We Are Not a Museum Interview with Michael Adlerstein, Assistant Secretary-General and Executive Director of the Capital Master Plan (CMP), on the value, maintenance, financing and curating of the art collection at United Nations Headquarters in New York and the UN Arts Committee. Visitors to the UN Headquarters in New York might not only be impressed by the international flair of the people and the design of the buildings but also by the art works that are on display: The glass window by Marc Chagall, the knotted gun outside, the mural in the Security Council chamber, to name but a few. What was your impression when you visited the UN for the first time? Well, I think the Art Collection of the UN is unique in the world. It is unlike a museum, or a capital building, or any other public building. It does not have a single mission or purpose or selecting group. It is a collection which has been donated by the Member States and reflects their impression of what they would like the world to see of their culture or of the UN mission. It is an incredibly rich collection of thoughts, of concepts. That was your first impression personally? I thought it was beautiful. I thought it was overwhelming. I think it is much unknown. When I came to the UN as an official I was able to see the entire collection. A lot of the collection is not visible to the public because it is in the delegates areas. The delegates enjoy the collection, it is their art, and it is their house. How many artefacts belong to the Collection in New York? We have 311 gifts that are listed in our inventory. We also continuously have loans from different museums or Member States. Do other headquarters, in Geneva or Paris, have art works? There is more art in Geneva, Nairobi, Bangkok, and Vienna and in all of the regional offices. I think there is far more art than in the New York Headquarters but I would assume that we have the largest collection in the organization. To my knowledge there are worldwide 700 art works. Do you have a registry of all of them? No, there is none. It is done city by city. Are they all gifts or where they commissioned by UN officials? If they were gifts, by whom? By individuals or institutions? In the early days of the UN, some gifts were donated by foundations and by the city of New York and by others that were invited to gift. Since that time, the number of gifts has grown significantly. Wall space has become in high demand so that at this point in time, we prefer gifts from Member States, and this is the Member States preference as well. There are very few gifts anymore that are not from the Member States. Are the gifts coming from Member States around the world? VEREINTE NATIONEN 4/2014 1
More than 140 of the 193 Member States have made gifts to the UN, either as individual countries or as members of regional groups and organizations. We have had a pause for the Capital Master Plan where we have not received gifts for the past six years, because there is too much construction going on. But as soon as we have finished the Capital Master Plan, we will reopen the gifting opportunity for the Member States. Part of what the Arts Committee tries to do is to make sure we do not get overwhelmed with art. We are a beautiful building, but we are not a museum. We do not have the curatorial skills of a museum; we do not have the budget of a museum. The building was not designed to be a museum. As you probably know and you can see from watching North by Northwest [Alfred Hitchcock movie, 1959] the UN allowed smoking for many decades which would never be permitted in a museum. But we are getting better at managing art as we move forward. What kind of art can be seen? Is it basically paintings, sculptures, and murals? All of the above. We do have many paintings; we have lots of sculptures, both indoor and outdoor sculptures, large-scale bronzes out on the North Lawn, and small-scale objects inside the building. We have textiles, we have historic fabrics. We also have art that is not considered part of the collection but is part of the architecture. We have wall fabrics. In the Security Council Chamber there is wonderful wall covering from Norway. And we have of course frescos or murals on the wall painted by the artists directly on the walls, like in the General Assembly Hall. There is a great variety of almost every form of art that I can think of. You mentioned the Arts Committee. This Committee seems to be unknown to many people. Who are the members and what does this Committee do? The Arts Committee establishes policies and procedures for the Secretary-General on receiving gifts. The purpose of the Arts Committee is to recommend to the Secretary-General the acceptance or rejection of the offers of official gifts to the United Nations by Member States. Furthermore, it assists with the implementation of policies or procedures for the appropriate management of these gifts. The Committee meets on an as-needed basis. Currently, the Committee has nine members, all UN officials. 