statewide arts education policies has been updated and renamed as ArtScan. It includes a state-to-state comparison feature as well as information about past efforts to survey the status of arts education in each state.
• The Hewlett and Irvine Foundations have released an external assessment of their Next Generation Arts Leadership program, which they have renewed for another three years, to inspire other regions facing a potential arts leadership deficit. (The full report and executive summary are online.)
• The National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture is out with a nationwide survey of media arts organizations – the “first-ever, comprehensive data set documenting the media arts field.” With nearly a quarter of respondents self-identifying as local cable TV operators, television still reigns as the primary focus of these organizations’ work.
• Two weeks ago we noted the ever-rising cost of sales in the international and antique art markets as a possible sign of an emerging “winner take all” economy. Others think it’s an insidious sign of something more akin to insider trading.
• March Madness = time to reflect on whether economic impact arguments for the arts really make any sense.

• Joan Mondale, wife of former Vice President Walter Mondale and known to many as “Joan of Art” for her arts advocacy efforts, passed away February 3.
• After April 6, cracking jokes in the UK will become a little easier. A new UK regulation allows for the use of parts of original copyrighted material if used for parody, caricature, or pastiche.
• Over at ARTSblog, Ciara McKeown argues municipalities are commissioning too many permanent public art pieces, and suggests public art programs “generate goals that are not defined as permanent or temporary, but that are about people and experiences.”
• Well, this is one way to make it as a DIY band: Canadian electro-industrial rockers Skinny Puppy have invoiced the Pentagon for $666,000 for the unauthorized use of their music during interrogations at Guantanamo.
• Confused about the ins and outs of all those visual art lawsuits of the past few years? Daniel Grant has a detailed overview over at Hyperallergic.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Geoffrey Canada, the charismatic face of one of the most ambitious and widely watched education and anti-poverty initiatives in the country, is leaving the Harlem Children’s Zone after two decades at its helm. He will be succeeded by Anne Williams-Isom, the organization’s current Chief Operating Officer.
• The William Penn Foundation has found its new leader: Peter J. Degnan, Vice Dean of Finance and Administration at the Wharton School. The foundation’s new structure (his title is “managing director”) will allow him to “focus on aligning interconnected organizational functions, including strategic grantmaking, knowledge-building, and community engagement.”
• Ron Ragin will jump coasts from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation to become the first arts program officer for the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.
• The National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University recently appointed Kate D. Levin, former Commissioner of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, as its first fellow. As part of role, Levin will be responsible for raising the center’s visibility and providing input on its research. Levin will continue in her new position with Bloomberg Associates, a consulting firm founded by the former Mayor that advises local governments around the world.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• The Artist Pension Trust controls some 40,000 works of contemporary art as part of a risk-pooling retirement plan for the artists themselves. As it begins to sell some of them off in its tenth year, dealers express concern about the effect on the market – and others question whether the plan can possibly make money.
• Arts funders, take note: the New York-based F.B. Heron Foundation has ceased requiring its grantees to submit reports, moving instead to a “outside, cooperative data warehouse” to provide real-time information. It’s also transformed its structure and operations to maximally integrate investing with grantmaking. President Clara Miller’s annual letter describes the nuts and bolts of the foundation’s ambition to maximize the social return from every dollar in its corpus.
• Foundation transparency is all the rage this month. It emerged as a major theme in a recent arts funders’ convening on failure hosted by NYC’s The Field. GrantCraft published a new guide with tips for funders interested increasing the transparency of their day to day work. And the new site Inside Philanthropy targets potential grantees with eye-catching headlines (“Find Out How You Can Get $10,000 From the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation”), and offers subscribers insight into individual program officers’ giving preferences. It also exposes staff email directories and allows anonymous Yelp-style reviews.

IN THE FIELD

• The National Coalition for Core Arts Standards (NCCAS) has been hard at work drafting new national arts standards for K-12 classrooms. These standards are rad for a number of reasons, most importantly 1) because they are aligned to the Common Core, and 2) they bring us into the 21st century by including media arts as a distinct discipline. A final draft of the standards is up for final public review through February 28; get on over and check them out.
• The New England Foundation for the Arts has launched a new directory mapping artists, “creative businesses” and cultural nonprofits across six states.
• Following an encouraging trend started last year, issues of race and diversity continue to spur conversation, with HowlRound devoting a week of blog posts to asking whether or not “a white person can write, adapt, direct, or perform stories from a different culture or race.” Meanwhile, new studies on how perceptions of an individual’s race change over time underscore race as a social construct.
• Even better than talk, though, is action, and there’s good news on that front: Detroit’s Sphinx Organization and management agency IMG Artists have a budding partnership aimed at creating greater diversity among classical musicians while broadening audiences for classical music. Stay tuned for the first trial run at this summer’s Napa Valley Festival del Sole where the Sphinx Symphony Orchestra will perform.

BIG IDEAS

• We’ve mulled whether computers can generate art, but a related question is whether computer programmers are artists when they dabble in code. A novelist makes an eloquent case that they are.
• Been a while since your last nerdgasm? Read up on social physics, which explores how ideas flow, evolve, and (we hope!) improve within communities — and asks whether “our hyperconnected world may be moving toward a state in which there is too much idea flow.”

RESEARCH CORNER

• Following up on the first-ever official count of the arts’ contribution to the GDP, the NEA has released more detailed estimates for individual industries, including a breakout of performing arts groups by tax-exempt status. (Most of the $526 million added by dance comes from non-profits; most of $407 million from circuses is pure capitalism.)
• Southern Methodist University’s National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) released a study claiming that, contrary to the insinuations of Republican lawmakers, NEA doesn’t simply represent a “wealth transfer” from poorer to wealthier citizens. Michael Rushton, however, argues that the study doesn’t succeed in the argument because it looks at wealth at the level of the community, preventing firm conclusions about the wealth of individual attendees of NEA-sponsored arts. The comments on Rushton’s article contain a lively methodological debate if you like that sort of thing. In other news, NCAR officially launched its inaugural report (originally reported by Createquity back in December) on the health of U.S. arts and cultural organizations; the event was webcast by HowlRound TV.
• A new study from the College Art Association shows that visual arts professionals – scholars, curators, publishers – don’t understand fair use, and they avoid or abandon projects because of it. The CAA is working toward a Code of Best Practices for Fair Use to assuage the anxiety; such a code proved helpful to documentary filmmakers.
• Anyone who works with schools should carve out a few hours to play with this: DonorsChoose.org, which in 13 years has allowed teachers to raise more than $220 million in funding for their classrooms, is making its 20+ million project records on proposed and successful projects available via a free, interactive data analysis tool.
• Are too many of our research and evaluation efforts in the arts theoretical rather than directly applicable to practice? Nina Simon thinks so, and the comments from Peter Linett, Jay Greene, Carlos Manjarrez and others are worth checking out as well.

A group of onlookers tours the plant in a detail of Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry, the centerpiece of the Detroit Institute of Arts. The mural was completed during the city’s heyday as auto capital of the world. Photo credit: grifray

Since last May, the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) has been at the center of bankruptcy negotiations between the beleaguered City of Detroit and a myriad of creditors and pensioners to whom a staggering $18 billion is owed. When Kevyn Orr, Detroit’s state-appointed emergency manager, included the museum’s art collection among city assets available for possible liquidation, the suggestion that the artwork might be sold to satisfy creditors sent shudders through the art community. Could a world-class art museum, part of America’s cultural foundation, be raided, its cultural treasures sold off to pay the debts of its city? And what would that mean for other art institutions around the country?

The story has captured the attention of the powerful and common alike, with many weighing in on the whether the collection should or would be sold. But even before Emergency Manager Orr brought in Christie’s auction house in August to evaluate the art, a group of influential and deep-pocketed DIA supporters had begun to assemble. Federal bankruptcy mediator U.S. Chief District Judge Gerald Rosen gathered a group of national and local charitable foundations in November to brainstorm and discuss “out of the box” ways to prevent the DIA from being gutted, while still protecting city pensions. The result of Judge Rosen’s roundtable has been nothing short of extraordinary and could have long-term implications for the role of charitable foundations in the future.

Last month, a group of ten foundations with close ties to the city joined ranks to develop an unprecedented rescue plan. Led largely by the Ford Foundation, the consortium has pledged to give $370 million to the city pensioners’ fund under the condition that ownership of the DIA’s collection is transferred to a separate nonprofit organization, thus protecting it from the city’s creditors. With the foundations’ commitment in place, the State of Michigan has also stepped in with its own pledge of $350 million, pending approval by the Legislature. Governor Rick Snyder described the offer as a “settlement” rather than a city bailout and it comes with another caveat: pensioners must drop all lawsuits against the city.

