FIGHTING STILL; STILL FIGHTING Clyfford Still vs. The Clyfford Still Museum and The City of Denver By David Colosi Tuesday, October 4, 2011 Something is rotten in the city of Denver. On Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 1:30, the Denver City Council Business, Workforce, & Sustainability Committee1 assembled to consider “a bill for an ordinance approving a proposed agreement between the City and County of Denver and Sotheby’s, Inc., for the sale of four Clyfford Still works of art and to authorize officials of the City and County of Denver to take all action necessary to carry out the resultant transactions.” At least that is what it said on paper. What the council members were actually asked to approve that afternoon by the smooth talking city-appointed representatives of the Clyfford Still Museum amounts to no less than a breach of trust on an agreement (both personal and legal) made between the mayor of Denver in 2004, John Hickenlooper, and Patricia Still, now-deceased widow of the American painter Clyfford Still. What council members actually did approve that day could, and in fact should, lead to the declaring null and void of the gift of the coveted Clyfford Still collection and archive that Mayor Hickenlooper fought hard to win. The council members had the wool pulled over their eyes, and in their ignorance of what was happening were made unwilling parties in a scheme that will cast doubt on the integrity of the City of Denver and the Clyfford Still Museum for years to come, even before its doors open to the public in November 2011. A video of the council meeting I will discuss throughout this essay is publically available online.2 The issue that came to the council members’ table that day appeared to be whether or not to approve a preference for a vendor bid by Sotheby’s over Christie’s auction houses for the sale of four Clyfford Still paintings. Councilmember Jeanne Faatz was astute to ask the question as to why the council was brought into this process and if they were going to have to compare bids Copyright © David Colosi, 2011, contact: [email protected] 1 and make a financial decision for a local institution that couldn’t handle this internally. Unfortunately, she was armed with the wrong question. She, like her fellow council members, was misled as to why the council was involved. The proper question that Councilmember Faatz and her colleagues did not know to ask because they were not duly informed as to the actual vote they were casting would have been this one: Why is the Denver City Council being asked to approve of the sale of artworks – any sale, by any vendor – from the Clyfford Still bequest, and why does the museum need city council approval to move ahead with this? Sadly no one in the room asked this preliminary question, and the museum representatives entrusted with protecting the work and legacy of Clyfford and Patricia Still remained tight-lipped. The museum representatives I am referring to are specifically Dean Sobel, Director of the Clyfford Still Museum, Jan Brennan, Director of Cultural Programs, Arts and Venues Denver, and Chris Hunt, President of the Board of Trustees for the Clyfford Still Museum. There are two reasons why the council members should have asked this question. The first reason can be discussed by looking in plain sight at the Press section of the Clyfford Still Museum’s website. One can find there a press release dated Monday, August 9, 2004 on the letterhead of then-Mayor John Hickenlooper containing the City and County of Denver seal that announces that the City of Denver had “been chosen to receive the much desired 2,000+ piece private collection of works by the late American artist Clyfford Still.” Describing the process with pride it reads, “Most of Still’s works have been locked away in storage for the past two decades, bound by the terms of his will in which he bequeathed his works to an American city that would create and maintain a museum devoted exclusively to his art. Since Still’s death in 1980, numerous cities have sought the collection by negotiating with his widow.” The release goes on to praise Mayor Hickenlooper’s tireless efforts in winning the trust of Patricia Still. “Mrs. Patricia A. Still confirmed today that the City and County of Denver is to be the recipient of a gift of a collection of works of art by her late husband, Clyfford Still. Also, Mrs. Still noted with pleasure and gratitude that the City and County of Denver, through the auspices of Mayor Hickenlooper and with the anticipated cooperation of the City Council, had accepted the gift of the collection in the spirit and letter of the provisions of the will of her husband which created the gift.” (italics added)3 In fact many other cities were courting Mrs. Still at the time for the donation of this one-of-a- kind collection. It represents a whopping 94% of Clyfford Still’s entire artistic output, which astonishes considering that only 6% in the public and private domain was enough to define him as an iconic American painter. In the words of Dean Sobel during this meeting, there is no other collection as extensive and exclusive as this since the discovery of the tomb of King Tut. Denver had every right to be proud in 2004. But it was the diligence of its creator and his widow that kept this collection intact for all of these years, and now it is the responsibility of the City of Denver to offer it that same protection. Other American cities, like Baltimore, Washington DC, Boston, and Atlanta, had tried to win Mrs. Still’s trust and the collection, and only Denver, through the efforts of Mayor Hickenlooper, accomplished the task. Copyright © David Colosi, 2011, contact: [email protected] 2 For clarity, I will reiterate exactly how Mayor Hickenlooper and the City of Denver earned that trust and gift: he agreed to accept the gift on the condition that the city abide by the spirit and letter of the provisions of the will of her husband, and Mrs. Still appreciated this with pleasure and gratitude, and for this sole reason awarded this unique prize to the City of Denver. One can conclude that had the mayor and the City of Denver not accepted the spirit and letter of the provisions of the will of her husband that Denver would not have received the gift. Instead it would have gone to Baltimore, a city closer to the Stills’ home, or Washington DC or another “American City” worthy and willing to accept full – not selective – responsibility for the gift. In fact, in 2000, Diane Perry Vanderlip, then curator of modern and contemporary art at the Denver Art Museum, along with Denver Art Museum Director Lewis Sharp and representatives of then Denver mayor Wellington Webb, had a donation agreement in the works with Mrs. Still, but this fell through because Patricia “didn’t feel the language of the agreement ‘was wholehearted enough about the independence of the museum.’”4 Mrs. Still was very particular and very premeditated, as was her late- husband, of who would get the gift based on how they would respect it and the wishes of its benefactors. It wasn’t until 2004 that Mayor Hickenlooper won-over the trust of Patricia Still, apparently agreeing to all of her terms. Yet Mrs. Still remained cautious. And her exercise of caution can also be found in this very same 2004 press release. But before I move to that, I should first introduce exactly what Mrs. Still referred to as “the spirit and letter of provisions of the will of her husband” so that we are all on the same page. This gesture on my part for clarity was not offered to the council members by Dean Sobel and Jan Brennan at this meeting, and, in fact, the only voices not called to the speaking table that day by committee chairman Brown were those of Clyfford and Patricia Still – no documents or verbal defenses or statements representing their position were introduced in this meeting. I came across the following document through the efforts of journalist Lee Rosenbaum who has been critical of these museum representatives from as early as March 2010. Upon request for documentation that spelled out what Mrs. Still referred to as the “spirit and letter” of her husband’s will, and also the spirit and letter of Patricia’s will and the terms of the agreement made between mayor Hickenlooper and Patricia Still, the museum’s press office sent Rosenbaum these excerpts, the first, from the will of Clyfford Still, and the second, from the will of Patricia Still. In this mere excerpt of Clyfford Still’s will, “Item Fourth” only, Clyfford could not be clearer about the spirit and letter of his will. “I give and bequeath all the remaining works of art executed by me in my collection to an American city that will agree to build or assign and maintain permanent quarters exclusively for these works of art and assure their physical survival with the explicit requirement that none of these works of art will be sold, Copyright © David Colosi, 2011, contact: [email protected] 3 given, or exchanged but are to be retained in the place described above exclusively assigned to them in perpetuity for exhibition and study.”(italics, mine)5 No bones about that. It is 100% clear how Still wants this yet-to-be-named American city to handle his artwork.