1 Do some of them have artistic experience? We are selected because we are in fields of endeavor that the Secretary-General needs to pay attention to, political affairs and facilities and public information. So, we all have different art skills to bring to the table. We do not have the actual staff experienced in art curation. We have staff who can take care of the paintings but they are not art experts. In 1992 the Joint Inspection Unit issued a report called Managing Works of Art in the United Nations. In this report the Inspectors made several recommendations. One was that the Arts Committee shall be reorganized and strengthened, specifying its composition and terms of reference. Has this been implemented? 1 Yukio Takasu, Under-Secretary-General for Management (Chairperson), Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal, Under- Secretary-General for Communications and Public Information, Zainab Hawa Bangura, Special Representative on Sexual Violence in Conflict, Joseph V. Reed, Special Adviser to the Secretary-General, Michael Adlerstein, Assistant Secretary-General, Capital Master Plan, Levent Bilman, Director of Policy and Mediation Division, Department of Political Affairs, Yeochol Yoon, Chief, Protocol Liasion Service, Executive Office of the Secretary- General (EOSG), Victor Kisob, Director, EOSG, Claudio Santangelo, Secretary of the Arts Committee. VEREINTE NATIONEN 4/2014 2
Well, it was probably implemented several times since then. When we started the Capital Master Plan, there was an audit of the gifts management system at the UN Headquarters conducted by the UN s Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS) 2. OIOS made recommendations in this regard to the Department of Management which are being implemented. And the terms of reference for the Arts Committee and the management of the gifts is presently in review again by the Arts Committee. Two terms of the terms of reference seem to be a little bit sensitive: The relocation of artefacts and who is bearing the costs for their maintenance. Well, I think in terms of the money: that has never changed. The donor is responsible for the maintenance of the art. We have experienced that quite a lot during the Capital Master Plan. Many of the donors accepted back their art to be cleaned, curated, fixed, whatever was needed. They returned the art to the compound when the renovation of the building that it came from was finished. So, we have experienced great success in the Member States taking responsibility for the curation of the art. That has always been the policy, set out in the Financial Rules and Regulations of the United Nations 3. In terms of moving them, generally the gifts are retained in their location. It makes everyone feel at home, seeing pieces of art in their familiar spots. During the Capital Master Plan we were given permission to move art if the walls moved or if circumstances changed with functionality. In terms of curation and management of the art we have a partnership with the Member States. The piece of the Berlin Wall, which Germany donated to the UN after reunification: where was it located and where will it be relocated? The piece of the Berlin Wall was outdoor art on the North Lawn. It was moved. Almost all the art on the North Lawn had to be moved during the project. It will return once we take down the temporary North Lawn Building. And when will that be? We have been instructed by the General Assembly to take down the North Lawn Building at the end of the Capital Master Plan, so it will be very soon. We are going to finish this project in 2015. What are the rules for the rejection of gifts? What is an inappropriate gift? There are no specific criteria for what makes a work of art unacceptable. The purpose of the Arts Committee is to give the Secretary-General its opinion to determine if a gift might be inappropriate. Generally speaking, the UN avoids gifts that might be offensive to Member States or to any particular group. We encourage gifts that are consistent with the themes of war and peace, reduction of poverty, women s rights, and children in armed conflict. Our mission is reflected in our art. The most enjoyable art for me personally is the art that does reflect the mission of the UN: art like the twisted gun, the murals by Candido Portinari about war and peace, or the tapestry after Guernica by Pablo Picasso. But, of course, all art is looked at and the Arts Committee makes that determination. Has the Committee ever rejected a gift or a piece of art? 2 OIOS Audit Report, Assignment Number AH2007/510/05, 25 August 2008. 3 Latest version: Secretary-General s Bulletin, UN Doc. ST/SGB/2013/4, 1 July 2013. VEREINTE NATIONEN 4/2014 3