The amount of money flowing in to save the DIA, largely from sources outside of Detroit, is breathtaking in its grandeur. The Ford Foundation’s pledge of $125 million is more than a quarter of its entire grantmaking budget in fiscal year 2012. In second and third place are the Kresge Foundation with $100 million (a whopping 70% of its 2012 giving) and the Kellogg Foundation at $40 million. These developments make for quite a story and may provide comfort to those who feel the 139-year old art museum should be left intact. And yet this sudden infusion of cash raises a number of important questions for the arts field and for the institution of private philanthropy alike.

For example, is the foundations’ commitment to the DIA a distraction from other, possibly better giving opportunities, whether in Detroit or elsewhere? Mariam Noland, president of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan (CFSEM), reported receiving concerned calls from cultural organizations worried their usual grant funds would be diminished as a result of the foundation’s pledge. However, CFSEM and the other foundations claim they are working to ensure this does not happen, either by stretching their contribution payments out over 10-20 years or tapping into their own endowments – another questionable move. Several of the foundation leaders involved – Noland, the Kresge Foundation’s Rip Rapson, the Knight Foundation’s Alberto Ibargüen, and the Ford Foundation’s Darren Walker – wrote an op-ed for the Chronicle of Philanthropy defending their decision, writing, ”our support…aims to accomplish something even larger: helping a great city get back on its feet quickly and on course toward a better future.”

So just how far will the coalition go to protect the DIA from any long-term financial burden Orr tries to impose on it? Historically, charitable foundations like to avoid quick-fix approaches when it comes to supporting public institutions, favoring innovative policy reforms that promote social change instead. However, here, they are bargaining with Detroit’s pensioners, taking a risk, and potentially opening themselves up to a future of wheel-and-deal funding schemes. Indeed, some in the grantmaking world are already voicing concerns about the precedence of conditional giving being set and whether it “amounts to philanthropic coercion rather than generosity.”

Between the foundations and the state, the total amount put forward now surpasses the $500 million contribution requirement Emergency Manager Orr had originally placed on the DIA. And the museum just recently agreed to raise an additional $100 million itself over the next 20 years, bringing the grand total to $820 million – all of which would be disbursed to the pensioners’ fund. If all parties accept this amount and Orr’s plan, then the City of Detroit would immediately transfer ownership of the entire art collection and building to the DIA, the private non-profit that has actively managed it for decades, thereby bringing a swift end to an at times harrowing situation.

But how much danger was the DIA ever in, really? All of the drama of the past year notwithstanding, the DIA hasn’t had any ultimatums placed upon its collection by Judge Steven W. Rhodes, who is presiding over Detroit’s case in federal bankruptcy court. In December, Christie’s auction house completed its appraisal of roughly 2,800 artworks – comprised solely of pieces purchased with city funds so as to avoid any legal action by donors and their heirs. Christie’s estimated the art to be worth between $452-866 million, with a couple of standout pieces valued at nearly $150 million apiece. The assessment was not music to the ears of creditors, who—their hopes no doubt bolstered by multi-billion dollar speculations made in the media early on—accused the city and auction house of purposefully undervaluing the artwork. The consortium of European banks, bond insurers, Detroit retirees, and labor unions requested that an independent committee conduct a separate review of the museum’s full collection – approximately 66,000 pieces, 95% of which were donated or purchased with private funds. Judge Rhodes has since refused the creditors’ request, ruling that he doesn’t have the authority to permit an independent evaluation of the DIA’s entire holdings.

Rhodes has furthermore said he is seriously considering the formal opinion issued by Attorney General Schuette back in June, which declared that the DIA’s collection, though technically owned by the city, is held in a “public trust” and therefore off limits to creditors. If he does agree that the collection is held in a public trust, it would mean the artwork is legally off the negotiation table.

A couple poses in front of the south wall of Detroit Industry. To the left, images of fertility preside over the larger frescos depicting the auto assembly line. Photo credit: Lars K. Christensen

In the final days of 2013, I took a quick trip to Detroit to visit the museum in question, a reconnaissance mission to experience the day-to-day reality of the institution under threat. It was heartening to see that the DIA was absolutely packed with people on the Friday after Christmas. The clerk at the ticket desk informed me that there would be a live concert that evening in Rivera Court, the large atrium home to Diego Rivera’s masterful work Detroit Industry. Executed from 1932-33, the mural was gifted to the DIA by Edsel B. Ford himself. Unanticipated by Ford, however, was the artwork’s socialist overtones, which caused quite a stir at the time it was created. Sited right at the core of the sprawling museum, the mural depicts the auto industry and its workers as the “indigenous culture of Detroit,” using the literal representation of manufacturing to achieve metaphors of power and growth. From floor to ceiling, assembly line workers dominate the scene in numbers and fortitude, while images of fertility—fruits, grain, mothers, and infants—preside overhead. Standing there dwarfed and surrounded by its twenty-seven boldly painted fresco panels, Detroit Industry makes palpable the heart and soul of the once-thriving metropolis whose influence has extended far beyond its city limits.

Despite the very real concerns that have arisen over the philanthropic “rescue mission” to save the DIA, private donations, both large and small, continue to come in from around the world. It seems that, through its ordeal, the DIA has unexpectedly become the public face of the city of Detroit. Its recent plight is a symbol of the gradual destruction of a cultural and economic legacy rooted in the early years of the 20th century, the so-called American century. As the city painfully negotiates the resolution of the narrative at play in Rivera’s masterpiece, the rest of us are provided with an opportunity to reflect on that legacy – not just the art collection, but how an important American city came to be. It seems that by preserving one, the hope is we save the other.

Graffiti mecca 5Pointz was whitewashed in November by the property owner in preparation of the building’s demolition. Photo credit: Dan Nguyen

For two decades the warehouse in Long Island City, Queens, known as 5Pointz stood as an unofficial museum of graffiti art. Jerry Wolkoff, the building’s owner, was considered an ally of graffiti artists for offering it up as a free canvas in the ‘90s – but that ended in 2010, when an artist was injured on site and the city fined Wolkoff for several building violations. No legal protections had ever been secured for the artwork, and despite an attempt to win landmark status and a last-minute call to “Save 5Pointz” by street art superstar Banksy, a judge ruled on November 12 that Wolkoff had the right to tear the complex down. Two residential high-rises will be built in its place. 

With the rise in Percent for Art programs around the country, questions of ownership, responsibility, and control over public art remain critical. Increasingly, commissioners of public art attempt to pre-empt these problems by hiring public arts advisors and engaging communities in the selection process, even inviting them into the creative conversation with the artist. But public art is a complicated and varied medium that includes a broad spectrum of artistic styles and approaches – from the most familiar bronze figural monuments to massive mid-century abstract sculptures, site-specific installations, and new media forms.

The challenges to long-term success—and the trickiness of defining that—are formidable, even for site owners and artists who go in with a clear-eyed, thoughtful process. Though art consultants and community dialogue help in the conscientious placement and positive reception of public work, they do not always guarantee the art will remain undisturbed. This post explores some of the ways public art can go awry – and how artists can try to protect their work.

Threatening Signs

A variety of factors can lead to the removal and scrapping of public art, including neighborhood development, changes in building ownership, dilapidation due to poor maintenance, and shifts in demographics or public sentiment. In the case of 5Pointz, the matter involved real estate development and a changing community. The area of Queens where the warehouse resides has seen major increases in property values resulting from gentrification. The building owner wanted to capitalize on the property, which has sat empty—with the exception of its use by graffiti artists—since the incident in 2010. Paradoxically, the popularity of 5Pointz as an open-air museum likely contributed to the development of the neighborhood that led to the decision to demolish it, which points to the special need for forward-thinking legal protection of arts initiatives in public areas off the beaten path.

Sometimes when a building or site is sold, the artwork that adorns it no longer fits in with the taste or interests of the new owner. Lumenscape (2009), a City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs Percent for Art piece created by artist Rob Ley, lost its site-specific home above the Wilshire and Western Metro station when the newly constructed Solair building was sold shortly after opening. The new owners, Starwood Capital Group, decided to remove the piece, but thoughtfully gave Ley the option to take it back rather than simply disposing of it. Ley has since sought a more permanent location for the work. Planning for possibilities like the sale of the underlying site is wise, and to protect their interests artists should think like lawyers or engage others to do it for them.

