The Art is For Everyone auction will go on tonight - minus eight items leaders of the Blanden Memorial Art Museum withdrew from the sale offerings Friday.
Members of the institution's board of trustees voted to press ahead with the long-planned auction, which has come under fire by museum benefactor William Doan and others, after withdrawing those items and prohibiting themselves from buying anything at the sale.
Late Friday afternoon, a list of all artworks to be sold, including city property and items owned by the private Blanden Charitable Foundation, was released. It appears on pages 9A and 10A of today's edition of The Messenger.
Dr. Matt Maggio, vice president of the museum's board, said leaders of the city-owned art gallery have talked about having such a sale for 10 years. He added that the auction has been actively planned for three years and four months.
''This is not a rash decision,'' he said.
During a special meeting at noon Friday in the Municipal Building, board members Meg Beshey, Robert Glaser, Deb Johnson, Sarah Kelly, Margie Loomis, Regina Smith and Maggio voted to hold the auction. Dr. Ken Adams and the Rev. Madai Taylor were absent.
Before the vote, Doan, of Fort Dodge, urged the board members to scrap the auction.
''Cancel the auction or walk into the darkness of an uncertain future that may damage the reputation of the museum and the city for decades to come,'' he said.
Following the vote, he said the Doan Family Foundation, of which he is the president and chairman, will no longer support the museum with money or gifts of art. Over the years, that foundation has given more than 50 artworks to the museum.
''We are never coming back, ever,'' he said. ''We could not trust the museum ever again.''
Doan has complained that a complete list of items to be sold at the auction was never released before Friday. A list of 64 city-owned items was released Oct. 2.
Additionally, Doan has said that the procedures used to plan the auction violate the professional standards of museums. On Friday, he said the American Association of Museums may investigate the sale in a move that could potentially result in the Blanden losing its accreditation from that group.
Local historian Roger Natte told the board Friday that the auction may result in valuable artworks being sold for a fraction of their worth.
''I wish I weren't here today,'' Natte told the board members.
''My assumption was that what you were getting rid of were Kmart specials,'' he added.
But he said he became concerned after he did an Internet search for some of the artists whose work is to be sold and found that their items were commanding prices ranging from $100 to $4,750.
Natte also said that some of the items to be sold have never been on display in the museum.
''Shouldn't we have one last show?'' he asked. ''We could at least walk past and see things that have never been displayed before.''
Natte said no one at the Webster County Historical Society remembers being contacted by museum representatives about the art sale. He said Adams, the president of the museum's board, had previously said the society had been informed of it.
''Maybe they're only worth $50, but they're local history,'' he said of the items to be sold.
According to Margaret Skove, the museum director, a December 2003 report from the American Association of Museums eventually led to the auction. She said that report cited the museum for ''collection overcrowding.''
Skove said the museum doesn't have enough room to house everything it owns. She added that it would cost $200,000 to $300,000 to create the necessary storage space. Those facts, she said, led to the decision to reduce the number of items in the museum collection.
''The AAM was the professional authority to bring this forward and we acted on it in the best way we could,'' Skove said.
Money raised by the auction will help pay for preserving artworks in the museum's permanent collection, according to Skove.
Before voting to hold the auction, the board took a series of specific steps.
First, it removed eight items from the sale list. Seven of those items were given to the museum in 1935, two years after it opened, by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. That agency commissioned unemployed artists to create works during the Great Depression.
The withdrawal of those pieces came after the U.S. General Services Administration contacted City Manager David Fierke on Thursday and asked the museum to refrain from selling any Depression-era artwork commissioned by the government. That agency requested that any such unwanted works be sent to the federal government.
Skove said no decision has been made on keeping or returning the items.
Also, on Friday, the board voted to sell city-owned art only to the highest bidder. The previous plan called for placing a ''buy it now'' price on some artworks instead of auctioning them.
The board also directed Johnson and Skove to determine if bids lower than the assigned starting bid should be accepted for artworks that don't attract any attention from buyers.
Lastly, the board members voted to bar themselves and their relatives from buying art at the auction.
Contact Bill Shea at (515) 573-2141 or bshea@messengernews.net
