House panel votes to advance bill to sell UI's Pollock painting

A House panel voted Wednesday to move ahead with legislation that calls on the University of Iowa to sell Jackson Pollock's "Mural" in order to fund scholarships over objections that it would be an act of “cultural vandalism.”

Rep. Ralph Watts, R-Adel, said he expects to offer an amendment that would set a minimum sale price of $120 million when the bill comes before the House Appropriations Committee but he expected House Study Bill 84 will clear full committee and eventually be approved by the House.

The subcommittee action came after legislators heard impassioned pleas from UI, Board of Regent and legal officials who warned the sale of a donated art piece would do irreparable damage to the university's reputation, “chill” future private donations, and likely trigger legal action that could result in the state losing one of its most famous assets and ending up empty handed.

Sean O'Harrow, director of the UI Art Museum, likened the proposed sale of the 20-foot-by-8-foot Pollock painting as an act of “cultural vandalism” that would take a priceless work of art and “sell it like a bushel of corn.”

“Is nothing sacred? Does everything in our society have to have a price tag?” O'Harrow said. He noted that the likely outcome, if the sale were allowed to happen, would be that it would be purchased by “the richest people for Russia, China or the Middle East” and leave Iowa.

Carroll Reasoner, UI general counsel, said one possible outcome would be that the Guggenheim family estate would seek to have the Pollock painting returned because the sale would violate the educational intent of the donated art work. If the estate prevailed, the university would reap no financial reward but O'Harrow predicted it would be showered with outrage and “blacklisted” by the art world.

“This action will go down in infamy,” he told the three subcommittee members. “This is what makes Iowa great. You sell this painting, it makes us look like fools.”

Watts said the core mission of the university is to educate students and the establishment of an art scholarship with the proceeds from the sale would fund the education of thousands of students “in perpetuity.”

However, O'Harrow said top art students would shun the university and David Miles, president of the state Board of Regents, said he was worried that if such a sale was mandated by the Legislature, “it's hard to tell where it would stop.”

“It doesn't make sense to me to begin to dismantle world-class programs if we don't need to do it,” the regent president said.

UI President Sally Mason was unable to attend the meeting because she was out of state raising private support for the university, but she sent a letter expressing her opposition to the proposed sale.

“We cannot break the trust of our donors. We must honor those wishes and requests,” wrote Mason, who noted the university has been the beneficiary of a number of donations that have been entrusted to the educational institution as caretaker.

“These works cannot be replaced and Iowa as a state will suffer a far greater long-term loss in the state's image and quality of life than any immediate proceeds gained,” she said.

Rep. Pat Murphy, D-Dubuque, a subcommittee member who opposed the bill, said he believed the Legislature should leave such decisions to the Board of Regents and university officials. “To get into this level of micromanagement is wrong for us to do,” he said.