{"id":37384,"date":"2018-01-11T13:57:38","date_gmt":"2018-01-11T19:57:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=37384"},"modified":"2018-09-13T22:23:21","modified_gmt":"2018-09-14T04:23:21","slug":"controversial-auction-of-works-from-logan-city-school-district-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/controversial-auction-of-works-from-logan-city-school-district-collection\/","title":{"rendered":"Controversial Auction of Works from Logan City School District Collection"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Harbor<\/a>

Harbor scene by J.T. Harwood, part of the Logan School District collection.<\/p><\/div>\n

Controversy has erupted over the Logan City School District\u2019s decision to sell 11 paintings by regional artists apparently purchased through a program of early arts champion and Utah state representative Alice Merrill Horne, whose 150th<\/sup>\u00a0birthday was celebrated Jan. 2. She helped 37 school districts and libraries across Utah begin their own collections of original work by regional artists so that students could experience fine art firsthand. The statewide investment started with nickels and dimes \u2014 milk money collected by Utah children in the 1930s for art that is now worth millions of dollars.<\/p>\n

Giclees are being made of the 11 works being sold in Logan to exhibit in the schools, and funds raised will go toward conserving the remaining 30 \u201clesser\u201d works in the collection and to send students on field trips out of state to view art \u2013 not to support football, says Logan City School District Superintendent Frank Schofield.<\/p>\n

Artist and gallery owner Karen Horne, the great-granddaughter of Alice Merrill Horne, was not happy when she learned of the sale and went with a group on Friday to\u00a0David Ericson Fine Art<\/a>, where the works are on display prior to a Jan. 31 auction:<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw\u00a0that the works plucked from the collection are top-tier \u2013 including a jaw-dropping large Harwood harbor scene, a huge Millet copy done by Harwood right in the Louvre, a lovely early LeConte Stewart [1924, that Ericson says will go for $80,000-$100,00], a\u00a0powerful\u00a0Birger Sandz\u00e9n [an atypical oil by the Kansas watercolorist who taught at USU for a time].\u201d There\u2019s a Moser and a Phillip Henry Barkdull, too.<\/p>\n

The sale, Dave Ericson points out, for which he is getting a 10 percent commission, also includes a Minerva Teichert, \u201cThe Spinner,\u201d with an 8-inch tear in the lower-left corner that he is sure the artist sewed together herself (another Teichert from the collection, worth $500,000, is on loan to the Utah State Capitol); a Waldo Midgley with a big crack in it; a Mabel Frazer with two repaired pencil holes; \u201cand the excellent Gleaners painting, the Harwood copy, contained six pencil holes and the entire sky and most of the foreground had been overpainted. \u201cThat was hanging in the art teacher\u2019s room,\u201d he says. \u201cThe professional restorer successfully took off all of the overpainting [and repaired the holes but found four more to fix]. Most of the paintings had coal soot on them. They hadn\u2019t been cleaned or touched in 50 years. The Birger Sandzen was so gray you couldn\u2019t see any color in it,\u201d he says. \u201cAll the works were bubble wrapped and so were unharmed but they were sitting on a soaking wet carpet in the new addition to the library,\u201d adds Ericson. \u201cNo one realized it was leaking. I had them moved.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clearly, he says, \u201cthe district was unable to care for these paintings and is doing the responsible thing by putting them up for sale.\u201d The gallery is accepting bids through noon on Jan. 31.<\/p>\n

Horne, however, maintains that, \u201cAlice\u2019s work is being dismantled without what I would consider due process.\u00a0If there were\u00a0problems securing the artworks and restoring them, then they should have first been addressed by other means than liquidation.\u00a0I\u00a0feel this\u00a0sell-off of the school\u2019s heritage should not happen casually,\u00a0and without serious examination or protest.\u00a0The works should also have been offered to other state agencies and public collections before putting them up for sealed-bid public auction which encourages rampant speculation, flipping by other dealers, and dispersal into private hands. . . .This purely commercial handling of this school collection makes me sick.\u201d<\/p>\n

Katie Lee-Koven, executive director and chief curator of Utah State University\u2019s Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, concurs. In a letter she read to the Logan School District Board on Tuesday evening during a meeting in which the group agreed to hear eight members of the public comment for 3 minutes each on the matter, she said if the board had sought their input, they would have offered the Museum\u2019s deaccessioning policy and procedures, which she enclosed; would have suggested things like plexi \u201ccovers\u201d to the front and security hardware to the back of restored artwork and rotation for display as well as a fundraiser to pay for conservation costs. She said that another local institution could acquire the works, care for them properly and offer educational opportunities to Logan City schools \u201cso that kids still have access to them and learn from them\u201d and also offered the Harrison to provide educational resources and lesson plans for teachers across various disciplines to \u201chelp them consider how to incorporate the use of these artworks into their lesson plans.\u201d<\/p>\n

