Out with the old…
One hundred years ago – in 1927 – French writer Julien Benda published a book with the above referenced title, translated loosely as “Treason of the Intellectuals.”
The gist of the book is that European intellectuals had led their nations astray by encouraging political dogmatism at the expense of intellectual and moral values.
I think of this phrase when I consider the arrogant elitism of a different Julien, Julian Zugazazoitia, director of the Nelson Gallery here in Kansas City.
It’s been four years since the Z-man ordered the Kansas City, Missouri Police Department during the 2020 George Floyd riots off the museum’s property.
No one has ever explained to me how a single employee of the museum had the authority to commit that institution to a public political position.
Not only did the Z-man emphatically state that it had a moral obligation to withhold cooperation with local authorities at a time of civil unrest, but he broadcast this by adding a Black Lives Matter screen saver to the Nelson’s website and committing it to support that movement in statements to the press.
What did the Trustees say?
Was this dramatic move their call?
Apparently not.
Because after I raised these issues in a post here on KC Confidential, ‘The Necessary Murder’-Nelson Atkins vs KC Cops,’ 7/1/20, I sent copies to every member of the Board. And not one person bothered to respond to the dozen copies I sent to them.
I thought of that when I heard my friend Jack Cashill, a local author and journalist, interviewed on talk show host Pete Mundo’s program last week. He later asked about how Kansas City has changed since he moved here in 1975, and Jack said:
“It’s not the place it was…I mean by this that when I drove down Ward Parkway 50 years ago, there was substance behind those walls. The people who lived there cared. There were adults in Kansas City running the city. You had an adult newspaper. You could tell the truth…When we stripped the J.C. Nichols name from the fountain on the Plaza that was the turning point, the archetypal surrendering to the woke masses by the city’s corporate leadership. I don’t have any confidence in the city’s leaders after this, a real decline further evidenced by their abandonment of the Country Club Plaza to crime because of fear of being called racist.”
The Z-man at the Nelson is a case in point…
And not just his surrender to the woke mob during the Floyd riots. (It was no accident that the same night the Z-man threw in his lot with the rioters, they trashed virtually every retail establishment on the Plaza.)
Zugazazoitia’s latest betrayal surfaced last week.
That’s when he agreed to put up for auction arguably the brightest jewel in the Nelson Gallery’s crown, to be sold at Christie’s auction house on May 16th in New York.
Folgers Coffee heiress Cynthia Tinsley Chase inherited her late mother’s 1/3 interest in the $25-million impressionist painting, Claude Monet’s Moulin de Limetz.
The Nelson owned a 2/3 interest in the painting, which was gifted to it almost 40 years ago. Surely a way could have been found to buy out Ms. Chase’s interest and keep the painting here.
After all, the Nelson has a $500-million endowment, plus a host of deep pocketed donors, who could have purchased the one third interest that would allow the painting to stay in Kansas City.
However, that would have meant losing anywhere from $12 to $16 million in sale proceeds and possibly a lot more if the painting brought what similar works by Monet have in recent years.
The Z-man could then use that walking around money for new acquisitions on his watch. (Who needs a world class Impressionist work when you can buy instead cutting-edge contemporary art, e.g. purple neon tubes?)
So where were the Trustees? The major donors?
Following in the wake of our Marxist Museum director, apparently. Insiders tell me that six of the latter are traveling to New York to see the auction-as if that was something to celebrate. Then they had appointments with five contemporary art dealers to spend the sale proceeds and whatever else they want to kick in of their own money to stroke J.Z’s ego.
When a ruling class loses confidence in itself and the values which sustained it, the downfall of that society is soon to follow.
Look at the abject surrender to Marxism going on on campuses all over the country. This latest episode just confirms what Jack Cashill said last week. The leaders of our community have given in to enemies within like Julian Zugazazoitia, who seem intent on diminishing the institution he’s supposed to be preserving.
Full, embarrassing disclosure: I have a step son who felt led, as most woke white kids did, to participate in the Floyd Plaza “march.” He wasn’t there to damage anything, just be present.
I asked him what he felt about the damage done to all the buildings? He told me, while he didn’t approve of it, the buildings “were all owned by rich white people whose insurance would pay for the damage anyway.” And the cause was more important than any damage done.
In rebuttal, I told him about my two friends, Chris and Tai, who own Cafe Trio.
Cafe Trio had been closed during Covid and were days from their reopening. As the mob marched up Main, the first thing you come to, from the REnamed fountain, is Trio. With a front face of huge, plate glass windows, it looked like a good prospect. So the rioters smashed the glass, went in and looted all the new liquor back stock, all the bottles from the bar and ransacked the place.
Chris and Tai got the call, just after midnight, from the police. They came down to find their new inventory was gone and the place was destroyed. They went back home to return the next morning to contact their insurance company.
What were they told?
“Damage from a riot” did not fall under their coverage.
If it wasn’t for their landlord and “Friends of Trio” who raised money for them, they would have been finished.
I told him Trio is well attended by the diversity crowd he also supports and there was no reason for their establishment to be targeted. The mob didn’t care WHO they destroyed, they were simply on a mission of violence that truly had nothing to do with Floyd.
I asked him how stealing $100K in inventory made anything “right?”
And I concluded, “Now, how do you feel about my “rich, white friends whose insurance would cover it anyway?”
Silence….
Sudenote trivia. Cynthia Tinsley Chase is the half sister of comedian actor Chevy Chase