I do not think so, but if it was done it would have been done very quietly. The works of art that are being displayed need to be protected and taken care of. They need to be registered. That entails costs. Where does the money come from and how much is it? The budget for art is sort of under the umbrella of the Office of Central Support Services (OCSS), Department of Management. They manage the Art Collection. They manage it on a day-to-day basis; they clean it; they paint the walls; they move the art off the wall in order to do the maintenance of the building. Their budget serves many purposes. As far as I know, they do not itemize a portion of their budget reserved for art. Like many governments we are self-insured and do not carry commercial insurance. We protect the compound and the art is within the compound. Is it necessary to have more money for the restoration and maintenance or is it sufficient? That would be a subject for the General Assembly to debate. In the Secretariat, we always say that the General Assembly provides us with sufficient funds. We would not turn down additional funds, but we are not looking for significant money. The curatorial work is done by the Member States, so there is not a significant work load for us. Most of the staff involved, including the Arts Committee, treats this part of their work as collateral duty. We have our responsibilities and we also serve on the Arts Committee. But would it not be good to raise admission fees for visitors, or to put up a box for donations in the visitors area, or establish a trust fund in order to have more money to do a real museum-like exhibition? We do not think that way. We do not put out donation boxes. In the UN, we have so many mandates and missions all over the world for which we do not seek donations from the general public walking in the door. The general public is invited to come in, in order to understand what the UN does. We are not asking them to pay more than the fee for the tour. Is there a possibility for normal visitors to see more than the art that is in the visitors areas? Generally, security does not allow the public to go into the areas where the delegates are. But it is not really significant. There is a lot of wonderful art to see in the areas accessible by the public, either with or without a guided tour. The UN Headquarters is not a museum. The UN could not afford to open itself up in a way of a museum, to open up all its floors on a regular basis, because the UN Headquarters is the functioning office of an inter-governmental organization. But you have a curator for the collection, haven t you? Since when does she work? We brought a curator in for the Capital Master Plan, paid for by the Capital Master Plan, in order to make sure that we are moving the art properly and that the gifts in their new or temporary locations would be properly protected. She has rendered a wonderful service for us with skills that we do not have in our staff. The UN will decide later whether the position of curator is needed for the long term. But I think the UN is moving towards that direction. You know, the Arts Collection was originally quite small-scale. Even though it was important art, the art did not have the financial value that it has today. The Arts Collection of the UN has grown in financial value as well as of course in spiritual value quite significantly. We are taking the art more seriously now. VEREINTE NATIONEN 4/2014 4
Speaking of the financial value: The Chagall window, the Léger murals, the Hepworth sculpture, the Matisse collage and so on: these are famous artists that donated these gifts. What would you say: is it a rich collection in financial terms? I assume it is. We do not know the value. We do not have insurance so we do not appraise it. But we know that, based upon the names you just said and many more we do feel that our art is very valuable. We have religious and historical objects. Peru, for example, donated an over 2000 years old burial cloth. The objects are well protected by an enormous security force, which is put here not to protect the art, but to protect the delegates. If you had three wishes, what wishes would that be? I think the art of the UN is a great success. It is a success, partially because the collection grew without a master plan that was going to aim for famous artists, or for certain kinds of objects. It reflects the cultures of the world. That is what makes it a success. I would wish that the Member States remain committed to showing us their culture, sharing it with the rest of the world, and providing it to the UN Headquarters, so we can hang it or place it. I would wish for the success of the Arts Collection to continue. It is not really a wish, because I know it is happening. The Member States are very proud to provide art, and show their culture in front of the world, in front of the ambassadors of the world, so they are continuing and I think it is a wonderful tradition. Thank you for the interview. This Interview was conducted via telephone on 10 July 2014. The Questions were asked by Anja Papenfuss, Editor-in-Chief, VEREINTE NATIONEN German Review on the United Nations, www.dgvn.de/journal-vereinte-nationen/. The German translation was published in VEREINTE NATIONEN, Vol. 62, No. 4, 2014, pp. 152 155. VEREINTE NATIONEN 4/2014 5