The Kojo Nnamdi Show

I worked in the curatorial office of the Corcoran for 28 years and retired in 1998 with the title, Curator Emerita. I protest and object to the decision of the Board of Trustees and Director, Fred Bollerer to consider selling the Corcoran's building on 17th Street NW. This is a gravely wrong course of action for many reasons. The building the Gallery and College occupy is more than just a facility to be discarded like an old raincoat. It is the symbol of the institution - The Corcoran -- and has been its home for almost 115 years. The building is crowded and has been so for many decades. A number of solutions have been sought to find adequate room for both the Gallery and the College in the present building. None has yet been successful but that is no reason to stop trying, pack your tents and slip away to suburbia. Being where they are benefits College and Gallery and is their spiritual home. They have lived so long and successfully together in a symbiotic relationship with their home, this building, the biggest work of art in the collection, that to remove the Corcoran from the building would be, as former Curator of Education, Donna Ari has said, to tear it's heart out. I characterize it as a Faustian deal which follows the reasoning that you have to sell the Corcoran to save the Corcoran. This is wrong headed thinking. No matter how much money the Board receives for such a sale the amount will never be enough to replace what will be lost.

There are many reasons why this building is the prefect home for the Corcoran and should remain so. More than foolish affection and casual associations are involved as has been implied are the only reasons for the strong bond between the Corcoran and the building that is its home. The building was designed by Ernest Flagg and bears his signature on the cornerstone -- there is even a time capsule somewhere near that stone. The Corcoran Gallery of Art was designed to function as an exhibition space and home for its renowned 18th, 19th and 20th century American art and a home for the department of the School, today The College of Art and Design. The College, occupies the wing facing New York Avenue and is connected to the 17th Street Gallery building physically and intellectually by the Hemicycle at the intersection. This building is one of the finest Beaux Arts structures in the United States, a National Historic Landmark, a unique and wonderful structure. Its design incorporates many elements inside and out which have made it a place where both artist, curators, students, faculty and art lovers have for decades wanted to exhibit or see art. Basically the volumes, sight-lines, light, surfaces and beautiful spaces were designed to present art. It has done this wonderfully and still does so. The design of the building tells how it all "works". Once there were regular educational tours that helped visitor, student and staff learn about what they were seeing and experiencing at Corcoran. But those tours do not seem to be common nowadays.

But the functions of the building still remain evident from its facades on 17th Street and New York Avenue. At the main entrance on 17th Street where it reads, "Dedicated to Art" and above that stretch high walls without windows beneath a frieze of artists' names that "tell" you this is the place inside where paintings are exhibited. Flagg lists some of those art greats: Durer , Rubens , Raphael, etc., including American Washington Alston, ancestor of Flagg. Here you find just one of many examples of how rich the Corcoran's collections are and deeply interwoven with this building. If they were on exhibition you could see not only a miniature portrait in watercolor on ivory of Flagg by his daughter Betsy Flagg Melchers but also large to-scale tissue paper renderings for the architectural details of the building. The Corcoran Archives contain not only many such large architectural sketches but also other drawings for the building including door handles, other details, the metal grills over the windows, the lions' heads on the great bronze doors, the layout of the galleries, etc.

The facade on New York Avenue is for the College and inside the vestibule is a bronze bas relief portrait of the founding dean, E. F. Andrews built into the wall. But before you enter consider how Flagg united the two parts of the Corcoran physically as well as intellectually through the use of a half circle room, The Hemicycle as it is called and labeled above the New York Avenue door. Here Flagg is acknowledging the source of his inspiration as the Ecole Des Beaux in France then one of the greatest art schools in the western world. There the students received their awards in a semi-circular theater, the Hemicycle d'Honneur beneath a great painted frieze by Paul Delaroche showing the great artists of all time for sculpture, architecture and painting. Here at the Corcoran it was " the American Genius" William Wilson Corcoran wanted to encourage in creating, collecting, displaying and sharing with the American public. Both parts of the Corcoran are symbolically and functionally linked here.

The building has done this work very well and should not be abandoned. Instead, the Board should make every effort, appealing to all the funding source possible to find the resources to care for,to restore and to utilize this building. They should re-purpose the spaces within it to return ground floor rooms designed as exhibition galleries to that use and the classrooms and studio spaces now there should be moved. The Corcoran should plan and then make every conceivable effort to get possession or long-term use of every inch of built space within other parts of the city block it occupies. Significant College functions may need to be moved to an enlarged Georgetown campus or other off-site locations but the College must retain space in the Corcoran building for the pinnacle of the College experience to take place. But in this planning the Board must be very careful and not consider that any art works be sold. Do not sell anything further. The Board has sold enough - the Randall School, the land where Carr is now building and this crazy idea to sell the Corcoran building. As Phillip Kennicott of the Post has written this Board and Director need to reconsider and change their approach to stewardship of the Corcoran.

Linda Crocker Simmons