The Chinese jades created little buzz in the art world when they were shown at the Museum of Fine Arts a few years ago. But a decision by the New York collectors who own the pieces to sell them through Christie's is now turning heads - and drawing unwanted attention - outside the MFA.
Alan and Simone Hartman, the latter of whom is on the MFA's board of overseers, auctioned off half of their collection of carved jade pieces last November, bringing in $15 million. The second half of the collection will be auctioned on Tuesday in Hong Kong, and the sale is expected to garner in excess of $10 million.
Some museum ethics experts and officials say it is disturbing to see an entire collection up for auction so soon after being displayed at the MFA. They raise questions about a nonprofit museum giving its imprimatur to works owned by wealthy collectors who are generous donors to the institution. Some say that the Hartmans, who run an antique business in New York, put the MFA in an awkward position with the sale.
"It looks like the show may be more of a favor to the lender as opposed to something created by the curatorial staff," said Patty Gerstenblith, a DePaul University law professor who specializes in the way museums collect antiquities. "Showing the collection in the museum will raise the market value of the pieces, particularly when there's no other exhibition of the works."
Other experts agreed. "It does look bad," said Marie Malaro, the former head of the George Washington University museum studies department and the author of the book "Museum Governance: Mission, Ethics, Policy." "[The timetable] looks uncomfortably close. If somebody had come to me, when I was advising a museum, I would have said to them, 'First of all, you shouldn't do this show if this person is sitting on an advisory board.' And if I had been in the position of directly talking with these people, I would have asked, 'Do you have plans to sell?' "
But MFA director Malcolm Rogers defended the decision to show the Hartman jades. He said that the 207 ornate carved works the MFA exhibited in 2003-04 make up a "superb" collection that deserved to be seen based on its artistic merits, and that it is unlikely the museum's decision to exhibit them had any influence on the prices they would fetch in the increasingly hot jade market.
"It's an area of jades that have been little shown in recent decades, an area once thought unfashionable," Rogers said. "We wanted to bring a great collection that was little known to the Boston public."
Created in the 18th century, the pieces are mainly white jades, ranging from small pendants that Christie's estimates will sell for less than $10,000 to a brush pot carved with an intricate landscape featuring deer and cranes (estimated at $1.3 million to $1.9 million) and a pair of semi-translucent circular screens depicting mountain scenes that could fetch $1 million.
James Cuno, president and director of the Art Institute of Chicago and former director of the Harvard University Art Museums, expressed sympathy for the MFA. "My guess is that the MFA thought the exhibition was very much worthwhile doing and that they were hoping the collectors would give the collection to the museum," said Cuno, "No doubt they are disappointed. No museum wants this to happen."
Rogers said the MFA had no idea when the jade exhibit was mounted that the Hartmans would sell the collection. Simone Hartman, in a phone interview, confirmed that when she spoke to Rogers before the exhibition opened, she told the director there were no plans, at the time, to sell.
That changed in 2005, within a year of the show's closing. The Hartmans agreed to auction their collection after being approached by Christie's. Hartman said she was aware the museum would have liked to have seen some of the jades donated to its collection. After all, the Hartmans had given the MFA a valuable collection of antique English silver in 2001, not long after the museum had mounted an exhibit showcasing the pieces. But the couple couldn't afford to make such a gift this time, she said.
"If we can help out the museum at some future date, we'll be very happy to do so," said Simone Hartman. "But you can only do what you can do. We're just ordinary people. We're not like Bill Gates."
Murky ethical waters
With limited acquisition funds and soaring prices in the art market to contend with, many museums depend on donors and collectors to help their collections grow. The challenge for museum officials and curators is to navigate the often murky ethical waters surrounding such relationships to ensure that they do not compromise the institutions' educational and artistic missions.
It is not uncommon for objects shown in a museum to eventually go to auction. But museums generally try to avoid appearing too cozy with art dealers. Failing to do so can damage a museum's reputation, as was the case in 1999 when the Brooklyn Museum of Art allowed Christie's to help sponsor an exhibit featuring art collected by Charles Saatchi, an important client of the auction house.
What's notable about the Hartman auctions is the sale of the entire collection, the short time that elapsed from the closing of the MFA show, and the fact that no other museum has exhibited the work.
In fact, Simone Hartman says the couple tried to have the jade collection shown at the Asia Society and Chinese Institute, both in New York, with no success. Museums were also not interested. "Very often, museums don't want to spend the money to put on an exhibition," she said. "You foot the bill. And quite frankly, we weren't quite anxious to foot the bill."
The Hartmans, who summer on Cape Cod, say that they have had a long-term relationship with the MFA. The Hartmans' 2001 gift to the MFA of a collection of more than 100 pieces of antique silver led to their being named "eminent benefactors," a designation meant to represent gifts - either through money or works of art - worth between $5 million and $10 million. In the fall of 2001, Simone Hartman was installed as an overseer, an advisory position.
It was Tom Wu, curator of Asiatic art at the MFA until 2004, who suggested that the jades be shown, Hartman said. "The fact is, there are very few jade collections in the world of this kind of quality," she said. Wu could not be reached for comment.
The MFA showed the jades in the Paul and Elizabeth Schmid gallery, a 1,255-square-foot space typically used to display Chinese decorative arts. In the 272-page hardcover color catalog Christie's produced for Tuesday's auction, the MFA is listed in the histories of the 105 objects for sale. But it is not clear what impact the MFA exhibit may have had on the works' value.
Theow Tow, the Christie's deputy chairman who brokered the sale arrangement with the Hartmans, said it was unusual to be able to sell a collection so soon after a major museum showed it. But he said he believed the MFA exhibition had little impact on the prices. Eighty percent of the buyers at the November auction of the Hartmans' jades were from East Asia.
"[The MFA show] did make a difference to potential American buyers," he said. "It had less of an impact on the East Asians, who dominated the sale. They may not have been aware of the museum."
'A situation to be avoided'
The MFA does not have a policy that prevents private collectors from selling works after they've been shown at the museum. But other museum leaders say the MFA should have such a policy.
"I would believe that any museum would have some kind of written agreement in terms of the collector's ability to sell works en masse," said Millicent Gaudieri, executive director of the Association of Art Museum Directors. "The donors moved too rapidly."
At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, "we always have an agreement to keep collectors from selling works 'off the walls,' " said Harold Holzer, the museum's senior vice president for external affairs. He described the MFA's scenario with the Hartmans as "a situation to be avoided."
Rogers said the MFA does not intend to institute any policy to control sales of works it has exhibited. While praising the Hartmans for their support of the MFA, he said he had hoped the collectors would have donated some of the jades to the museum.
"There are pieces we would have liked to have had, and we were disappointed," said Rogers. "But our main aim was bringing a collection to the public of Boston. With the Hartmans, we remain longtime friends."
Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com. For more on the arts, visit boston.com/ae/theater_arts/exhibitionist.
