Keeping the Warhol famous

The museum needs a way to grow and acquire

The sale of Andy Warhol’s painting “Double Marilyn,” along with the removal of 10 more of the artist’s works from the Warhol Museum, is distressing. The museum’s management and board, and the civic community as a whole, need to learn from the experience.

There is no big, bad guy here. The Warhol family owns the art and needed the money. “Double Marilyn” (as in Marilyn Monroe) sold at auction Thursday for $3.6 million. The other 10 paintings are early works by the Pittsburgh-born artist, created while he was a student at Carnegie Tech; a collector has an option to buy them. A family member said that donating the pieces to the museum could not be taken as a tax write-off for they were, themselves, the family’s principal asset.

(Indeed, the principal endowment of the museum itself is art, not capital.)

The museum’s director strove to retain the works. A deal could not be worked out, though it was close.

But here is what disturbing: A member of the board said, “We would love to have these if we could. … We don’t have the cash to purchase them.” That has to change. The purchase and sale of art at museums is a notoriously tricky and controversial subject. One U.S. museum is selling off some Warhols, in order to acquire a collection of greater diversity — of artists. Another museum has divested itself of all its ancient art in order to acquire a wider contemporary portfolio.

The non-expert enters these debates at his peril.

But one thing is certain and universally agreed upon: A great museum must have money to buy new art. It have such funds to improve and progress.

The Warhol is a unique and immensely popular cultural asset for Pittsburgh. It is our most popular museum and perhaps our most popular attraction. It is one of the first things people want to see when they come here. It is a wonderful museum.

Its future is vital and must be assured.

To have a future, the Warhol must be able to do what its namesake did — innovate, experiment and expand.

That takes money. And a good chunk of that expansion money must be for new acquisitions.

It is a shame that the museum could not acquire “Double Marilyn” — a missed opportunity. Why, for example, could the larger Carnegie system not have stepped up here? The Warhol has boosted it.

But of more grave consequence is the stated, passive acceptance of helplessness in the face of future such opportunities — “we don’t have the cash.” That will not do. This is an urgent task for the museum’s board, Pittsburgh’s corporate leaders, civic leaders and the city’s foundations: We must develop a significant endowment and art acquisition fund for the Warhol museum.

For what is good for the Warhol is good for Pittsburgh.

The museum should never again have to pass on an available work not in its collection.

There should always be enough financial cushion to acquire when the opportunity is ripe and work out the accounting later.

Too many of Pittsburgh’s art collections have left Pittsburgh over the decades, starting with Henry Clay Frick, and then Andrew Mellon. Let’s not, as a city, make this mistake again.

Andy Warhol never stopped growing. If the museum is to be the last word on Warhol, as it should be, it needs a dynamic plan for acquisition and growth.