The Prendergast Library art collection has been on display in the Prendergast Library’s Fireplace Room for the past several years.

JAMESTOWN – The James Prendergast Library board of trustees will hold its monthly meeting Thursday, with the possibility of library officials acting on a measure involving the future of the Prendergast art collection, with an estimated value of $1.17 million dollars.

Last month the library announced it had reached an agreement with the state’s attorney general’s office that would allow it to sell the collection, but only if done so by auction. The agreement was necessary because the library had filed a request with Surrogate Court to allow the auction to proceed, but the AG’s office was initially against the sale. The primary concern from the AG was that library, which is a nonprofit organization, may not receive the actual full value if it were to just sell the collection to any buyer. Instead, the AG insisted the sale only take place via an auction.

With the agreement in place, the board can now proceed with identifying an auction house to facilitate the sale, and there’s a possibility they will select an auction house during today’s meeting.

BOARD SUPPORTS SELLING COLLECTION, DESPITE LOCAL EFFORT TO SAVE IT

The library board is in unanimous support of selling the collection, saying it would help with the financial challenges the library currently faces. In recent years the library has seen the amount of public donations decrease, and last year the Jamestown City Council, due to the city’s on financial challenges, voted to eliminate $250,000 in contributions to the library. That amounted to a 21 percent cut in operational revenue for the library.

Prendergast Library board president Tom Rankin talks with attendees, many of them in favor of saving the art collection, during an October 2015 public input session. Despite the support expressed during that meeting and other meetings the past two years, Rankin has recently said there is overwhelming public support to sell the artwork.

Board president Tom Rankin also recently said in an op-ed piece that there is overwhelming support in the community to sell the collection, with 99 percent of the participants saying that “the library should no longer have an art collection or even be in the ‘museum business.'”

However, WRFA spoke with some community members who support keeping the art earlier this week, and they disagree with Rankin’s statement.

“My wife and I ran into a gentleman from Westfield, an art collector and art enthusiast, and he was in one of those focus groups. There were 12 people in his focus group. When presented with the option to sell the art or keep it, not a single person said, ‘Sell the art.’ I have another friend who was in a separate focus group and he describes the same situation. So I think Mr. Rankin is a little off in his facts,” explained local resident Bill Locke.

“There are a lot of people who think they should sell the art, that is true,” added another member of the group, Robert Plyler, who until recently also wrote for the Post-Journal.  “But most of those people have never heard the whole story of what has gone on and one of the problems has been the difficulty we’ve had of getting the three news papers to share that story. People would write to me and say ‘I love that art. I grew up on it. My parents took me to see it. I want it saved’ and I would say, ‘Well write to the paper.’ They would reply with, ‘I did, but it was never printed.’ Person after person told me that.”

Rankin also suggests that those who support keeping the artwork in Jamestown at the library are comprise a loosely organized group who have done nothing to help raise money or offer suggestions on how the library can fix its financial situation.

Plyler takes issue with that, pointing out that it was the local residents who were able to bring the Texas-based couple Jesse and Cathy Marion into the discussion (Cathy Marion is also a Jamestown-area native), and they ended up making a $60,000 donation to the library, while also offering help in save the collection by working to upgrade the library facilities.

The Prendergast Library Association Board of Trustees during its May 2017 board meeting.

“The board at first said they wanted to sell the art collection because they library didn’t have the appropriate facilities to accommodate an expensive art collection,” Plyler said. “[The Marions] were shocked that this artwork was in danger so they offered to pay for the cleaning, the repairs, the framing, and the security system, the climate control, and so on. Everyone thought ‘well good, the problem is solved.’ But that turned out to not really be why the library board wanted to sell the art. They wanted the money.”

The Marions then donated $60,000 to the library to buy time in order for officials to come up with an alternative plan to selling the collection. And late last year they offered to purchase the entire art collection for its assessed value of $1.17 million so that it would continue to stay in the community, even if the library no longer wanted it. But that offer had to be turned down because of the agreement with the attorney general’s office.

Rankin has stated that the board will no longer delay the effort to sell the artwork in order to find an alternative solution.

“The library’s funding problems dictate that the library cannot wait up to another twenty-four months to sell the art collection,” Rankin said in the recent op-ed. “The library will now proceed to sell its art collection through an auction house that can successfully handle a collection of this size and quality.”

