In the Culmination of a Longstanding Feud, the Mayor of Washington, DC Locked the City’s Arts Commission Out of Its Own Vault

A long-simmering feud between the mayor of Washington, DC, and
the city’s cultural commission came to a boil late last week when
commission staffers found themselves locked out of a vault holding
thousands of artworks.

On Friday, the registrar of the District of Columbia Commission
on the Arts and Humanities, Ron Humbertson, attempted to enter the
storage facility but discovered that the locks had been changed,
according to the Washington City
Paper, which first reported the news. Inside the
vault are around 3,000 works by local artists including Sam Gilliam
and Alma Thomas, among others.

“Yes, apparently last Friday when [Humbertson] tried to access
the art vault to get art for an installation, he could not get in,”
according to a memo written by the chair of the agency. “It was a
surprise as he (and no one to my knowledge) had a heads up.”

The paper said the move was an attempt from Mayor Muriel
Bowser’s office “to seize the art collection.”

By the Tuesday after Labor Day weekend, access had still not
been restored, and was granted only later in the
week. Although the works in the vault are purchased by the
commission, they legally belong to the DC government, according to
the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Planning and Economic
Development, making it unclear who precisely has control over the
collection.

The lockout caps a longstanding dispute between DC Mayor Muriel
Bowser, who has pushed hard to bring cultural funding under
executive control, and the commission, which opposed several of her
proposed moves.

Last fall, the office lobbied against legislation proposed
by the mayor’s office that would have made the commission an
advisory body rather than a funding arm.

The battle escalated when the DC council passed a motion to
ensure the independence of the commission. Following that move, in
August, Terrie Rouse-Rosario, the commissioner of the Arts and
Humanities agency and an ally of Bowser, announced her resignation,
effective September 30. She also announced the cancellation of
the 34th annual Mayor’s Arts Awards and began staffing up her
agency, despite her pending departure.

The post In the Culmination of a Longstanding Feud, the
Mayor of Washington, DC Locked the City’s Arts Commission Out of
Its Own Vault appeared first on artnet News.