Judge approves Corcoran Gallery of Art plan to partner with National gallery, GWU

Featured on washingtonpost.com

A D.C. Superior Court judge Monday approved the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s controversial plan to merge into the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University. The ruling terminates the independence of Washington’s oldest private art gallery and a venerable art college but opens a future in which proponents contend that the artworks and students will be better served by more financially stable caretakers.

The ruling makes official an outcome that leaders of the three institutions have been forced to plan on anyway, given that the new school year opens with orientation Wednesday. Corcoran executives also maintain that the institution was on the edge of having to close altogether.

“It’s quite a relief because the alternative was too painful to consider,” said Peggy Loar, interim director and president of the Corcoran. “Because of the timing of all this, we didn’t have the luxury of waiting.”

In the next few years, Corcoran students will pay the same tuition and take similar classes from many of the same professors, albeit under GWU management. New curriculums, higher prices and closer integration with the university are likely to be phased in over time.

Meanwhile, curators from the National Gallery of Art (NGA) and the Corcoran will continue taking inventory and planning for transferring the 17,000 artworks.

“I realize it’s come out of a long, complicated and difficult time in history,” said Earl A. “Rusty” Powell III, director of the National Gallery. “I think the solution saves the collection for Washington. It saves the school and moves it into a great university.”

In his 49-page opinion, Judge Robert Okun held that it is not impossible but it is “impracticable” for the Corcoran to operate in its familiar form of the past 145 years. Instead, Okun wrote, the proposal to give much of the Corcoran’s art to the NGA and to turn over the Corcoran College of Art and Design to GWU is the best solution to the Corcoran’s long-standing financial crisis. It is also the closest alternative to carrying on the mission established by financier William W. Corcoran in 1869, the judge wrote. The court’s approval was required in order to revise William Corcoran’s original deed of trust.

“This court finds it painful to issue an order that effectively dissolves the Corcoran as an independent entity,” Okun wrote. “But this court would find it even more painful to deny the relief requested and allow the Corcoran to face its likely demise — the likely dissolution of the college, the closing of the gallery, and the dispersal of the gallery’s entire collection.”

Sounding torn, Okun added that “the question is a close one, about which reasonable minds could differ.”

The decision was a victory for Corcoran Chairman Harry F. Hopper III and his board of a dozen trustees who, in 2009, embarked on a methodical search for a sustainable path for the institution. At the time, Hopper testified during a seven-day evidentiary hearing, the Corcoran was in default to creditors, on the verge of missing a payroll and at risk of closing altogether. Over the past six years, to cover $26 million in losses, the Corcoran cannibalized $9 million from its endowment and “borrowed” millions more from restricted accounts, promising to pay back the money from sales of real estate and other one-time windfalls.

Click here to read the full article.