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

JAMESTOWN – The Prendergast Library Board of Trustees has unanimously selected Sotheby’s to sell much of its art collection, despite pleas from several area residents who attended Thursday’s board meeting.

The action by the library board took place following nearly two years of effort by a group of area residents who’ve been working to “save the art” and keep the collection intact and in Jamestown, as intended when much of it was first purchased more than a century ago with money willed to the library from the estate of Mary Prendergast.

The most recent assessed value of the collection is $1.17 million, with the library planning to use proceeds from the auction to place in its endowment and use the interest generated to offset financial challenges in annual budget. It’s estimated such a plan would generate anywhere between $35,000 to $50,000 in additional money each year for the library, depending on how much the art actually sells for.

About two dozen people attended Thursday’s meeting, with ten of the attendees addressing the board at the start of the meeting. All but one spoke in favor of keeping the artwork.

Jamestown’s Peter Miraglia is one of several residents who spoke to the library board on Thursday, June 15 as part of an 11th hour effort to request the board not sell the library’s art collection.

Jamestown resident Pete Miraglia requested to board keep the collection, and work to leverage as both a fundraising and educational component of its programming.

“I appreciate that the library board provided the time for a buyer to step forward to keep the art in the community. However, as you know, a recent legal ruling made it virtually impossible to keep the art in Jamestown if it is sold,” Maraglia said, referring to a Surrogate Court decision announced last month that stated that if the artwork is sold, it can only be done through reputable auction house. “There are other ways to provide the library funds from the artwork. One way would be to lease the art to a group, who would house, maintain and promote it. This community has been bringing to life projects that a few years ago no one else could imagine. This is not the time to start going backwards.”

Another city resident, Timothy Starr, said the board was being shortsighted.

“It seems to me like there are options that haven’t been considered. It seems to me that the math doesn’t work very well,” Starr said. “If the collection is only worth one-plus-however-many million dollars, and if the salaries of the library alone are $700,000, or if [the sale proceeds] are added to the endowment and we get $35-$45,000 a year, why is it that that’s being considered as such a drastic solution that will have so little long-term benefit for us?”

And yet another area resident, Bill Locke, who’s also part of the save the art group, read a statement that was purportedly written by Jesse Marion, a Texas-based businessman. He and his wife Cathy, who is from the Jamestown area, are philanthropists who had offered to purchase the collection for its assessed value in order to keep it in Jamestown. That offer was turned down due to conditions outlined in the ruling by the Surrogate Cout.

“Libraries, newspapers and even books themselves are becoming extinct,” Locke read. “Art, however, can be an important cultural connection to our past and present for thousands of  years. Is $30-50,000 a year from increased endowment really worth the destruction of a dream and a treasure? I think not.”

Part of the statement read by Locke also admonished the board for its decision to sell the collection, rather than work with community members to find an alternative solution.

“I suggest that the entire board resign and the library find new leadership with strong personal and financial commitment to the library, the city, and its citizens,” Locke said.

Jeff Holroyd of Jamestown defended the board’s decision to sell the art collection, saying that if residents were in favor of saving the art, they should have supported a public funding referendum for the library that failed in 2016.

Not all who spoke were against selling the artwork. Jeff Holroyd of Jamestown said the library really has no other option after residents failed to support it during last year’s failed funding initiative referendum.

“Everyone had the chance to come and vote and put it on the tax. I know everyone gets touchy about increased taxes, but it was out there and we wouldn’t be having that meeting today if it had passed last year,” Holroyd said, adding, “This isn’t a museum. The sign outside says its a museum but it’s not. Is there a curator here or downstairs qualified to take care of that art that’s deteriorating on a daily basis?”

Following the statements from the public, the board unanimously approved the Sotheby’s resolution with no discussion, comment, or response to any one who spoke or was in attendance. However, following the meeting, Prendergast Board president Tom Rankin said that he and the board remains sympathetic to the Save the Art supporters.

“I sympathize with the folks that want to keep the collection, I absolutely sympathize with them. I don’t want you to think otherwise,” Rankin said. “I think when those folks asked us to delay once again selling the art collection, the board felt strongly that we’ve waited long enough. We’ve suffered some financial setbacks beyond our control, and we really need to help ourselves at this point so we can keep the doors open.”

Rankin said that the terms of the contract with Sotheby’s is that the library will receive 100 percent of any final bid placed on any artwork that is sold at auction. He said that the media should check with Sotheby’s to get the specific details on how it will make its profit. It’s believed that will happen by assessing buyers fee on anyone who purchases a piece of art at auction.

The artwork will be sent to Sotheby’s in the coming weeks so it can be cleaned and prepared for auction, with the sale likely taking place in the fall.

The only artwork that will remain in possession of the Predengast Library are the pieces that have a direct connection to Jamestown’s and the surrounding area’s history, such as portraits of the Prendergast family.

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.