Maintenance—or the lack thereof—is another major issue when it comes to the longevity of a public work. While freestanding art in bronze, marble, or metal needs occasional cleaning and restoration, site-specific installations and new media work can require a lot more attention. In the case of Athena Tacha’s installation Green Acres, created for the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) in Trenton, NJ, the DEP asserted that it needed to replace the work because the ground tiles, which had settled unevenly over the years, were a safety hazard in the case of emergency evacuations. Tacha claimed that the problem was caused by poor maintenance and the DEP’s decision to add trees to the planter boxes without consulting her – the roots eventually grew beneath the tiles and disrupted them.

Athena Tacha’s Green Acres was threatened to be removed for reasons related to public safety and maintenance. Photo credit: Athena Tacha, 1987 (The Cultural Landscape Foundation)

The rise in new media and digital art has resulted in a whole new set of maintenance issues. If an artwork isn’t properly installed or funds are not set aside for routine repairs and updates, a once visually stunning piece can become a public art fail. Once described as a “floating television garden,” video art pioneer Nam June Paik’s Video Arbor (1990) is composed of cage-like columns supporting multiple TVs surrounded by wisteria. Although the foliage is regularly trimmed back, visitors report that the televisions are rarely on, and the site’s management has blamed faulty wiring and an outdated LaserDisc system for the AV problems. Preservationists have started a conversation with the Nam June Paik Foundation in the hope of procuring financial support for the repair and upkeep of Video Arbor. However, if the managers of the site where an artwork resides don’t have the resources to fix these kinds of technical and equipment failures, the easiest solution may be to take the work down. Specifying the maintenance that will be required—and who is accountable for performing it—in the early phases of a project’s development can go a long way toward preserving it as long as possible.

Perhaps the most difficult issue to avoid is shifts in social attitudes and values. At the University of North Carolina (UNC), Chapel Hill, a bronze statue called “Silent Sam” was erected in 1913 to commemorate the 321 alumni who died fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War. A hundred years later, members of the student body, which now includes many African Americans, consider the 20-foot Confederate soldier to be racially offensive and a thinly disguised tribute to the legacy of slavery. Despite the school’s attempt to quell criticism by erecting another monument, Unsung Founders Memorial by Do-Ho Suh, celebrating the unknown slaves who help build the university, detractors continue to call for the older bronze to be removed. At the same time, there are those who would rather see the piece contextualized with a plaque speaking to the history of racial discrimination associated with it. Of course, art is sometimes designed to be provocative; in this case, though, public attitudes have changed over time, creating new controversies that were not anticipated by the artist or the owners of the site. To stave off more immediate backlashes, however, public arts commissioners and artists can include local communities in the creative process to ensure their values and interests are reflected as accurately as possible in the final work.

Rights and Responsibilities

Regardless of why it happens, the decision to remove public art is almost never the artist’s. While abrupt disposal may feel to the artist—and devotees, as in the case of 5Pointz—as though a painting she labored over has publicly had a hole punched through it, the actual outcome for the work may not be outright demolition. It could be indefinite storage, sale on the secondary market (usually for the owner’s benefit) or, in the case of Ley, a return to the artist. In an effort to avoid these events, every artist should think carefully in advance about how to preserve her vision.

So what can artists do to ensure their work is protected in the long run? States differ slightly in their public arts policies and the rights they allot to artists. The Art Law Blog points to guidelines established by Americans for the Arts to help commissioning agencies and artists sidestep potential snafus. The national Visual Artists Rights Act (VARA) of 1990 also states that artists have “the right—(B) to prevent any destruction of a work of recognized stature, and any intentional or grossly negligent destruction of that work is a violation of that right.” VARA has helped numerous artists prevent destruction or removal of their works over the years, but it is not a panacea. VARA only covers works produced after 1990 – and public art contracts often include waivers of this right. In the case of 5Pointz, the judges considering the case ruled the building was not a “work of visual art” and therefore not of “recognized stature” under the act.

With the popularity of public art programs growing around the country, debates over what should be done when an artwork is no longer welcome at its site will continue. One solution to the controversy may be to establish a decommissioning standard wherein work that was once considered permanent can be formally and more respectfully retired from its original location if another home or collector is found for it. Another interesting model is temporary arts commissions like those made by the NYC Public Art Fund. In these instances, the public art has a limited exhibition life, the opportunity to change venues, and the potential for purchase and permanent display. Regardless of whether these options are embraced as industry standards, artists must be vigilant about negotiating on their own behalf to avoid VARA waivers, ensure proper funds are available for installation and long-term maintenance, and at the very least procure a right of first refusal should their artwork ever be displaced.

First published in 2007, Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education by Lois Hetland, Ellen Winner, Shirley Veenema, and Kimberly M. Sheridan offers a new approach and perspective on the “real benefits” of visual arts studio education. The authors believed that by studying the intrinsic value of teaching art rather than its instrumental effect on other subjects, like math and reading, they would be able to make a stronger case for the importance of studying art.

Summary

Studio Thinking presents the researchers’ careful observations and analysis of 28 visual art projects taught in five high school level studio art classrooms at two Boston area high schools with “exemplary” arts programs. Using an admittedly subjective approach, Hetland, Winner et al. worked to incorporate evidence-based methods in the study as much as possible and developed a code system to calculate how often specific habits and skills observed being taught. Through this rigorous process, they were able to identify four “Studio Structures of Learning” and eight “Studio Habits of Mind.” A second edition published in 2013, Studio Thinking 2, features a new addition to the core Studio Structures of Learning, further explanation and examples of habits of mind, and new information on the application of the authors’ research since the book’s first publication.

According to the authors, the Studio Structures for Learning are four modes of instruction germane to the studio classroom: Demonstration-Lecture; Students-at-Work; Critique; and Exhibition (with Transitions functioning as a sub-structure between the other four). These Studio Structures create a supportive atmosphere for learning eight so-called Studio Habits of Mind (SHoM): Develop Craft, Engage and Persist, Understand Art Worlds, Stretch and Explore, Envision, Express, Reflect, and Observe.

These habits are taught in a non-hierarchical manner, each no more important than the rest, and a class may consist of several habits taught in “clusters” and/or interwoven into the Studio Structures. The combination of Studio Structures and SHoM is what Hetland, Winner et al. call the “Studio Thinking Framework.”

Studio Thinking notes that the Studio Thinking Framework can be useful as a method of self-assessment for both teachers and students, as well as in non-classroom settings. The authors are now using the framework as a guide to conduct a study that examines the transference of studio thinking – i.e. the degree to which students’ engagement with the SHoM leads to their using similar dispositions when engaging with subjects such as math and reading.

Analysis

The Studio Thinking Framework has been widely embraced since it was first introduced, with the original Studio Thinking making the New York Times bestseller list and the authors consulting on a number of national, state and local arts education initiatives. While well executed on the whole, Studio Thinking suffers from several limitations in its methodology and design that narrow the extent to which it truly “makes a case” for different forms of arts education.

The Studio Thinking study focused solely on the visual arts and more research is needed to determine how applicable the framework is across all arts disciplines. Furthermore, the visual art classes studied mimic a pre-professional studio teaching style commonly found in college-level and adult arts courses, which implies that the research may have little to say about the art classes more common to secondary and primary settings. By the authors’ own admission, Studio Thinking’s descriptive and theoretical approach makes no attempt to “prove” anything about the benefits of arts education. Given these methodological limitations, the use of the framework in transfer studies, the promotion of it as a tool of advocacy, and arts advocates’ quick adoption of it, all seem a bit premature. It would be more prudent and helpful to conduct research that compares the differences between teaching arts and non-arts subjects from the perspective of studio habits of the mind to more accurately pinpoint the benefits of arts education relative to other subjects and students.

Implications

Studio Thinking‘s reception to date, and in particular the alignment of the Studio Thinking Framework with federal and state arts education initiatives, suggest that the authors’ findings will have some long-term influence on the way educators, advocates, and policymakers think about studio arts and education as a whole. Does Studio Thinking promote a space in society where teaching the arts is valued for its own sake and not a means to an end? In one sense it does isolate how studio learning encourages the development of important critical skills necessary to produce creative, engaged individuals. However, the decision to focus on the results of the method of teaching and use the study to once more look for arts transference to other subjects should concern arts advocates. It suggests an easy leap for policymakers to say, “Thanks for showing us how to better structure curriculum and classes for the other still ‘more important’ subjects. So now we really don’t need the arts.”

As the emergent Studio Thinking movement focuses more on expanding and generalizing what is learned in studio classes beyond the studio, a clear distinction between the effects of the art and the effects of the teaching will become increasingly important.

For a 75% shorter read than what you’re about to experience below, try Studio Thinking: the condensed version.

