A Stitch in Haste

Some very confused malcontents at — where else? — a liberal arts college seem to think so:

Randolph College simply wanted to sell four highlights from its renowned American art collection to boost its endowment and protect its accreditation. Instead, it has fallen into a bitter legal battle with art lovers who consider the sale an unethical breach of public trust. That fight has led the Virginia Supreme Court to block the sale by the New York-based Christie's auction house.
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The art community sees as a moral imperative to keep the collection intact at the college's Maier Museum of Art for the education and cultural enrichment of students and the community.

"There's an ethical contract between donors and a museum," said Ellen Agnew, the former associate director at Maier and a plaintiff in the art lawsuit. "You're using this for an educational resource. Museums do not think about objects they hold as a financial asset."

Randolph spokeswoman Brenda Edson said that two of the paintings were donated and two were bought by the college — and that none of them came with any restrictions.

The capacity of self-appointed "protectors of the public trust" to demand unearned money, expropriated from taxpayers against their will, to overproduce politically favored art by politically favored artists, based solely on the irrational fiction that, somehow, "art is different," is well-documented on this blog.

But this is a whole new plateau. We now see the artocrats™ transcending their insolent dismissal of the pesky notions of enumerated powers and fiscal federalism, and launching an all-out frontal assault on both the law of property and the law of contracts.

Note carefully that there is no dispute over ownership of the paintings, nor is there any issue of competing interpretations of restrictive covenants (for the lawyers: this is not a cy près action). Two of the paintings were bought in the open market; the donated works came "with no strings attached" (which, incidentally, the donors could easily have insisted upon).

Yet none of that matters to the artocrats™. Of what importance is a concrete legal contract when there is a nebulous "ethical" contract? Of what importance is the fact that museums buy, sell, trade and bail (and charge admission to view) their holdings all the time? No — museums, we are told, "do not think about objects they hold as a financial asset." Oh really?

And let's not overlook the pesky (but hardly dispositive) complication that Randolph College is facing financial distress and perhaps even de-accreditation. How does it further a college's educational mission to force it to misallocate its (dangerously limited) resources? Whose interests trump whose — the tuition-paying students, the paycheck-earning faculty and staff, or the externality-exploiting "community"?

Occasionally, property rights are indeed complicated by restrictions and limitations. Sometimes such encumbrances are created voluntarily; sometimes they are imposed by government coercion. But they are almost always (and only properly) created ex ante — as part of the bargain, with full knowledge beforehand. Imagine the chilling effect, by contrast, if every private transaction came with the caveat that "you can buy whatever and whenever you like, but you can only sell when 'the community' considers it acceptable." Imagine if you could never again be an owner, but only a "public trustee." What would you be willing to not-quite-buy? What wouldn't you be willing to?

All this again because, somehow, "art is different."

When, as is the case here, title is unambiguously held free and clear, private autonomy must be acknowledged and respected. Shame on any court that refuses to acknowledge this highest of all human rights — the right to own property.

Kip's Law: Every advocate of central planning always -- always -- envisions himself as the central planner.