Who doesn’t know that Keith McCullar and I are erstwhile Fresnans, whose avocations took us far away, but we still consider Fresno our home town. For you benighted souls who don’t know, Fresno is in the midst of California’s great Central Valley, long famous for its farming wealth. Not just a wide spot in the road, Fresno and its environs is home to nearly a million well-differentiated individuals. Demand there for English antiques? Well, yes, but Fresnans whose bent runs to the material we sell prefer to buy it in San Francisco. So, no, we won’t be opening a satellite gallery there any time soon, as presumably valley residents must feel that high culture is to be had, not locally, but elsewhere.
This isn’t just a matter of collectors buying privately who can trade with whomsoever they like, but publically, Fresno has habitually struggled to provide local outlets of world culture, witness the closure this last week of the Fresno Metropolitan Museum. The victim of an ill-managed expansion, the museum’s huge debt load was guaranteed by the City of Fresno, with the city, ultimately, deciding in this economic environment it had no choice but to close rather than operate, as arts organizations are wont to do, at a loss. It is my understanding that the city is now seeking to sell the museum complex.
What’s a sad irony in all this is that the ill fortune of the museum was guided by the local great and good who sat on its board and made abysmally poor decisions that resulted in the museum’s closure. What’s worse, these same local grandees, rather than owning up and stumping up personally, inveigled the City of Fresno into guaranteeing a bank loan for the museum, upon which the museum subsequently defaulted. Now, what moves the irony from sad to cruel, the local community does not have the museum- but does have its debt! I suppose that’s a factor common to grandees anywhere, who, when it comes to guiding the fate of public institutions, often check their good judgment, and sense of responsibility, at the door.
There might be those who would argue that between the axes of San Francisco and Los Angeles, both about 200 miles distant from Fresno, museums mid state might be thought redundant. That would be the point of view of the person for whom travel is an easy matter, who probably also regularly visits collections in Europe. For those not so fortunate, and this includes nearly every public school student in the greater Fresno area, a local public museum of culture and the arts provides about the only affordably accessible window on the larger world. Despite difficult economic times, one can only hope that the vision of the City of Fresno will extend beyond the present vicissitude of the Fresno Metropolitan Museum, and determine a manner in which it can be kept open.