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‘Junk Bond King’ Michael Milken to Open American Dream Museum

Michael Milken, better known as the “junk bond king,” has reinvented himself once again. Milken has a sorted resume that includes working at a diner during high school, becoming one of the highest-paid financiers of all time, being convicted of securities fraud and serving time in prison, and finally remaking himself again as a philanthropist for medical research. Now, he is the founder of a museum—the Milken Center.

A 60,000-square-foot exhibition space in Washington, D.C., the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream, a will open July 4, 2023. “It will tell the story of American Dream through the eyes of people who have sought the American Dream, but we’ll also be asking people to define their American Dream,” Kerry Murphy Healey, the center’s president said in an interview. “We’re trying to capture those stories and the evolution of the idea of the American Dream. We want to weave storytelling into what we do, so that whoever comes through the doors, they find the stories of people like them inside.” The center will be housed in the Riggs National Bank building on Pennsylvania Avenue very close to the White House. Shalom Baranes Associates, which also renovated the Pentagon and the Main Treasury Building, is the named architect of the project.

“We’re interviewing multichannel design firms to help us envision the space, which will include the newest technology but also historic documents from partners who have been reaching out to us,” Healey said. “And there will be art created by the public that relates to the American Dream, so we expect to have an ongoing effort to solicit submissions, whether for essays, photo-

Courtesy of the Milken Center for Advancing the American Dream.

flesh out the tapestry of the American Dream.”

Healey added that the center will include a five-story, modern atrium and a solicitation for proposals for public art will begin in January 2021.

Baltimore Museum Halts Art Sale Amid Escalating Controversy

The Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) recently announced that it will suspend the sale of three paintings in its graphs, spoken word poems, or film, to

collection. The decision was made just before the Sotheby’s contemporary art auction in which two of the works, Brice Marden’s “3” (1987-1988) and Clyfford Still’s “1957-G” (1957), were slated to go under the hammer. A private sale of the third work, Andy Warhol’s “The Last Supper” (1986), was to be brokered by the auction house; it has also been halted. “The decision was made after having heard and listened to the proponents and the detractors of the BMA’s ambitious Endowment for the Future and after a private conversation between the BMA’s leadership and the association of Art Museum Directors,” said a statement from the museum’s leadership and board of trustees.

The museum has faced a flood of backlash against the deaccessioning plan in the last three weeks, including the resignation of two honorary board members, threats from two philanthropists to withdraw pledges, and a spate of critical op-eds and open letters.

A group of former presidents of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) sent a letter to BMA board chair Clair Zamoiski Segal urging that the museum reconsider the sale. Among its 12 signatories as were Maxwell L. Anderson, former director of the Whitney Museum; Madeleine

Grynsztejn, director of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; and Arnold Lehman, director emeritus of the Brooklyn Museum.

“We look forward to working with the BMA’s trustees and staff to rebuild community relationships and strengthen diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that will ensure the BMA remains relevant and responsive to its community going forward,” said Laurence Eisenstein, a former trustee who drafted an open letter against the deaccession that has garnered over 200 signatures. In its statement announcing the halting of the sale, the museum said that it had previously discussed the deaccession with AAMD and had secured the organization’s support. “The BMA was in touch with the AAMD leadership early this fall in advance of announcing its plans for the Endowment for the Future. In private and public statements, the AAMD affirmed that the BMA’s plans were in alignment and accordance with the resolutions it passed in April 2020,” the statement reads. “However, subsequent discussions and communications have made clear that we must pause our plans to have further, necessary conversations.” Banksy Painting Sells for $10M,

The combined public and private sales of the paintings were expected to bring mate of £3 million (~$3.9 million) to £5

in $65 million to fund staff salaries, equity programs, and new acquisitions of underrepresented artists as part of the BMA’s new “Endowment for the Future” initiative.

In its statement, the museum affirmed its commitment to the plan. “We believe unequivocally that musethrough experiences with art and artists. We firmly believe that museums and their collections have been built on structures that we must work, through bold and tangible action, to reckon with, modify, and reimagine as structures

Banksy’s “Show Me The Monet” (2005) sold last night for nearly $10 million. (photo by Michael Bowles/Getty Images for Sotheby’s).

that will meet the demands of the future,” the statement reads. “We do not abide by notions that museums exist to serve objects; we believe the objects in our collection must reflect, engage, and inspire the many different individuals that we serve.”

“Our vision and our goals have not changed. It will take us longer to achieve them, but we will do so through all means at our disposal. That is our mission and we stand behind it,” it concludes.

Surpassing Its High Estimate

A painting by the anonymous British street artist Banksy recently sold for £7.6 million (~$9.8 million) at Sotheby’s Contemporary Art Evening Auction in London. Surpassing its pre-sale estiums exist to serve their communities

million (~$6.5 million), it is the second-highest price ever paid for a work by the artist.

In “Show Me the Monet” (2005), Banksy puts his own spin on Claude Monet’s iconic paintings of a Japanesestyle wooden footbridge in his water lily garden in Giverny. Banksy interrupts the tranquil Impressionist scene with half-submerged shopping carts and a bright orange traffic cone, and he offers a critique of consumerism, excess, and environmental waste.

The work was included in one of Banksy’s earliest gallery exhibitions, Crude Oils: A Gallery of Re-mixed Masterpieces, Vandalism and Vermin, held at 100 Westbourne Grove in London in 2005. It was among 22 hand-painted canvases that reworked and subverted traditional modern masterpieces, including a painting of a vase filled with dead sunflowers based on one of Vincent Van Gogh’s most recognizable images and a portrait of the model Kate Moss based on Andy Warhol’s “Marilyn Monroe” series. The show also notably included 164 live rats, a living representation of one of Banksy’s recurring motifs. Early on in his career, he spray-painted the rodents onto London subway cars and murals as a form of social commentary, inspired by the French graffiti artist Blek le Rat; they continue to feature prominently in his works. Last October, Sotheby’s sold Banksy’s “Devolved Parliament” (2009), an oil on canvas depicting Britain’s House of Commons overrun by chimpanzees, for £9.9 million with fees (~$12.1 million), setting an auction high for the artist.