At the turn of the millennium, arts education found itself increasingly under the axe in a school system beleaguered by budget cuts, low grades and poor test scores. Arts advocates and educators were scrambling to prove the worth of the arts as a means of boosting those test scores and grades in academic subjects deemed “more important,” like math and reading. Motivated by claims of evidence supporting this case, Project Zero researchers Lois Hetland and Ellen Winner conducted a meta-analysis of related research studies dating back to the 1950s to determine if there was in fact a direct correlation. They found no evidence to support the notion that studying the arts caused students’ standardized test scores or academic grades to improve. Arts advocates reeled at this disclosure, which provoked no small amount of controversy in arts education circles. Nevertheless, Hetland and Winner believed that by taking a different approach to the research—one based on the intrinsic value of teaching art rather than its instrumental effect on other subjects—they would be able to make a stronger case for the importance of studying art. They thus set out to determine the “real benefits” of a visual arts studio education. The result was the first edition of Studio Thinking: The Real Benefits of Visual Arts Education, authored in 2007 by Hetland, Winner, Shirley Veenema, and Kimberly M. Sheridan.

Studio Thinking exhaustively presents the researchers’ careful observations and analysis of 28 visual art projects taught in five high school level studio art classrooms. Their findings suggest that students not only learn “dispositions” specific to visual art, but also six general “habits of mind” that are potentially useful in other subjects. A second edition published in 2013, Studio Thinking 2, features a new addition to the core Studio Structures of Learning, further explanation and examples of habits of mind, and new information on the application of the authors’ research since the book’s first publication.

Summary

Studio Thinking and its update present what the authors identify as the “real curriculum” of a visual art studio education. The authors focused on the visual arts to establish parameters for the study, but hoped that others would look more closely at other arts disciplines. At the time the initial research for Studio Thinking was conducted, there was no other arts-related research that examined the day-to-day teachings of studio art, so the authors developed a methodology based on traditions established by three pioneering non-arts classroom studies: Magdalene Lambert’s Teaching Problems and The Problems of Teaching; James W. Stigler & James Heibert’s The Teaching Gap; and Harold Stevenson’s The Learning Gap.

To observe studio instruction in practice, Hetland and Winner worked with five visual arts teachers at two Boston area high schools with “exemplary” arts programs, the public Boston Arts Academy and the private Walnut Hill School for the Arts. They chose the former for its student demographics, which mirrored those of the Boston area. The Walnut Hill student body, by contrast, was mostly middle and upper-middle class, with a diverse mix of local and international urban and suburban students, and a high concentration of Koreans. At both high schools, students were admitted by portfolio review and/or admissions assignments and interviews. They spent a minimum of three hours a day working on their art under the guidance of their teachers, all of whom were also practicing artists with Master’s degrees in art or art education.

The setting of the study is the studio class environment, which, according to the authors, differs from a “traditional” classroom setting in a number of ways. Traditional classrooms arrange desks in rows facing the front of the class. The teacher often lectures or gives a presentation, and sits at his/her desk while students work on tests or other in-class assignments. In an art studio,  by contrast, easels, horse-stools, and various seating apparatus are typically arranged in a loose circle. In the center of the room the teacher lectures, demonstrates, or sets up a still-life model. When not giving a presentation, the teacher roams the studio space executing tasks or visiting students at work. Special lighting and music may also be employed in the studio class to promote an active and focused atmosphere.

Over the course of the yearlong study, Hetland, Winner et al. observed the instruction of 28 art projects. Using an admittedly subjective approach, they worked to incorporate evidence-based methods in the study as much as possible. By videotaping the classes, they were able to compare their direct observations with documentation and more thoroughly analyze student-teacher interactions. They requested post-class written reflections from teachers, conducted interviews with students, and examined samples of the student’s artwork for learning patterns. A code system was created based on their initial analysis, which took into account teacher’s intentions as stated in their interviews and calculated how often specific habits and skills were taught. The code was further refined with the assistance of consulting field specialists and distilled into categories that described what the researchers had observed being taught. Through this rigorous process, they were able to identify four “Studio Structures of Learning” and eight “Studio Habits of Mind.”

According to the authors, the Studio Structures for Learning are four modes of instruction germane to the studio classroom. Initially observed in each teacher’s class were three structural elements: Demonstration-Lecture; Students-at-Work; and Critique. Each studio class features a combination of these activities. In Studio Thinking 2, Hetland, Winner et al. introduce a fourth culminating structure called Exhibition. It is described as an “overarching” structure that encompasses the original three. The authors also identify a fifth sub-element called Transitions, which is the time spent transitioning between all other structures.

An illustration of how four Studio Structures are integrated into Walnut Hill teacher Jim Woodside’s studio class. The authors call this studio time organization a Punctuated Class whereby the structures are layered with shorter intervals between them.

These Studio Structures create a supportive atmosphere for learning eight “Studio Habits of Mind” (referred to in the text by the somewhat unwieldy acronym SHoM): Develop Craft, Engage and Persist, Understand Art Worlds, Stretch and Explore, Envision, Express, Reflect, and Observe. The authors assert that these SHoM are what the studio arts “actually” teach. Each is considered a “disposition”—a term and theory borrowed from the work of Project Zero co-founder David Perkins and his colleagues—or way of thinking that includes specific core skills, an inclination to use those skills, and an alertness to opportunities to put them to use. Not all eight habits of mind are not necessarily present within each studio project, but usually several are learned within a successful course. The authors found that the habits are taught in a non-hierarchical manner, each no more important than the rest, and a class may consist of several habits taught in “clusters” and/or interwoven into the Studio Structures.

Each structure emphasizes the studio habits in different ways. For example, when Walnut Hill teacher Jason Green gave a presentation on clay assembly, the researchers observed four SHoM embedded in the Demonstration-Lecture segment of his class. As he manipulated the clay and spoke, the students “learn[ed] to observe as they look[ed] carefully at ceramics; they learn[ed] to envision as they plan[ned] their designs; they learn[ed] to express as they think about conveying some kind of idea or feeling in their set; and all the while they [were] learning to acquire technical skills required for expertise in ceramics.” Put in the authors’ terminology, the teacher “used a ‘cluster’ of Observe-Express-Envision-Develop Craft: Technique.”

The Students-at-Work structure allows students to spend in-class time working on an assignment, while keeping the classroom focused on art-making goals. Teachers are able to give individual attention and address the specific needs of each student, creating a tailored approach to learning studio habits when students require help. While a cluster of SHoM are embedded in the art project, the teacher draws each student’s individual habit needs into the foreground as he circulates the room to offer one-on-one guidance. For example, a student may be encouraged to “Envision” what another color would do for a painting, or “Persist” in pulling the final composition together.

In the context of the Critique structure, the period when students and teacher collectively analyze individual artworks, the students integrate SHoM through a process of inquiry, observation, and discussion. This structure allows them to make connections with habits different from those that may have been taught in other stages of the class. During a critique, the teacher may compare a student’s unique style to a particular artistic movement unfamiliar to the class (Understand Art Worlds). Another student may be asked to explain why she made a particular artistic decision (Reflect) and how the work would differ if she had done it another way (Envision and Express).

New to the second edition of Studio Thinking is the fourth structure, Exhibition, which the authors claim incorporates all eight SHoM. Through the staging and presentation of the artwork produced within the Studio Structures, students learn different but supportive skills that provide a broader context for understanding the purpose of art, and for deepening their comprehension of the studio habits.

The combination of Studio Structures and SHoM is what Hetland, Winner et al. call the “Studio Thinking Framework.” An interesting outcome of the original study, described in the second edition, has been its application as a method of self-assessment for both teachers and students. Rather than focusing solely on skill development, such as drawing techniques, instructors may evaluate their own teaching weaknesses and strengths through the lens of the framework, or set goals to improve certain dispositions in their students by altering their teaching approach. The authors also report instances where students themselves have used the framework to assess and improve their skills and dispositions.

Other Applications of the Studio Thinking Framework

Hetland, Winner et al. suggest that the Studio Thinking Framework can also be useful in non-classroom settings, such as teacher education programs, museum and gallery education, new technology research, and even policymaking. The authors suggest using the framework to inform new teachers of the “purpose and rigor” of arts education and to improve museum- and gallery-offered courses. They also present ideas for adapting the framework to non-arts subjects, and attest to witnessing its use in a variety of classroom environments:

Teachers have reported to us that the Studio Habits of Mind are broad enough to offer guidance for curriculum and teaching in their disciplines, and the Studio Structures for learning foster classroom cultures of thinking and learning across disciplines by modeling how to organize classroom time and interactions around personalized and collaborative projects.