The library board meeting is scheduled to begin at 5:15 p.m. Thursday in the Library Fireplace room and is open to the public.

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WRFA public affairs director Jason Sample talks with a three local residents – Bill Locke, Robert Plyler, and Nancy Bargar – who are part of a larger group that supports keeping a $1.17 million art collection at the James Prendergast Library in tact and remaining in the Jamestown area.

Since September 2015 the library has been working to sell the collection to help address ongoing financial challenges it has faced in recent years. In May 2017, the library board announced that it had reached an agreement with the New York State Attorney General’s office, allowing it to move forward and auction the collection.

Our guests explain why they feel it is important the library board works to keep the art in the Jamestown community, as well as offer some clarifications to recent comments in the press made by board president Tom Rankin in regards to overwhelming support by the community to sell the collection, as well as a lack of an effort by their group to help address the financial challenges facing the library or offer to purchase the collection to keep it local.

The board could act as soon as its June 15 meeting to hire an auction house to begin the process of selling the collection. The meeting is scheduled to begin at 5:15 p.m. in the Library Fireplace room and is open to the public.

Two pieces of artwork in the Prendergast collection that could be auctioned in the coming months: Left: “Industry” by French artist Eugene Romain Thirion – painted in 1874.
Right: “Sleep, Baby, Sleep” by French artist Leon Bazile Perrault, painted in 1884.
Both are from a collection of 32 paintings given to the library at the bequest of the Prendergast family.

During the public hearing, only two individuals spoke on the budget. One was Jamestown resident Doug Champ, who criticized city officials for not being creative enough to bring new economic development into the region, which has resulted in stagnate growth and the city reaching its constitutional tax limit.

“I assume that none of you wants a control board and you’ve not worked in a city with a control board, but that’s what you’re going to get. It’s just a matter of time before it’s going to happen. If you’re at 99.9 percent [of the constitutional tax limit] you might as well be at 100 percent. It’s just a matter of time for that to happen,” Champ said. “Why are we there? We’re there because the development and the full assessment of this city has not kept up with the rising cost of the public services. We do not know how to attract private  investment.”

Champ also criticized the city for not doing enough to promote its assets – such as the BPU – and location to help recruit research and development projects.

“We sit here with these assets, not understanding how we can attract research and development opportunities from outside the area,” Champ said. “The mayor should be traveling to economic development conferences around the country and have a bill of knowledge to provide to these people that are interested in doing things.”

Besides Champ, the only other person to speak out on the budget was resident Bill Locke, who urged the city to continue the same level of support for the James Prendergast Library as it has in the past. The mayor’s budget proposal calls for cutting $15,000 in funding to the library, giving it $350,000 in 2016.

COUNCIL REVIEWS SERVICE AGENCY FUNDING

Following the public hearing, city officials also held a work session to focus on the budget and met with representatives from three local agencies that receive funding from the city – the Prendergast Library, the Fenton History Center, and the Jamestown Area Senior Center.

During the meeting with Prendergast Library Director Tina Scott, the council asked about the library’s operations and services, as well as why fundraising for the library has gone down by nearly $100,000 during the past decade. Scott and board member Joni Blackman explained that a large portion of the donors for the library were seniors and that pool of donors has declined in size over the years, without younger adults stepping in to offset the loss. They also acknowledged concern from the community regarding the previous director, Linda Mielke, which led to a number of supporters no longer donating to the library.

Besides the library, the Senior Center is also slated to see a cut in funding. The mayor’s budget proposes cutting the entire $5,000 in annual funding the center receives. Activities director Shirley Vandenburg said if the funding is cut completely in next year’s budget, the senior center will have to close. In response city council members asked Vandenburg about other possible funding sources. The senior center provides services for about 130 seniors each month and is located at Immanuel Lutheran Church, 556 E. Second St.

The council also talked with Blackman, who also serves as the executive director of the Fenton History Center. Because the city owns the Fenton Mansion and related property, it is required to continue paying the cost for the upkeep of the facility. As a result, the Fenton did not see any reduction in funding for 2016.

So far, the council has yet to make any changes to the mayor’s $35.1 million executive budget, which is calling for a tax hike of 5.6 percent. The next budget work session is at 7 p.m. next Monday, Nov. 23. The council has until Dec. 1 to complete and pass a budget.