Opinion: Corcoran Gallery’s End a Failure of Governance

The agreement to effectively dissolve Washington, D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art points up an “emerging crisis in nonprofit governance” that is increasingly engulfing significant cultural institutions, a Wall Street Journal editor writes.

After years of financial turmoil, Washington’s oldest private museum announced plans this week to turn over its $2-billion collection to the National Gallery of Art and its building and art college to George Washington University. Journal arts-and-leisure editor Eric Gibson lambastes the Corcoran’s board for “a string of policy lurches” he says left the museum floundering, culminating in trustees “washing their hands of their own institution.”

Mr. Gibson likens the situation to to the closure of New York City Opera last year and the struggles of the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, which he laid to boards pursuing “policies that go against—and even imperil—the mission of the institution they are charged to oversee and protect.” He says members of major culture boards are increasingly motivated less by public service than by social and business interests.