According to the authors, non-arts subjects can easily make use of the Studio Thinking Framework by dedicating most classroom time to the Students-at-Work structure. By using a studio, laboratory, or workshop model, teachers can personalize the classroom setting, provide instruction across a wide range of skill levels, and more effectively guide students in their dispositional learning.

Hetland and Winner, with the help of Lynn Goldsmith of Education Development Center, are currently using the framework as a guide to conduct a study that examines the transference of studio thinking – i.e. the degree to which students’ engagement with the SHoM leads to their using similar dispositions when engaging with subjects such as math and reading. At the time of Studio Thinking 2’s publication, the authors were only able to cite one instance of potential direct transference of a SHoM (Envision) to a non-arts discipline (geometry). Preliminary findings from comparing the performance of arts majors, theater students, and after-school squash players on spatial geometry problems developed from standardized tests indicated that the art majors performed better initially and also gained more on the test than the other two groups. The authors caution, however, that the experiment does not conclusively demonstrate transfer because they were unable to assign students randomly to the three groups to create a “level playing field.”

Analysis

According to the authors, the Studio Thinking Framework is “a set of lenses for observing and thinking about teaching and learning in the visual arts and beyond.” In Studio Thinking and its second edition, the authors succeed in presenting visual arts studio teaching as a flexible model that not only promotes art techniques and skills, but also critical observation and thinking habits that are applicable in many disciplines. The four Studio Structures and eight Studio Habits of Mind are easy to comprehend and have broad appeal. Together they provide a dispositional vocabulary that augments the skill-building aspects of an arts curriculum with an alertness to opportunities and inclination to use those skills beyond the classroom. With the Studio Thinking Framework, the authors have created a common language and working model that can be used by educators, administrators, and policymakers in discussing arts education. That enables advocates to speak more broadly about what is achieved through arts learning.

Indeed, the Studio Thinking Framework has been widely embraced since it was first introduced, with the original Studio Thinking making the New York Times bestseller list. On a national level, the authors have consulted on the development of Turnaround Arts Initiative, a project of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities, which pairs several under-performing urban elementary schools with famous artists like Yo-Yo Ma and Chuck Close to provide enriching studio-style arts classes. At the state and local level, the new Common Core State Standards place an emphasis on the dispositional vocabulary invoked in Studio Thinking and are arguably supportive of the authors’ position that SHoM is the core of arts education. As part of a K-12 arts integration program in Alameda County, California, the framework has been implemented as a shared conceptual language across disciplines to communicate with teachers, administrators, advocates, and parents. Their students have been taught to use SHoM as a method of self-assessment and critique.

Despite this positive reception, Studio Thinking suffers from several limitations in its methodology and design that narrow the extent to which it truly “makes a case” for different forms of arts education. The authors acknowledge that the study’s reliance on ethnographic methods renders it inherently subjective. Another set of researchers might have identified a different set of habits, such as those outlined in Eric Booth’s “The Habits of Mind of Creative Engagement.” It is important to understand that Studio Thinking‘s descriptive and theoretical approach makes no attempt to “prove” anything about the benefits of arts education, but rather “make a case” for them.

Studio Thinking focuses on the visual arts at the expense of other arts disciplines, although the authors report a few positive findings and comparisons by other researchers and experts in the areas of dance, theater, and music. Notably, Boston Ballet’s Center for Dance Education conducted a two-year study to determine whether the habits were taught in dance and concluded that all eight were present in their dance studio classrooms. Matthew Hazelwood, former conductor of the National Youth Orchestra of Colombia, reported using SHoM as a way to enrich his orchestra class instruction, and theater teacher Evan Hastings is using the framework to help his students track and assess their own development. Nevertheless, more research is needed to determine how applicable the framework is across all arts disciplines.

Finally, the study was conducted in just two high schools in the Boston area, both of which cater to students who already have a strong interest in and aptitude for the arts. The visual art classes studied by Hetland, Winner et al. mimic a pre-professional studio teaching style commonly found in college-level and adult arts courses, which is unusual in most high and middle schools and practically non-existent at the elementary school level. If the “real benefits” of arts education are found only in a college-style course, the research may have little to say about the art classes more common to secondary and primary settings, taught as they are in most cases by teachers less skilled or credentialed than those the authors observed. Would the eight studio habits have been as evident if classes serving students new to the visual arts, or younger students, or special-needs students, had been a part of the study? And would those same students learn the SHoM as readily as the arts-inclined students in a studio-structured environment?

Given these methodological limitations, the authors’ use of the framework in transfer studies, their promotion of it as a tool of advocacy, and arts advocates’ quick adoption of it, all seem a bit premature. While Studio Thinking has certainly added to the arts education conversation, the findings arguably appear only to scratch the surface of the benefits of teaching art. Rather than rushing to test transference and apply the framework across disciplines, it would be more prudent and helpful to conduct research that compares the differences between teaching arts and non-arts subjects to both arts-interested and uninterested students from the perspective of studio habits of the mind. Doing so might more accurately pinpoint the benefits of arts education relative to other subjects and students, and go much further in supporting the authors’ claim that the arts teach “a remarkable array of mental habits not emphasized elsewhere in school.”

Implications

Studio Thinking‘s reception to date, and in particular the alignment of the Studio Thinking Framework with the President’s Committee’s agenda and the Common Core State Standards movement, suggest that the authors’ findings will have some long-term influence on the way educators, advocates, and policymakers think about studio arts and education as a whole. In doing so, will it make an intrinsic case for the value of teaching the arts?

The eight Studio Habits of the Mind as implemented by Alameda County “Art is Education” program. Note: Understand Art Worlds has been altered to Understand Communities.

On the one hand, these developments are encouraging in a country where arts education has been increasingly marginalized over the last couple decades. The success of these early programs will have a hand in determining whether the Studio Thinking Framework will continue to have influence and application. If the results are favorable, perhaps more studio-style arts classes will be incorporated into students’ everyday curriculum in the interest of promoting a studio-centric version of increasingly popular habits-of-the-mind learning. Studio Thinking openly advocates for incorporating studio teaching methodology into these other classroom formats and, in this way, the authors offer a way of valuing arts education that could potentially encourage a demand for it.

But this also implies that Studio Thinking makes a case for studio format arts education as the only area where these particular skills and habits can be learned, which it doesn’t. The authors make a pointed effort to illustrate how SHoM can be applied to non-arts subject areas. If students can get the same benefits from conducting a chemistry experiment or building a physical model based on mathematical theory as long as there is an emphasis on habits like Envision, are we once more back to the drawing board in trying to articulate why arts education is important?

The decision to focus on the results of the method of teaching should concern arts advocates. It suggests an easy leap for policymakers to say, “Thanks for showing us how to better structure curriculum and classes for the other still ‘more important’ subjects. So now we really don’t need the arts.” As it is, the authors’ ongoing research into using the Studio Thinking Framework as “the foundation for more precisely targeted and plausible transfer studies” hews closely to the instrumental language of looking for causal relationships between the arts and other academic disciplines. If the studio structures and habits are indeed the “the real benefits of visual arts education,” then using the framework to once again test for improved performance in other subject areas is more than a little ironic.

Does Studio Thinking promote a space in society where teaching the arts is valued for its own sake and not a means to an end? In one sense it does isolate how studio learning encourages the development of important critical skills necessary to produce creative, engaged individuals. However, as the emergent Studio Thinking movement focuses more on expanding and generalizing what is learned in studio classes beyond the studio, a clear distinction between the effects of the art and the effects of the teaching will become increasingly important.

Additional Reading:

• Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland, Art for Our Sake
• Peggy Burchenal, Abigail Housen, Kate Rawlinson, and Philip Yenawine, Why Do We Teach Arts in the Schools?
• Ellen Winner and Lois Hetland, Continuing the Dialogue
• John Broomall, Is This The Book That Will Change Arts Education?
• Lois Hetland, Why do we need the Studio Thinking Framework, anyway? 
• Ellen Winner, Lois Hetland, Shirley Veenema, Kimberly M. Sheridan, et al., Studio thinking: How visual arts teaching can promote disciplined habits of mind

Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893) was stolen along with his Madonna (1894) from Oslo’s Munch Museum in 2004. After the theft, the combined value of the artworks was assigned retroactively at $121 million.

Christie’s auction house is wrapping up four months of appraising artworks at the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), which has become an unfortunate hostage in negotiations between the bankrupt City of Detroit and its creditors. When the city’s Emergency Manager, Kevyn Orr, brought in Christie’s in August, there was an outcry of disapproval from the public and museums across the country. Marion Maneker of Art Market Monitor described the general sentiment this way:

If you allow Detroit to appraise its art… you’re simultaneously devaluing the importance of art and culture and opening the door to further kleptocratic appropriations from the “public trust.”

