In the Arts: How Museums Turn Down Donations

While cultivating gifts is a major part of museum curators’ and directors’ work, they must also become practiced in the art of saying, “No thanks,” The Wall Street Journal writes in an article examining how several institutions handle rejections.

Officials at the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, and other institutions discuss what one terms the “delicate dance” of turning down works over quality, condition, space limitations, unsuitability to the museum’s mission, and other factors.

In other arts news, a Washington, D.C., theater has canceled its planned production of a play about the Bernard Madoff scandal due to objections from the human-rights activist Elie Weisel, according to The Washington Post.

Imagining Madoff, which was to have its world premiere at the District’s Theater J in August, pivots on a fictional conversation between the convicted financier and Mr. Weisel, whose foundation lost millions of dollars in Madoff investments.

And The New York Times reports on the closure of the National Museum of Catholic Art and History amid low visitor numbers and mounting debt.

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