From: mvd@cs.brown.edu (Maarten van Dantzich)
Subject: NYT: Dutch State Dumping Art
Organization: Brown University Department of Computer Science
Date: Tue, 15 Sep 1992 00:11:52 GMT


This was on the front page of the New York Times today; I found it
fairly amusing. Any typos are probably mine.

>> Maarten.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

(c) New York Times, Monday Sept 14, 1992.

_DUTCH STATE DUMPING SOME NONE-MASTERS' ARTWORK_
            By Marlise Simons


  THE HAGUE -- Considering its long love affair with painting, the
Netherlands is undertaking an unusual task: It is trying to give away
215,000 works of art.  
  The problem is, most are not the works of DUtch masters, and not
everyone wants them.
  At issue is the towering pile of art that grew from the 1950's to the
1980's, when the Dutch Government insured artists their place in one
of the world's most generous welfare states by purchasing their work. 
  In a new mood of blasphemy, the Ministery of Culture has said that
the enormous stocks of art must be cleared out because they are tying
up costly storage space, air conditioners, computers and staff.
  More ominously, cultural officials are saying openly that while the
program has yielded some fine work, it has produced much of dubious
quality. Only one of six works is worth keeping and fit for
exhibiting, the ministry has declared.
  The decision has caused a fair commotion in the Netehrlands.  Some
citizens argue that the subsidies should be revived to keep struggling
artists afloat when the market fails them.  Others see the pile of art
as a monument to socialist central planning at its most absurd.
  Almost inevitably, artists have opposed the plan to give away the
works.  One artists' union has denounced it as "wholesale dumping" and
warned that it will spoil the market for new work.
  Heleen Buijs, the art historian and lawyer who is running the
giveaway program, has been writing letters and working the phones with
her staff of eight in an effort to jettison thousands of canvases,
tapestries, sculptures and other works of art.
  WIth so much to give away, the keepers concede they are unfamiliar
with most of the inventory.  The taxpayers' art collection occupies a
space the size of a hangar in a Government building in Rijswijk, a
suburb of The Hague.
  "We store by size, not by quality," said Frank de Man, a warehouse
worker, as he moved among cages filled with diptychs, triptychs and
sculptures of wood, clay and bamboo.  Nestled among the objects were a
handmade amphibious helicopter, a bicycle wheel with leopard spots and
a puzzling metal pyramid.
  In the next room, engravings and etchings were still neatly packed
in their own boxes.  "We have 85,000 prints, Mr. de Man said with
pride.
  "These don't really belong here," he said, steering past clusters of
ornate drapes in the textile section.  "They're old palace curtains of
the Queen.  We don't know if she wants them back."

  _A Smashed Shopping Cart_

  A sloping table loomed, with a crushed rack and a smashed shopping
cart on top.  Could this be a memento to an angry homemaker?  "It has
no name but it has a number, so it is a work of art," Mr. de Man said.
  Was all this work, everything crowding these racks, to be given
away?
  "Not to worry," he replied, "We are not donating the Rembrandts and
Van Goghs of our time."
  Over four decades, the Netherlands allocated large amount of public
money to buy artists' work and thereby guarantee their income.
Another purpose was to exhibit the works to demystify art and make it
less of an elitist experience.  The program ground to a halt in 1986,
however, as the number of artists taking part and the work they
produced swelled to an unmanagable flood.
  "Stuff was arriving by the containerful," said Miss Buijs, who
estimates that the state was buying some 20,000 works a year by the
early 1980's.
  She gracefully sidestepped questions about the quality of specific
works.  "People who did the buying included welfare officials," she
said.  "Their main criterion was often whether the artist needed the
money, rather than judging the attributes of the work."
  Prices paid by the Government ranged anywhere from $100 for a
drawing to $5,000 for monumental pieces.  The state also reimbursed
artists for materials.  No precise figures are available on how much
was paid, but the Minitry of Culture estimates that the state spent
more than $65 billion buying artworks and benefited close to 10,000
people. 

  _Better Pieces Will Be Kept_

  Miss Buijs has been given thre years to sort out the inventory.  Of
the nearly 260,000 works purchased, she said the Government will keep
about 40,000 -- the better pieces -- to send to museums, embassies or
exhibitions.  The rest will be donated to nonprofit organizations.
  "We'll offer it to schools, clinics, old peolpe's homes, police
stations, tax offices, unemployment bureaus," she said.  "we will not
sell it because the artists have asked us not to compete with them." 
  She hopes that much of the printed work will find a home in the
country's art libraries, a national network of some 70 outlets where
people can borrow paintings, prints or sculptures and keep them at
home for up to six months for a small fee.  Even companies and hotels
use the libraries.
  But giving away art is not proving to be easy.  Many art libraries,
museums and other public institutions are already filled to
overflowing. 
  Following the same principle practiced by the state, municipal
governments are said to have bought more artworks than the federal
Government, and town halls across the country have begun emptying
their cupboards by donating or returning the objects.
  Miss Buijs finds inspiration in some of the letters she receives,
though they may complicate her task.  A home for the aged advised her
not to send an abstract work because the residents would not like it.

  _Neon, Please_

  A clinic wants peaceful landscapes only.  A school requests a
painting measuring 9 by 12 feet for its entrace hall, and another says
it is collecting neon art.  An institute for the blind and other
people with impaired sight requests collages and tapestries that are
interesting to touch.
  "It's an enormous job to sort that out," Miss Buijs said, "but we
would like to comply with such special requests."  One painter asked
the ministry not to donate his work "because that would suggest it has
no value."
  At the Arts Palace, a painters' cooperative in Amsterdam, the
reaction to the giveaway program was generally dispirited.
  "Of course we don't like this; it's competition for us," said Dorrit
Klomp, a painter in her 20's.  But she had a second thought.  "It will
show us work we didn't know from the sixties," she mused.  "That was
an important period."  A lot of people from that time are now
prominent.  I'm rather curious."
  The sticking point is what to do with work that nobody wants.  It is
a question that makes the Ministry of Culture nervous, and it has
responded indignantly to Italian press reports that the Dutch plan to
burn piles of unwanted art.

  _The Last Resort_

  Officials have settled on the answer of giving the artists or their
survivors the last word by offering them any work that is damaged or
unwanted.  "That means they can decide if they want to take it back,
give it away or destroy it,"said Miss Buijs, adding that the state can
destroy it as a last resort.
  "Whatever happens, we'll be discreet," she said, "We will not
publish a list of names or leftover work."