Orr has said that he expects the DIA to find a way to raise money from its collection, which may mean a sale of some works at auction. However, the objections are not just to potential deaccessioning (the controversial practice of selling of a work in a museum’s collection), but even to the very notion of assigning an estimate of market value to works of visual art. Maxwell Anderson, Director of the Dallas Museum of Art, compared Christie’s process to “the weighing of souls” and expressed concern that it would “alter…the public’s perception of artworks from being ciphers of public heritage of transcendent value, to objects for sale to pay other people’s debts.”

Protests against the valuation of art in public institutions are not new. Once an artwork has made it behind the pearly gates of a major museum, it is generally considered to be off limits to market forces forever, preserved and protected for the benefit of all. The arguments for this view usually echo the opinion that art’s intrinsic and cultural importance render it priceless, so assigning a price would profane this sacred value.

But are these fears of assigning dollar amounts to artworks warranted? As an associate in the field of fine art appraisal, I take issue with the notion that art could be kept separate from economic value and market forces, even if we would like it to be – and I question the underlying belief that assigning price and respecting “transcendent” cultural value are mutually exclusive. As one municipal bankruptcy expert asserted, “You can’t pretend the art doesn’t have monetary value.” I would go further and say that we should be glad it does.

How Much Is It Worth?

The systematic valuation of artworks in a major museum’s collection is unusual. Even in the DIA’s case, Christie’s is only appraising a select group – less than 5% of the collection – comprised of works purchased directly by the City of Detroit. However, art museums, their collections, and exhibitions have always been intertwined with the art economy. Deaccessioning is one obvious point of intersection, but even setting the sale of art to the side, museums actually assign market value to works all the time, particularly when they acquire or loan them out.

A museum typically acquires work either through a direct purchase made with a combination of its own money and donor funds or via a donation from a private owner. In both instances, the artwork enters the collection with a price attached. In the case of a purchase, curators will examine the historical and aesthetic importance of the artist and her past market activity to justify to their director and board the need to spend a certain amount on a new acquisition. In fact, rising market prices for a less established artist’s work can actually be a signal that she is worth considering for acquisition in the first place. Pop over to the website for Boston’s Museum of Fine Art for an interesting peek at one museum’s acquisition policy (and visit it again for more insights on provenance, which we’ll get to in a bit).

In the case of a charitable donation to a nonprofit institution, the Internal Revenue Service requires that the artwork be professionally appraised upon acceptance to determine its fair market value, defined as:

The price that property would sell for on the open market. It is the price that would be agreed on between a willing buyer and a willing seller, with neither being required to act, and both having reasonable knowledge of the relevant facts.

This valuation provides the basis for the tax break the donor will receive. To ensure he doesn’t scam the system with an inflated value, this type of appraisal uses a market data approach that includes prices of “comparable examples” or sales of the artist’s work in recent years. The appraisal also incorporates any pertinent information on the state of the art market at the time of the gift with regard to the artist, as well as a biography and testament to her relevance in relation to a particular art movement or period. In other words, the appraiser must prove the fair market economic value of the work as it relates to its cultural value in order for the IRS to accept the designated price.

These values are not static; they change with inflation, the ebb and flow of the market, and trends in the art world, which is why private collections are reassessed on a regular basis for insurance purposes – another moment at which monetary value is assigned to art. Perhaps surprisingly, most art museums do not insure their full collections, which would be prohibitively expensive. Instead, individual artworks are insured only when they leave their permanent homes, usually as part of an exhibition or occasionally for conservation. At that time, the works are re-appraised, their value once again determined to guarantee full coverage in the case of damage or loss, such as theft. If either occurs at home where the work is uninsured, the piece will be appraised retroactively for what it would have been worth at the time of the incident.

In 2004, Edvard Munch’s The Scream (1893) and Madonna (1894) were stolen from the Munch Museum in Oslo. After the heist, their combined value was set at $121 million. The works were later recovered, but without an art appraisal, insurers would have been unable to determine how much to compensate the museum. By establishing the market value of an artwork, an organization can give itself options should the unforeseen occur. The money recovered from insurers will generally be put towards repairing any damages incurred, or if that’s not possible, acquiring another art piece. Both measures clearly benefit the collection and the public trust.

Exhibition History and Provenance

Museums don’t just establish the price of the art in their collections, they also help determine the value of works they never even consider buying. An artwork’s economic value is affected by its exhibition history and provenance—where it was shown, where it was written about, and by whom it was owned—so it’s in a collector’s best interest that it be seen in the right company.

When it comes to exhibitions, it is standard practice for museum curators to approach collectors about lending artworks for inclusion in upcoming shows featuring the artist’s work or area of influence. The wall text adjacent to an art piece in an exhibition can be a useful tool for illuminating the subtle presence of the art market in the room. Next time you attend a museum show, pay close attention to the last line of this catalogue description. If the provenance states, “From the collection of…” you can smile and nod with the knowledge that the lender has just added a feather to the artwork’s proverbial cap, an advantageous qualifier should he ever wish to sell it.

The cultural seal of approval that an art institution can issue extends beyond the objects within its own collection and those lent for exhibitions. It can affect an artist’s entire oeuvre, increasing the value of un-exhibited privately owned works as well as new ones offered for sale. One gallerist promoted the work of Israeli artist Leora Laor to a client by informing him in a letter that the The Jewish Museum was considering the purchase of Laor’s photograph Borderland #1006. In this case, the gallerist felt that even interest on the part of a museum would be a factor in the collector’s decision. Similarly, a well-received exhibition about a particular period or style can cause a flurry of buyer activity in the retail sector, as happened with a 2006 traveling showcase of 19^th-century Biedermeier fine art and furniture that was hailed in the New York Times as a “a harbinger of many things modern.”

An installation view of “Biedermeier: The Invention of Simplicity” at the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2006. Photo credit: Chris and/or Kevin

On occasion a museum may mount a show comprised solely of works owned or donated by one collector – a practice sometimes referred to as a “vanity exhibition.” If the collector is still living, the museum may enter into the preliminary stages of acquiring his collection or first right of refusal, wherein they show the work in exchange for donations of art or a cash gift. The collector/donor benefits by adding exhibition history and provenance to his artworks and glory to his legacy, while the museum in theory benefits by expanding its collection – although the artwork may or may not eventually end up there. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art came under fire for agreeing to a 2001 exhibition of works from trustee Eli Broad’s collection without procuring a contract ensuring that some pieces would be donated to the institution. LACMA never received any of the work—Broad decided to open his own museum—but prior to that he made a $60 million contribution for a contemporary art wing bearing his name.

The incident with Broad points to the complex relationship nearly all art museums have with deep-pocketed benefactors positioned behind the scenes as trustees, committee members, and influential donors. It’s difficult for their personal and financial interests not to get entangled with the institution and their collections, which is why museums must walk an ethical tightrope when it comes to public-private partnerships. While their presence ensures that the museum will always be indirectly tied to the marketplace, it also allows institutions a certain amount of autonomy from the limitations of government funding and it can even offer protection for works of art under threat. In the case of the DIA, for example, Emergency Manager Orr and the city’s creditors have largely shied away from the majority of the collection that was donated or acquired with private funds, lest donors and their heirs unleash a slew of lawsuits similar to the one recently filed (and later retracted) by two founders of the Dia Art Foundation in New York.

The Art in Art Appraisal

We’ve examined some of the ways market value and museums intersect, but who exactly is appraising all of this artwork? Is it a group of sticker-happy thieves who will sell world-class art like your Nana’s cheap china at a yard sale? Absolutely not. Art appraisers are also art appreciators. They have a discerning eye for the energy of the brush stroke, effect of light, complexity of composition, and artist’s intent. Most hold degrees in areas of art, history, and cultural studies, as well as economics and administration. The principal appraiser at the firm I work for is a contributing member of several Los Angeles-area art museums, an owner of a diverse collection of paintings and “tramp art,” and has consulted on several art books and catalogues. If you’ve ever watched Antiques Roadshow or History Detectives, you get a pretty good idea of the level of an art appraiser’s interest and knowledge in the work he or she evaluates. Even auction catalogues feature special spreads that include artist’s biographies and attest to the cultural relevance of particular works for sale.

Contrary to fears that dollar signs will devalue art’s intrinsic qualities, those of us who are in the business of knowing the most about its market value are devoted museum patrons, members, collectors, and even artists ourselves – as in my own case. We are deeply aware of what makes an art piece valuable in a cultural context and worthy of its place in a museum.

