The parties plan to move ahead to carry out the terms of the agreements in the coming weeks. The court’s ruling permits the parties to proceed with the transfer of ownership of the Corcoran’s historic 17th Street building and the College of Art and Design to GW and of custody of the art collection to the National Gallery of Art.

The collaboration will maintain the historic building as a showplace for art and a home for the Corcoran College and its programs, creating a global hub for the arts at GW. The collaboration also will safeguard the Corcoran’s collection and increase access to it as a public resource in Washington.

“Today we take a dramatic step toward realizing a dynamic partnership that will safeguard the Corcoran legacy for generations to come,” said GW president Steven Knapp. “The George Washington University looks forward to welcoming Corcoran College students, faculty and staff to the GW community and to working with them to continue and enhance their proud tradition of innovative arts education in our nation’s capital.”

“This is the beginning of a collaboration that will make the Corcoran collection more accessible to more people in the nation’s capital,” said Earl A. Powell III, director of the National Gallery of Art. “We look forward to restoring and programming the galleries in the historic 17th Street building with vibrant exhibitions of modern art, and to exhibiting a significant number of works from the Corcoran collection in the Legacy Gallery in the Flagg Building and at the National Gallery of Art.”

In February 2014, the Corcoran Gallery of Art entered into agreements with GW and the National Gallery of Art in order to assure:

• a long-term, sustainable future for the Corcoran Gallery and the College;
• the rehabilitation and renovation of the historic Corcoran building;
• the preservation and display of the Corcoran’s valuable collection of art and its retention within the District of Columbia; and
• the continued use of space within the historic Corcoran building for the exhibition of modern and contemporary art.

The Corcoran College of Art and Design will become a part of GW and will now be known as the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design within GW’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences. GW will operate the school; maintain its distinct identity within the Columbian College; and assume ownership of, and responsibility for, the Corcoran building, including its renovation, which is slated to begin early in October 2014. Students will continue to take classes in the Corcoran buildings.

GW also will assume custody of and care for a limited number of artworks that will remain permanently in place in the Corcoran building: the Canova Lions, the Salon Doré and the French Mantle.

Also, as previously announced, the National Gallery of Art will organize and present exhibitions of modern and contemporary art within the Corcoran building.

The National Gallery also will maintain a Corcoran Legacy Gallery within the building, displaying a selection of works from the collection that are identified historically with the 17th Street landmark structure. These and other works of the Corcoran collection will be transferred to the custody of the National Gallery of Art. The National Gallery will accession a significant portion of these works into its own collection where they will bear the credit line “Corcoran Collection” plus the historic donor credit line. Works that are not accessioned by the National Gallery will be distributed by the Corcoran to other art museums and appropriate entities in the Washington area. No work of art will be sold.

The National Gallery of Art and Corcoran curators have already begun to work together on the accession and distribution plan, which may take up to a year.

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The collection of Indianapolis attorney Scott Tarter explores Indiana’s contributions to America’s national pastime. The History Center says Indiana was the site of the first-ever major league baseball game and has been home to five major league teams, including the Indianapolis Hoosiers, who won the 1914 Federal League pennant.

Other material explores the history of the Fort Wayne Kekiongas and the Indianapolis Blues. Also on display are a limited-edition reproduction of the first recorded baseball card dating from 1869 and original 19th-century and early 20th-century baseball cards, photographs and illustrations.

The exhibition will be on display Sept. 9 through Nov. 15 at the History Center in downtown Indianapolis.

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The wealthy Baltimore couple hang in two separate portraits in the Fort Wayne Museum of Art’s “Decade of Decisions: The Shaping of Collection” exhibit. The show focuses on items from more than 1,000 pieces Shepard says he has added to the museum’s permanent art collection in just 10 years as the executive director.

He automatically went to the portraits from the late 1800s when he began thinking of his favorite items. An antique dealer originally tried to sell the portraits to him for nearly $8,000 each. Outside of his intended budget with no attachment to Fort Wayne, Shepard declined. And kept declining for two years.

