Pearl S. Buck foundation to sell two Edward Redfield paintings

The Pearl S. Buck foundation plans to sell two valuable paintings that belonged to the author so it can pay for restorations to her historic home.

The planned Dec. 4 auction takes the Bucks County nonprofit into contentious and ethically muddy terrain, as sales of institutional holdings rank among the art world's most controversial practices.

"It may not be a popular decision in the eyes of some people," said Janet Mintzer, president and CEO of Pearl S. Buck International. "But it was such a carefully considered decision. . . . It's a sacrifice for the better good of the house."

Both paintings are by Edward Redfield, co-founder of the New Hope impressionist movement, who sold them to Buck sometime before 1965. The author of The Good Earth considered the artist a friend, and the paintings hung at her Green Hills Farm in Perkasie until the foundation board moved them into storage 10 years ago.

Together, Canal at Lambertville and Spring are conservatively estimated to be worth $350,000 to $550,000. Proceeds of their sale would pay for the third and final phase of restoration at Buck's home, which the foundation regards as its chief and most important artifact.

The last phase of the $2.9 million restoration has been stalled by a lack of money, and with few prospects for raising large amounts of cash, the foundation's governing board voted in June to sell the Redfields.

Freeman's will handle the auction in Philadelphia. In January the foundation intends to start work to solve a water-infiltration problem and to upgrade plumbing and electrical systems, mechanical equipment, and outside drainage. The cost is estimated at $1.6 million.

Mintzer said she and the board believed that if the last phase was not started soon, it might be postponed indefinitely, risking irreparable damage at a site devoted to a woman who won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Nobel Prize for Literature.

The home is a national historic site that features an intact collection, left largely as it was when Buck died in 1973.

But what art professionals call deaccessioning is a gray and often disputed area that impacts core issues of stewardship and responsibility.

"A lot of institutions, it's the immediate [financial] solution, and they're not thinking about the long-term implications," said Julie Hart, head of standards at the American Association of Museums in Washington. "These items are in the museum for the public, and it's a public trust to care for these objects."

In 2007, Fisk University officials sought to salve the school's troubled finances by selling works donated by Georgia O'Keeffe, but legal challenges blocked that. In 2008, the National Academy in Manhattan sold two paintings to help its ledger, raising $15 million but drawing criticism from the Association of Art Museum Directors, which strongly discourages such sales unless the money goes to acquire other works.

For instance, a gallery that has numerous Picassos might sell one or two in order to strengthen its holdings of Cezannes.

No sale should occur "in reaction to the exigencies of a particular moment," and no proceeds should go for "operating funds, to build a general endowment, or for any other expenses," the association policy states.

The American Association for State and Local History says art should not be sold "to provide financial support for institutional operations, facilities maintenance, or any reason other than the preservation or acquisitions of collections."

Pearl S. Buck International follows the less-rigorous policy of the American Association of Museums, which says pieces should be sold "solely for the advancement of the museum's mission," with proceeds used only for "acquisition or direct care of collections."

The two Redfields are large canvases believed to have been painted around 1900. Redfield died in 1965. In 1972, not long before her death, Buck recorded a script for a walking tour of her home in which she discussed the paintings and the artist.

"He was a friend of mine, lived in New Hope, and when he was very old, before his death, I bought from him several fine paintings," she said.

A decade ago, amid news reports about the value of Redfield's works and before Buck's house was renovated for climate-control, the board moved the paintings to the James A. Michener Art Museum, where they were stored and occasionally displayed.

Other valuable art and artifacts have stayed in the house, including Buck's graphic arts collection and the typewriter on which she wrote The Good Earth, the 1931 novel about a peasant family in China.

"We wish we could keep them," foundation board chairman Edward Wilusz said of the Redfields. "But [their] sitting in the vault doesn't help us. That's probably where they'd always be."

Wilusz said that in voting, the board specified that no other artifacts would ever be sold. "This is it," he said.

Professional groups say the danger for institutions is the temptation to solve the next financial challenge in the same manner, ultimately depleting a collection.

"We swear 'one time only,' and that's a slippery slope," said the museum association's Hart.

Buck's wishes were for the house and its contents to be on public display, with visitors' fees used to support programs for needy children. Raised in China as the daughter of missionaries, she became wealthy from her writing but devoted herself to children, particularly to the adoption of Asian orphans.

Today, Pearl S. Buck International is a $3.6 million organization that promotes the author's legacy through programs in adoption, children's aid, and tours of the Perkasie house.

Buck left no money for preservation of the house, however, and drawing visitors to a site far off the Philadelphia tourist track is not easy.

The foundation has worked to make the grounds a setting for weddings and conferences, and overall annual visitation has tripled to 22,000 in the last decade, officials said.

During that time, visitors saw reproductions of the Redfields, which hang in the living room.

"We have such a great, great potential and future here, and it starts with making sure that house is going to be here," Mintzer said. "That house is the way we tell the story of Pearl Buck."

The reproductions, she said, will remain hanging after the originals are sold.