Another Museum Mulls Pulling Up StakesAnother Museum Mulls Pulling Up Stakes

By ERIC GIBSON

Philip Beaurline/courtesy Corcoran Gallery of Art

With its prohibitive renovation costs, the Corcoran is exploring the sale of its 19th-century Beaux Arts building.

Well, that didn't take long. Less than a month after the Barnes Foundation relocated to downtown Philadelphia from suburban Merion claiming financial necessity, another museum is planning a copycat move. Citing its own troubled balance sheet, a rundown physical plant and a desire to retool its mission, last week Washington's Corcoran Gallery of Art announced plans to explore the sale of its 19th-century building and move to a purpose-built facility elsewhere in Washington, or even in Maryland or Virginia.

Buildings again? Only a few years ago the Corcoran wanted to add one, a Frank Gehry-designed wing. But it had to scrap that idea in 2005, having been unable to raise the necessary funds. Now it wants to sell the building it's in and move away. Outsiders can be forgiven for being confused.

The Corcoran was founded in 1874 to house the collection of financier Wiliam Wilson Corcoran (1798-1888), and it is one of a handful of institutions in this country that are both art museum and art school. At the Corcoran, the two share the same building. The school, founded in 1890, offers multiple degree programs and is so successful it needs larger quarters.

The museum's collection of more than 16,000 works ranges across a variety of periods, styles and media. One of its better-kept secrets is the Salon Doré, an 18th-century French period room featuring gilded wall paneling and a ceiling mural. But the collection's strength is American painting to 1945, and it boasts one of the greatest American landscapes ever painted, Frederic Edwin Church's "Niagara" (1857). A generally lackluster exhibition program has been relieved by the occasional show of real importance, such as the 2009 "Sargent and the Sea," which played off a painting in the museum's collection to explore a little-studied aspect of the society portraitist's career.

In recent years the museum has been plagued by declining attendance and a persistent, seven-figure budget deficit. But according to officials there the most serious problem is the building, an 1897 Beaux Arts structure on Seventeenth Street N.W., a short walk from the White House. It has room to display only about 3% of the collection (on average, museums can show about 6%) and by the most recent estimate needs about $100 million in renovations. Some of that is deferred maintenance, but the bulk derives from the cruel Catch-22 of occupying a historic structure: The Corcoran has been "grandfathered," or exempted, from various ordinances and codes over the years. But once it begins making changes, those exemptions expire—forcing the Corcoran to conform to every legal jot and tittle. "We have some historic protection on ADA issues," says its director and president, Fred Bollerer, referring to the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act. But "once we do something on the building, we have to comply." And add such things as a proper fire-suppression system. The estimated cost for that? Mr. Bollerer puts it at $28 million.

Even after renovation and associated costs, such as temporarily relocating the college so it can stay open while the work is being done, "we'd still have a less than optimum facility for the college," says board chairman Harry F. Hopper III.

That's an undeniably tough nut. Still, it's hard to avoid the conclusion that what the relocation and Gehry plans have in common is the delusion that in museums, architecture is destiny. Ever since the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum opened a satellite in Bilbao, Spain, in 1997 designed by Mr. Gehry, museum boards around the U.S. have come to believe that all will be well if they can just hitch their wagons to a starchitect. Never mind that some museums have faltered after opening a flashy new building, most notably the American Folk Art Museum in New York.

Yet success, defined as building audiences, attracting support and making your institution part of the conversation, comes not through architecture but programming, primarily exhibitions and acquisitions. And this is where the Corcoran has fallen down. In a town of some dozen art museums, it has never been able to project a clear sense of its own identity, of what it can offer the museum-going public that no other institution can. The National Gallery is the country's flagship museum. The Smithsonian American Art Museum is exactly what its name advertises. The Hirshhorn is a modernist temple of international modern and contemporary art. The Phillips Collection is dedicated to the unique aesthetic vision of a single individual. And the Corcoran? "A visual-arts institution with education at the core that is leveraging the collection and engaging the community," Mr. Hopper says. Not exactly words to make someone smack his forehead and cry, "Get me over there right now!"

There was always the risk that once the Barnes embraced the idea of relocation as a cure-all, other institutions would resort to the same thing. But the Barnes example needs to be understood for what it is: a one-of-a-kind situation where a move of still-questionable necessity that seemed destined to destroy the institution miraculously did not. This is not a play that should be repeated anytime soon.

Besides, the Barnes has a well-articulated identity and mission. The Corcoran does not. Its officers need to come up with a better answer to the question, "What is this place about?" Until they do, the Corcoran can pull up stakes as many times as it likes, but wherever it goes, its problems will go, too.

Mr. Gibson is the Journal's Leisure & Arts features editor.