But what about the broader public? Could highly publicized, often astronomical market prices for significant artworks lead to a general sense that art is only as valuable as the dollars it can be exchanged for? There is reason to believe that the risk is low. Even as New York Times art critic Roberta Smith bemoaned the “new high-water mark”—$142,000,000.00!—set by the recent sale of Francis Bacon’s Three Studies of Lucian Freud, she pointed to a 1980 purchase by the Whitney Museum that made headlines at the time. The prestigious art institution bought an encaustic painting by Jasper Johns called Three Flags for an era-shocking $1 million. But no one talks about that when they see the work hanging in the museum today. It has weathered the once negative press resulting from its hefty purchase price remarkably well, becoming a popular icon of American 20^th Century art.

Jasper Johns’ iconic work Three Flags (1958) was purchased by the Whitney Museum in 1980 for $1 million.

A recent survey of Detroit citizens suggests a similar public resilience to artwork valuation. Despite the high estimates that have been tossed around in the media, reportedly 78% of locals surveyed would prefer not to sell the DIA’s art to satisfy city creditors, despite the city’s dire economic straits. And in another interesting development, Detroit’s creditors have accused Christie’s of undervaluing DIA artworks, the appraised portion of which are preliminarily estimated at $452-866 million. Their disappointment in the early assessment reveals how a prudent appraisal is less about giving the “kleptocrats” what they want than determining a value that accurately reflects the arts’ cultural and historical position within a market.

So if monetary value need not displace aesthetic or cultural value, it seems to me that we want art to be prized in the marketplace – which also means being priced. Though it may seem tasteless to talk cold hard cash when it comes to our cultural heritage, monetary worth is one of the most direct ways in which our culture speaks about things it truly values. Rather than trying to avoid pricing art all together—nearly impossible in a late-capitalist society—it might be more productive to think like an art appraiser and ask why the work is worth what it is at this particular moment in time. Examining the reasons reveals a lot about our cultural interests, state of the economy, and wealth distribution. The ability of an art collection to capture the attention of an American city’s creditors is disconcerting as a sign of culture’s vulnerability when our urban centers are poorly managed, but for a field constantly beset with worries of its declining relevance and difficulty reaching a broader audience, the public’s subsequent resistance in letting that artwork go should be something for arts lovers to celebrate – a sure sign that people really do care after all. In the opinion of this art appraisal associate, a world in which the price of certain artworks is ludicrously high is far less scary than a world in which no one is willing to put a price on art at all.

In recent years participatory culture has subverted consumerist habits, mass media production, and even our social interactions. People who wouldn’t previously have considered themselves creative are getting opportunities to become true collaborators in producing what they consume in fields where once they could only serve as audience members. Nowhere is this more true, arguably, than in the San Francisco Bay Area, the birthplace of parklets, Twitter, and Yelp. It’s clear that the lines between producer and consumer are being blurred in arts administration and education as well. Organizations of vastly differing sizes are adjusting to our changing culture in their own ways, altering how they interact with the public and how the public interacts with them.

Viewed from the outside, the two organizations I work for could not be more dissimilar, and yet both find themselves enveloped in this trend. Adobe Books and Arts Cooperative, where I head the gallery and serve on the board of directors, is a small, community-run bookstore and art gallery open since 1989; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), meanwhile, where I work in the education department, is a large, international collecting institution of modern and contemporary art. Both are at crucial points in their history, and progressing in divergent directions in their vision for public participation and assessment of their educational goals. SFMOMA is reaching to be more experimental, more integrated into daily life, and more collaborative, while Adobe Books is realizing that it must become more like a museum in many ways (more organized, more curated, with a developed mission statement) in order to stay afloat. These organizations are evolving slowly towards each other, providing us with a unique window into how cultural institutions are balancing educational priorities with dueling needs for top-down curation and creative collaboration.

Both Adobe Books and SFMOMA are known as culture makers, information disseminators, and artistic/cultural venues in San Francisco. And both, in the past year, have left their longtime homes. SFMOMA has decided to infiltrate the city and beyond with creative programming and artist projects, “on the go” until 2016 while the museum is closed for an expansion, and Adobe Books was pushed out of its longtime home on 16^th Street due to rising rents and gentrification, recently relocating to a cozier space on 24^th Street. The similarities end there. SFMOMA has over 200 employees, and has the resources to maintain a strong presence in the city, with or without an actual building. Adobe Books, by contrast, could not survive without a store; it is known locally as “the living room of the Mission,” and providing a space for people to meet and for the public to gather is a crucial part of who we are. Though Adobe Books’s art gallery is now fiscally sponsored through Intersection for the Arts, the bookstore portion is still just that, a store, with goods to sell.

Adobe Books at its new location on 24th St. Photo by Tiffany Seinz.

The Story of the Community Bookstore

Clay Shirky argues in his book Here Comes Everybody that organizing without organizations is the modus operandi of the 21st century, writing that “unlike sharing, where the group is mainly an aggregate of participants, cooperating creates group identity.” Adobe Books, though a sole proprietorship for nearly 25 years, has seemingly always operated on a community-run, collaborative model. By stepping back from curation and allowing community members to give life to the space, former owner Andrew McKinley was able to establish Adobe Books as a safe harbor for ideas, a place for meeting and doing, and a spot of artistic intervention for many.

Adobe Books is a natural spot for self-directed learning. Despite a more tightly curated selection of books in our new, smaller spot on 24^th Street, as a mostly-used bookstore with an ever-fluctuating inventory, most customers come in with the expectation of finding something they didn’t yet know they wanted. Because the programming is mostly developed by the visiting public, free programs happen easily and often. Only just recently has the Board of Directors created an online events calendar, or a website at all for that matter. Yet, as Shirky might have predicted, this lack of organization did not deter people from coming into the space; if anything, it fueled widespread neighborhood involvement. People came to the Adobe space on 16^th Street for the books, the people, and the likely chance that something was going on: an art opening, music performance, poetry reading, etc. This scarcity of management also gave the makers and doers of the community a sense of comfortable ownership over a space where they could speak their peace, make their mark, host a party, or even take a nap.

In 2013, however, with a rapidly gentrifying Mission District and steeply rising rents throughout San Francisco, time was running out for a bookstore that operated more like a community center than a for-profit business. Transitioning into a cooperative business with a fiscally sponsored gallery seemed to be the only option for survival. With significant seed funding from a successful Indiegogo campaign, Adobe Books has financially found a new lease on life. At the same time, as a cooperative with a managing board of directors, we struggle with how much to curate the space rather than let the community dictate our programming.

The new 24^th Street incarnation of Adobe Books is a bit more reserved than before. With 14 directors full of their own artistic ideals, the pressure of fulfilling the promises of a successful crowdfunding campaign, and the gallery’s new fiscally-sponsored status, we feel the responsibility to be organized and thoughtful about our decisions. As an administrator by trade, I must admit I garner some pleasure from drawing up loan agreements, event MOUs, and vendor contracts. I like that we maintain a calendar, and that price negotiations on all book sales is no longer the norm. As I happily file reimbursement forms, I do wonder if all of this “organization” is slowly killing the community space that Adobe Books used to be.

Artists in the Adobe Books gallery often give me sideways glances when I hand them a loan agreement—the sort of formality that has never been instituted before. More and more inquiries about book readings, concerts, and other events are being directed to a single events manager, which is just as convenient for us as it is inconvenient for the person inquiring at the front desk who has to remember to scribble down the correct email address. Adobe is learning to be more top-down, and all the while asking ourselves if this structure is worth the exclusion that often comes with this sort of organizational map.

SFMOMA takes programs “on the go” with Mark di Suvero’s sculptures on Crissy Field. Photo by Dominic Santos.

A Museum On the Go

In contrast, SFMOMA is ever so slightly turning bottom-up, and learning that providing arts experiences with a listening ear can be more relevant and valuable to today’s population than white walls with a system for dispersing information about objects.

At SFMOMA, even the education department has a directive to curate its offerings for the public in a more or less top-down way. As with any museum, we have both the task of engaging the public as well as protecting a historical archive. However, SFMOMA is unusual in our commitment to becoming part of urban life for the residents and visitors of San Francisco. In the 2.5 years of its closure, the museum has committed to activating the city in exciting ways, perhaps echoing the recent rise of socially engaged art. Projects like Project Los Altos in the town of the same name and our decentralized exhibition of the 2012 Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art (SECA) awards insert art into everyday life. David Wilson’s SECA piece literally directs viewers to follow itineraries through San Francisco to find secret art interventions, with all journeys commencing from the closed museum doors. While some SFMOMA departments may see the temporary displacement as a hindrance, asking questions like “how will we keep membership numbers up with no museum admission?”, the education department frames it as an opportunity to do what we’ve always wanted to do, reaching out into neighborhoods, schools, and communities to participate in art projects and programs that reflect the dynamics of our city.

