What’s in a name? A question for the Vladems

The controversy sparked by the design of the contemporary art museum slated to be built on Guadalupe Street (“Museum plan gets mixed H-board reaction,” May 10), overshadows another matter that deserves our attention: the name.

By all accounts, the new museum, the Vladem Contemporary, will be a wing of the New Mexico Museum of Art. As such, it belongs to the people of New Mexico.

So why did the contemporary art wing get stuck with such an unwieldy name? In no way does the name reflect anything about the state. According to articles in The New Mexican, the Vladem family — recent arrivals to Santa Fe — contributed $4 million to the museum fund. One assumes naming rights, along with a healthy tax deduction, came with that contribution.

Today’s art world is swimming in money. One of Monet’s haystack studies recently sold for more than $100 million. A Jeff Koons sold for $91 million. In the golden age of billionaires we are currently living through, $4 million doesn’t qualify as big money. It’s small potatoes.

Why did the Museum of New Mexico Foundation sell naming rights for such a paltry amount? You would have to ask them. Whatever the reasons, officials at the museum drove a poor bargain. In doing so, they deprived us, the people of New Mexico, of the right to name our own museum after ourselves, the true owners and the true financial backers of this project. And the foundation did it on the cheap.

Johnnie Prather is an art lover and longtime resident of Santa Fe.