These, she said \u201care the kinds of things that we can offer and while we wish the school district board would have reached out to us before, my hope and the hope of others here is that it is not too late.\u201c<\/p>\n

Ericson points out that every school in the state of Utah has this problem to a greater or lesser extent and says people should have been involved with the issue 50 years ago. \u201cWe really have very few museums in Utah and the state has no money to buy these major paintings.\u00a0That\u2019s the tragedy. The money from the sale is all going to the Education Foundation in the district, and it\u2019s my job to see that they get the most that they can get out of it. What\u2019s great about this is the discussion and what people are doing. The PTA and all of us as parents should be finding ways to do it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe public has 30 days to find people to bid and buy the paintings,\u201d he says, adding that he wanted the artworks brought to Salt Lake City to broaden the scope of people who are looking and bidding. \u201cWe hope the State of Utah considers having an art museum. The best thing they can do [with the school collections] is put them in a public place. It\u2019s us being responsible for our assets,\u201d Ericson stresses.<\/p>\n

The Utah Cultural Alliance has turned its focus from a successful campaign to save middle-school arts education to the Logan situation, with a petition (currently with 500 signatures) that was presented at Tuesday night\u2019s board meeting by Laura Gelfand and will be left up until Jan. 31 or a bit after. Signers are asking the Logan City School District to immediately halt the sale of their collection and to work to find a solution that keeps the collection accessible to the public and properly preserved and stored. The petition is found here:\u00a0http:\/\/www.utahculturalalliance.org\/lcsd-art-collection<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s suggested on the petition that the works be loaned or donated to Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art, Springville Museum of Art, Logan City\u2019s new library, UMFA, Capitol Preservation Board, Utah Division of Arts & Museums or expanding the new Logan History Museum to include art.<\/p>\n

Crystal Young-Otterstrom, executive director of UCA, says, \u201cWe are concerned about all the collections with all of the school districts and libraries. We\u2019ve heard that some of the school districts have seen dollar signs after Logan and we are sending a letter to superintendents and school boards statewide detailing that selling these pieces is unethical because it violates the intent of the schoolchildren who donated the art.\u201d The UCA letter also suggests giving artwork to museums in the district to restore and offers information about a number of specialists and curators who can give advice on how to store, restore and display them. \u201cAnd we\u2019re also looking at some more permanent options that may keep these from sales as well,\u201d she says. \u201cGallery owners need to be thinking about the fact that this glut of Harwoods and Tiecherts just lowers the value for everyone. Other galleries are bidding on this sale right now. Some have good intentions of keeping them publicly viewable. But the majority of us don\u2019t\u2019 want to see these go into private hands. We want all school districts to know that we are watching and want to offer ourselves as a partner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other speakers before the Board were Scott Bushman, from the Cache County Historical Society; Marissa Vignault, USU art history professor and parent; Glen Edwards, local artist and retired USU art professor; Barbara Edwards, local artist; Nadra Haffar, former NEHMA education curator; Karen Horne and her sister Bonnie Horne Schroader, a former Arizona school board member familiar with funding and budget issues who requested that the board look at a specific state policy on surplussing items over a certain value and whether they are following policy by having a closed-bid auction.<\/p>\n

The protests seem to have made some impact. On Tuesday night, Superintendent Schofield talked to Channel 2 News about the artwork: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t speak to us cognitively, it speaks to us viscerally,\u201d he said, adding that the district will consider a lower bid from a university if it will mean keeping the artwork in the state. \u201cThe problem is,\u201d says Young-Otterstrom, \u201cthat museums don\u2019t have the kind of money that school districts are looking for. The best option is to donate it, if you can\u2019t take care of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\"Karen<\/a>

Karen Horne addresses the Logan City School Board during the comments section of Tuesday\u2019s meeting.<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Controversy has erupted over the Logan City School District\u2019s decision to sell 11 paintings by regional artists apparently purchased through a program of early arts champion and Utah state representative Alice Merrill Horne, whose 150th\u00a0birthday was celebrated Jan. 2. She helped 37 school districts and libraries across Utah […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":844,"featured_media":37385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14],"tags":[1055,506],"class_list":["post-37384","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-public_issues","category-visual_arts","tag-david-ericson-fine-art","tag-karen-horne"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/harwood-1007x800.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-16 16:38:16","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37384","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/844"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37384"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37384\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37416,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37384\/revisions\/37416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37384"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37384"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37384"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}