“Every time I would go in over the next two years, he lowers the price – I knew I had a good thing going,” Shepard told The Journal Gazette. “I keep telling him I’m not interested, he keeps lowering the price until finally, it’s a very cold spring – antique dealers are not selling anything in the wintertime anyway. It’s dismal, it’s rainy, there’s no customers out. I look at those portraits again, and he goes, ‘I will let you have those portraits for $800.’”

“I take it, because in two years’ time, I had researched the frames,” he says, pointing to the ornate golden borders around the portraits. “The frames together are worth almost $15,000. I figured I can’t go wrong.”

The current exhibit is full of these little anecdotes that Shepard loves to share. Over the past 10 years, he has more than doubled the museum’s art collection, while maintaining his aim for diversity in media and artists.

“It dawned on me that over all of those other years, many people had a hand in choosing, and sometimes, it wasn’t a choice. There’s never been a period in this museum’s history that one person could make that many decisions, which led to the title, ‘Decade of Decisions,’” Shepard said. “I also realized when you come in to see the show, the average person is not going to know anything about the work other than what’s on the label, so I’ve been upstairs for the past few days writing labels because there’s a little story behind everything and I think people would like to read the story.

“When a group calls for a tour, I’m usually the person that gives the tour because it’s fun to me. I tell you about the prices, how the deal happened and people love those tours. We’re working on how to incorporate more of that information. Museums don’t do that.”

The museum’s permanent collection consists of nearly 1,400 American paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints and photography; the collection also includes Indiana Amish quilts and hundreds of American cut glass work and highly collectible Roseville pottery pieces. Shepard says it’s culturally important to continue collecting pieces that stay within the city.

“You could have just a showcase – it wouldn’t be a museum then, it would be an art center – and you just change your shows; they’re all good and that’s all fun. But every time you do that, you have left no gas in the tank, so to speak. The only cultural treasure was there for a moment and you got to savor that treasure before it left,” he says. “By being a collecting institution, we are able to build a treasure trove that stays here and enriches the cultural landscape forever, really.

“Now the struggle of doing that is how much money do you have? Because museums that we all know have great collections, got those collections because they have really wealthy donors. We had to start from scratch, and buy, and barter and talk people into stuff, and it is difficult. But the fact that I’ve been able to add so much tells you it’s fun.”

Shepard came from New England, by way of Connecticut, in 2003 to elevate the museum, which included an expansion in 2010. Shepard says he took a year to compile a catalog of what the museum already had and what time periods, mediums and artists were missing.

This is where, at least for most artists, Shepard appears to differ from most. If a piece spurs his curiosity, he picks up the phone and calls the artist personally, if he can.

He says photographer Michael July, whose images from his book Afros: A Celebration of Natural Hair, were on display last year, was surprised that a museum director wanted to display his work in Indiana, when he couldn’t even manage to book a meeting appointment at a museum where he volunteered in Brooklyn.

Latino printmaker Paul Valadez was so happy that Shepard wanted to buy prints for the “Graphicanos” exhibit last fall, he willingly gave Shepard 24 more pieces of art.

X-ray photographer Nick Veasey, who Shepard says rarely sells his work for less than $10,000, had so much fun putting his work on display for the contemporary photography exhibit this spring that he told Shepard to keep all five pieces.

“He gave us almost $80,000 worth of his work,” Shepard says. “We are growing at unprecedented rate. We are really doing what I said we do – diversify, diversify, diversify. I think that really matters. Our community is diverse and anyone can be an artist. It’s not a closed gate like it used to be in the old day. It’s fascinating to see the reactions on the artists’ part, like Nick (Veasey), who tell me that this is not the way museums are doing it.”

“It shows me that we’re doing something different, and I always like doing something different.”

Shepard says he would like to add some more photography, studio glass and craft work pieces to the collection. He says he recently has found an interest in “artist-sculptor-bikemakers.”

“How crazy is that? There’s an artist that makes these crazy bikes that work, but they are sculptures,” he says. “I’m thinking I have to at least put one on display, and apparently he’s hard to deal with – I can’t wait to talk to him.”

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Information from: The Journal Gazette, http://www.journalgazette.net

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