COMMENTARY : Damage Control at the Beleaguered Corcoran Gallery of Art

Now that Christina Orr-Cahall has taken the fall for the outlandish shenanigans of Washington’s Corcoran Gallery of Art during the past six months, observers immediately have begun to ask: Who will replace her as director of the once-venerable, now-sullied, museum?

Alas, we ought to be asking something slightly different: Who in their right mind would want to?

Let me explain.

The Corcoran’s problems are far from over. Following months of national protests, artists’ boycotts, staff defections, patron withdrawals and more, all in the crippling wake of the cancellation of a long-planned exhibition of photographs by the late Robert Mapplethorpe, the announcement Monday that the director would relinquish her post at the helm of the museum is news to be received with both a yawn and a groan.

The yawn comes from recognizing that, when Orr-Cahall decided, on June 13, to cancel a potentially controversial show for fear of upsetting Congress on the eve of budget hearings for the National Endowment for the Arts, she set into motion a great, whirring machine of righteous (and appropriate) horror that could only be shut off by insightful and decisive action.

Simply put, the cancellation was shocking because it placed the security of federal arts funding ahead of the very ends of art itself. It was difficult to believe that a museum professional who did not understand the gravity of that decision--indeed, who didn’t even seem to know that was its consequence--could possibly possess the skill to pull out of a screaming nosedive. She didn’t, and Monday she crashed and burned.

The groan comes from something else. We are not talking here about the momentary failure of judgment on the part of a single museum employee, which can be neatly swept away with her departure. We are not even talking about a director’s repeated failures. After all, the cancellation of the Mapplethorpe exhibition was accomplished with the official backing and continued support of the Corcoran’s board of trustees. There was virtually no indication Monday, as there has not been from Day One, that the museum board has in any way changed its mind about that calamitous decision.

In fact, board chairman David Lloyd Kreeger, a member of a special trustees’ committee appointed Sept. 25 to find ways to repair the damage to the museum’s credibility, was quoted in published reports of Monday’s announcement as saying that the board was less concerned about the cancellation of the Mapplethorpe show than about the “continued barrage” of criticism leveled at the Corcoran. (Kreeger was subsequently unavailable for comment.) Amazingly enough, six months later the crisis still is being perceived as a gross public relations problem, an ever more nagging menace that might miraculously disappear with the director.

It won’t. Public life is forever being confused with public relations, but the Corcoran scandal is at heart a catastrophe of public life. For it is finally the board of trustees, not the director, that holds the museum, its collections and its programs in trust for the public. It is the board of trustees, not its employee, in whom ultimate fiduciary responsibility is vested. That is what the word trustee means. Except for a staff change, the Corcoran Gallery of Art today is no different than it was last week, when public confidence and support were virtually nil.

So, what is the museum to do to begin earnestly repairing the damage it has wrought? Indications are that, in a report approved in principle and to be publicly released next month, the special trustee committee has recommended a structural overhaul of the museum’s unwieldy board. It’s a crucial decision. Indeed, a newly configured, less divisive board might now actually take the step it should have taken--and almost did--many months ago. The Corcoran might apologize to the public whose confidence it has breached, and whose trust has been seriously violated.

In September, a few days before the trustees’ special damage-control committee was assembled, the board and the director did issue a joint statement, which was billed as a public apology. When it turned out not to be, the supposed mea culpa immediately blew up in their faces.

For what did the Corcoran apologize? Certainly not for having erred in rearranging its exhibition program according to a perception of the political winds blowing through the corridors of Congress. No, the Corcoran humbly apologized for having created a public relations nightmare for itself. “By withdrawing from the Mapplethorpe exhibition,” the statement said, “we, the board of trustees and the director, have inadvertantly offended many members of the arts community, which we deeply regret.”

Apology not accepted, because apology not offered. If the Corcoran wants to appear strong, thus restoring at least a modicum of public confidence, then the Corcoran has got to be strong.

A formal apology is not necessary because of any vulgar need to embarass anyone, nor to force an admission of guilt on bended knee. A formal apology is necessary simply because the public needs to know that the museum truly knows what happened. So far, there is still no indication of that, and Monday’s musical chairs didn’t help.

Handicapping the potential replacements for the directorship of the Corcoran Gallery of Art is not the appropriate line of inquiry now, because this is not a business-as-usual situation. As it stands, it’s hard to imagine a candidate worth his or her salt even considering the post--which is not the same as saying that someone might not get the job.