Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Walton’s Museum

This is a fascinating story.

Alice Walton made a deal last November to buy Thomas Eakins’s 1876 masterpiece “The Gross Clinic” from Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia for $68 million. Walton (Sam’s daughter and Wal-Mart heiress) wanted it not for her living room but to hang in the public museum she’s creating in her hometown of Bentonville, Ark.

[...]

Walton’s taste, determination and deep pockets are clearly making some people in the art world very nervous. Art patrons say it’s great that she’s founding a museum in the heartland—but when the richest woman in America (estimated worth: $15.5 billion) snaps up a beloved painting from the Eastern establishment and wants to truck it back to Arkansas, many of those same patrons freak out. And it may not be just a question of cultural patrimony. Isn’t there a whiff of cultural snobbery here—a little like the exasperation expressed not long ago by Wal-Mart’s CEO H. Lee Scott Jr. over his failure to crack Manhattan’s resistance to opening one of his stores?

(6) Comments
Posted by Owen at 1737 hrs
Culture

  1. I share a last name with that family. Too bad I don’t share a bank account.

    Posted by k2aggie07 on June 12, 2007 at 1749 hrs


  2. Maybe they were going to use it as payment for her the people writing her daughter’s papers.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 12, 2007 at 1837 hrs


  3. Oh, the horror! The beautiful people might need to set foot on the ground of “flyover country” to see their artwork.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 12, 2007 at 2359 hrs


  4. If I were an Eastern establishment art lover/dealer, my main concern would not be that a valuable painting is going the hang publically in Arkansas, my main concern would be that an uber-wealthy art novice is drastically overpaying for a painting and potentially driving up the cost of art acquisition for me as well.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 13, 2007 at 0953 hrs


  5. Actually, if you read the story, they comment on how she’s not willing to spend more than it’s worth - even though she clearly could.

    Posted by Owen on June 13, 2007 at 1001 hrs


  6. The worth of the object is what someone is willing to pay for it.  The art lover from the East coast can not set the worth of something for someone else.  With Eakins being considered the first American master, I am suprised that it has taken this long for his works to approach this level.  I am lucky enough to have two Eakins prints (one boxing and one wrestling) at home.  They are incredible.

    Tad

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on June 14, 2007 at 0943 hrs


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