AFA 20th Anniversary

20th Anniversary 96 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com 2019 in Review TOP MUSEUM ACQUISITIONS BY DANIEL GRANT We live in polarizing times, and the cultural sphere has not been immune. Protests at museums have marked the year, particularly at those with ties to the Sackler family, owners of the Purdue Pharma, makers of Oxycontin. At least seventeen institutions have associations with the Sackler family and Oregon Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley called for the Sackler name to be removed from museums and universities in the United States; Harvard Art Museums, the Jewish Museum of Berlin, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, and the Tate Museum in London, have announced they were cutting their ties. Frick Collection supporters Bernard and Lisa Selz were “outed” for their $3 million-plus support to organizations that promote anti-vaccination campaigns. At MoMA, the activist feminists The Guerilla Girls staged protests against board of trustee members with ties to convicted sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. And demonstrators occupied the Brooklyn Museum to demand a more racially and ethnically diverse staff in the wake of the hiring of a white curator of the institution’s African art collection. Life at the major art museums abroad this year has been no less fraught, with demonstrations at the Louvre in Paris, the British Museum and Tate Modern, and the National Gallery protesting sponsorship by oil companies. In a more celebratory mood, museums across the United States acquired many notable objects for their permanent collections. >>> Fig. 1: François-Jules Bourgoin (1786–1821), Family Group in a New York Interior, ca. 1805. Oil on canvas, 30 x 42 inches. Courtesy of Winterthur; Purchase with funds provided by the Henry Francis du Pont Collectors Circle (2019.0006 A).