Rather than taking a soapbox approach to its educational programs, SFMOMA is developing two-way partnerships with schools and creating new public programs that rely heavily on audience participation. This year we are piloting several school projects that are part artist commission, part school curriculum, and part student-driven learning. These efforts are still in their infancy, but show promise in that both parties seem willing and excited to collaborate to bring contemporary art to the classroom in dynamic new ways. Our public educational programs are evolving as well. As part of our Project Los Altos exhibit, the Education Department is asking artists who participated in the exhibition to create a series of participatory art instructions to be printed in the Los Altos Town Crier, the local newspaper. Responses and documentation from those who choose to participate will be documented on the web as well as a few printed in the following week’s paper. After decades of hearing the likes of Paulo Freire and Sir Ken Robinson tell us that creativity and two-way communication between the educator and student are essential for dynamic learning, educators and education administrators are finally translating these ideals into actual teaching practices. We’re seeing the rise of Visual Thinking Strategies and other inquiry-based learning methods, evidence of the impact of participatory trends in our culture on museum education. The fact that education as a discipline has been at the vanguard of this shift means that museum educators are freer to adapt more quickly.

“You Do Have to Relinquish Some Control”

Forging new community partnerships is crucial to the health of  SFMOMA while it is without a building. Whether this comes as a welcome change or not, our 2.5-year closure may be exactly the catalyst necessary to transform SFMOMA into a leading 21^st=century institution, one thoroughly and intentionally engaged in its community. On the other hand, newly burdened by rising rent and the bureaucracy of organizing a cooperative (by-laws, articles of incorporation, etc.), Adobe Books is pushing hard to be structured while still maintaining its grassroots spirit. Both of these organizations have been molded by San Francisco’s unique, evolving culture, and transformed in recent months by both strong community support for the arts as well as by the money and change that comes with the city’s most recent tech boom.

This climate seems to have pushed San Francisco organizations to experiment with new methods of community collaboration, to search for the perfect balance between curatorial control and open source content. To stay relevant in today’s San Francisco, I suspect that more organizations will be striving for this middle ground—less “institutional” than the stuffy collecting museums of yore, yet more bureaucratic than the scrappy organizations that were once able to maintain cheap spaces in the city. As J.S. May, Chief Advancement Officer of the Portland Art Museum, recently said at the National Innovation Summit for Arts + Culture, “You do have to relinquish some control.” Just how much control to withdraw remains a pertinent and ongoing question for each individual institution – and as San Francisco’s experience demonstrates, large and small organizations have much to learn from each other across the resource divide.

Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker” (1904) greets visitors at the entrance to the Detroit Institute of Arts. The famous bronze was gifted to the museum in 1922. Photo credit: Quick fix via Flickr

Recent threats placed upon the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) have thrust the topic of deaccessioning once more into the popular spotlight. The DIA and its collection are owned by the City of Detroit, which has struggled financially for decades and was recently assigned a city emergency manager by the state’s governor Rick Snyder.  In July, upon reviewing the city’s fiscal situation, the newly appointed emergency manager Kevyn Orr declared Detroit bankrupt. The federal government subsequently decided against bailing out the once mighty auto capital. Facing an estimated $18 billion in debt, creditors and pensioners are now hungrily eyeing the city’s various cultural, natural and infrastructural assets for potential liquidity. Among them is the DIA’s art collection, which has a market value estimated at anywhere from $2 billion to “the low to mid-11 figures.”

Those dollar signs are juicy enough to make any Detroit creditor’s mouth water, but it is important to remember that many of the holdings were donated to the museum under legal contracts with donors that ensured they would never be sold. An attempt to do so would likely result in multiple lawsuits filed by donors and their heirs. With those works legally safeguarded, the pieces most desirable to creditors are those that were bought by the city directly. Unfortunately for the DIA, these purchases comprise an important part of its collection.

Indeed, emergency manager Orr has already hired Christie’s auction house to appraise approximately 3,500 of the Detroit-purchased pieces. Among the lot are significant works by Brueghel, Tintoretto, and Matisse with estimated values reaching as high as $150 million each. These astronomically priced paintings are the superstar outliers within the 60,000 plus item collection, and they are the works most often cited as part of any prospective—and controversial—sale. There is no precedent for so many masterpieces being sold simultaneously, and there are fears amid the collector and auction community that a sale of this magnitude would depress the art market.

“The Window” (1916) by Henri Matisse was purchased by the City of Detroit in 1922 and reportedly has a market value of $150 million.

For the moment, the artwork is not under any immediate threat of seizure. The DIA has claimed the collection is in a public trust, legally defined as “a trust created for promotion of public welfare and not the benefit of one or more individuals.” The state’s Attorney General Bill Schuette echoed this sentiment in a formal statement issued in June. Although an Attorney General’s opinion traditionally carries significant legal weight, it is a possible that a court could overturn it, and creditors may seek just such a ruling if push comes to shove.

Should a court rule in favor of the creditors, selling the artwork to pay off the city’s debt would quite literally betray the public’s trust—though perhaps not the way that has deaccessioning foes concerned. The DIA is the beneficiary of a homeowners’ tax, or millage, passed just last year by voters in three counties to ensure it stays open and accessible to local residents. In fact, in response to recent developments, Oakland County’s Art Institute Authority recently passed a resolution calling for the termination of its contribution to the millage if a sale or leasing of any artwork goes forth. The other two counties, Wayne and Macomb, could follow suit. Without the levy, the museum would face a reduction of hours and museum exhibitions, at the very least.

Since Orr mentioned the collection as a potential asset back in May, battles of opinion have been waged between cultural critics and commentators that have resulted in an art world panic over the disbursement of the collection. In lieu of retired city employees facing reductions in their pensions, one prominent art critic suggested the collection be sold as a preventative measure, only to be browbeaten into switching his opinion.

At the center of these debates is the code of ethics of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), which states that a museum’s collection may be sold “solely for the advancement of the museum’s mission . . . to be used consistent with the established standards of the museum’s discipline, but in no event shall [proceeds] be used for anything other than acquisition or direct care of collections.” The Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) upholds a similar ethical standard. In June, the Michigan Senate voted to approve a bill stating that all art institutions must adhere to this code. The art authority bill still has to be voted on by the House of Representatives when lawmakers return from their summer break, but one wonders if writing the AAM code into law is the right course of action.

Both the bill and Oakland County’s decision to end the millage pending a sale are intended to protect the DIA’s and taxpayers’ interests. But what happens to an institution whose hands have become tied legally? How will it affect the museum’s ability to decide what is best for it in the future?

In a Createquity post this May, Tegan Kehoe suggested “making responsible efforts to keep [deaccessioned] objects in public hands” as a reasonable standard that should avoid the worst outcomes of deaccessioning. But the proposed restrictions being placed upon the DIA would forestall even this approach. Let’s say the DIA wanted to invest in the goodwill of Detroit’s citizens by prudently selling or leasing artworks to other nonprofit institutions to help the city recover. According to Elliot Bostwick of Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, as quoted in the New York Times, most museums only exhibit between two to four percent of their collection at one time. It’s entirely possible that among the museum’s more than 60,000 works—some of which will never be exhibited—there are items that no longer support the DIA’s vision. If executed carefully, a sale of these holdings could be seen as an act of generosity on the museum’s part and actually benefit the institution over the long term, while ensuring that the deaccessioned works remained accessible to the general populace. Yet with the art authority resolution in place and counties threatening to remove taxpayer support, the DIA could be held hostage by the very laws designed to protect its interests. (Indeed, director Graham Beal is now asserting publicly that “selling any art would be tantamount to closing the museum,” in no small part because of the millage situation.) There is an upside to allowing public institutions to police themselves via trade groups like AAM and AAMD.

From Kevyn Orr’s perspective, there are surely quicker and more efficient ways to raise funds for the bankruptcy proceedings than plundering works from the DIA. Some of those options include sale of the Coleman airport, Joe Louis Arena, Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, Belle Isle Park, parking operations, city-owned land, and the water and sewer department. Each of these assets comes with its own particular set of issues, but none seems quite as legally challenging as liquidating the DIA’s art collection. With museum advocates rallying for their cause and the press hot on Orr’s heels, any sale by the DIA, small or large, is becoming less likely by the day. Deaccessioning opponents may find reason to rejoice in that outcome, but whether it’s ultimately a good thing for the City of Detroit—or the DIA for that matter—is still a question worth asking.