October 24: Shields, the Museum’s executive director, begins a medical leave for surgery on a heart valve and will be absent through rest of year, Museum announces. Nina Garlington and Craig Langlois will act as co-executive directors during Shields’ absence.
October 26: Second group of plaintiffs, made up of three residents of Lenox, files suit in Suffolk Superior Court also seeking injunction; the cases are combined.
October 27: New England Museum Association holds “think tank” called “The Deaccessioning Dilemma: How Can We Support Standards AND Museums in Crisis?”
November 1: Judge John A. Agostini of Berkshire Superior Court holds a hearing on the combined cases. Near end of hearing, the lead lawyer for the state asks that, if plaintiffs are found to lack standing, it be entered as a plaintiff.
November and early December: The Museum and sale opponents file multiple motions with the Massachusetts Appeals Court. The Museum seeks speedy trial at the Superior Court level. Opponents back higher-court review.
December 13: Trainor extends injunction through Jan. 29. “These delays benefit no one,” said William F. Lee of the Boston law firm WilmerHale. “It is ironic that, during this holiday season when the Museum is visited and enjoyed by more families than ever, its future is placed in grave jeopardy.”
December 18: Appeals Court does not grant the Museum’s request to lift the prohibition on Superior Court action. It also denies the museum’s bid to expedite the appeal, which normally takes many months to more than a year to play out.
December 26: Shields returns from his medical leave on a part-time basis.
Ahead: On or before Wednesday, the Attorney General’s Office is due to file a status report to the Appeals Court on its investigation.
February 5: Trustees review and approve the plan reached with Healey’s staff to end months of litigation and instead seek court approval for sales.
February 7: Board begins discussing works to sell, anticipating approval from the Supreme Judicial Court for Suffolk County, which came April 5. Trustee President Elizabeth McGraw briefs the board on terms of the agreement. The museum must consider the interpretive value of works as well as their possible sale prices. Trustees review likely values of 39 works that can be sold; Norman Rockwell’s “Shuffleton’s Barbershop” is to be sold to a private museum, later identified publicly as the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art in Los Angeles.
Trustees also identified a group of works to attempt to retain for the collection. In the following days, museum staff assessed works for possible sale “using a scheme based primarily on interpretive value,” according to an April 10 report to Healey’s office.
February 9: The museum-Healey agreement is filed with the SJC and made public
February 14: Trustees hold the first of two meetings with finance and collections committees. The agenda focuses on making a final selection of works to sell in a first group, still pending court approval.
March 7: Trustees meet again with the finance and collections committees. Participants produce a list of 15 works to include in what becomes a series of May sales and auctions.
March 26: Board members pick works for initial sales. “The Board assessed options for raising the needed funds while retaining works with relatively high interpretive value,” the museum reported to Healey.
One vote backs including 13 works. A second vote authorizes McGraw to add two paintings to the first sales, if needed as a result of revised auction estimates and less-than-expected net proceeds from the sale of “Shuffleton’s Barbershop.” In the end, the paintings were not included. They were Jan Victor’s “Benjamin and His Brethren” and Benjamin West’s “Daniel Interpreting to Belshazzar the Handwriting on the Wall.”
Also on March 26, trustees discuss the goal of keeping works accessible to the public through sales. Trustees back the idea, “but also expressed the concern that selling works subject to such restrictions would significantly reduce sale value and require the Museum to sell a greater number of works .” the institution informed Healey. Trustees agreed to ask Sotheby’s to relay offers from buyers willing to commit to public displays.
April 5: Associate Justice David A. Lowy issues his ruling approving of the agreement. Trustees meet that day to discuss the decision. They again debate the issue of public art displays by buyers and agree to ask Sotheby’s to take steps to foster such sales. (In April and May, Sotheby’s staff members contact more than 150 institutions offering special access and terms for purchases.)
April 19: The trustees’ Finance Committee creates a subcommittee to expand the museum’s business plan, including hiring a consultant to be found through a competitive bidding process.
May 14: A series of Sotheby’s auctions of Berkshire Museum works begins.
May 23: Sales end with 12 of 13 works being sold by auction or private transaction. Net proceeds from those sales and “Shuffleton’s Barbershop” come to $47 million.
June 7: Trustees discuss the shortfall from expected proceeds. The board reaffirms a wish to get the full $55 million allowed by the agreement. Trustees instruct staff to select works for a second batch of sales and, in doing so, to consider both financial and interpretive values.
June 11: Staff finishes its research, which included contact with Sotheby’s about works most likely to be sought by public institutions. On the same day, Collections Committee approved the staff’s choice of nine works to sell.
June 12: Trustees unanimously approve the works chosen for a second batch of sales, marking seven for private transactions and two Asian works for a September auction.
— “Shuffleton’s” in 1959 and “Blacksmith Shop” in 1966
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SAVE THE ART (STA)
A grassroots citizens group established in 2017 with the intent of stopping the sale of the Berkshire Museum’s treasured art collection in order to find an alternate solution to its continued financial shortfall.
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