Anonymous donations to museums make a mockery of history. In an industry where provenance is everything, what business is it, really, when lines of succession are erased? Besides eliminating the last owner from this artifact's history, reasons for this sort of transaction might include any 
number of shady deals.

1) To avoid inheritance disputes. No paper trail? No problem. This ruins families.
2) To move stolen art, often internationally. Someone's family here in the states, or abroad was likely harmed.
3) To deny indigenous, or war torn people the ability to track or repatriate stolen artifacts, often from victims of genocide. The ultimate destruction of families and cultures. If the administration is all lawyers, you're out of luck.
4) If items donated to Museums anonymously (or not), are never displayed, there is a good chance some of these items may opportunistically, make their way onto the black market, being trafficked, (alongside the other types of things that are typically trafficked) promoting the creation of smuggling operations.
5) To artificially elevate the valuation of any institution's endowment, without factual accounting, these assets can be manipulated for the purposes of bad loans (made by inflating valuation of hidden, lost or anonymized assets) and making money laundering a real concern.

Art for the people is good. We love Museums. Asset aquisition by Museums is big business. In the billions. The more art they acquire the better. It helps to increase that Institution's endowment. Also not a bad thing and a large endowment can be leveraged into loans from which the Museum may grow it's physical footprint or power base. Great. However, if the artwork, 
historic documents, land, or even architecture is donated "Anonymously" then the Institution is not incentived to preserve fiscal transparency.

Then there are the cross business venturers. Lets just say a trustee of a museum is also a fiduciary/ wealth manager and a co-owner of an elderly care facility, then we are getting into a whole host of potential crimes including "undue influence", fraudulent asset acquisitions and the 
potential abuse of the medically assisted "end of life care." Yikes.

An already highly publicized examle of some of these concerns has been at the Peabody Essex Museum, where 20, or more, donor families have never been able to trace their donations, nor have they seen those artifacts on display and have very little recourse to get answers. This same Museum "relocated" a whole trove of historical documents from the Phillips Library, whose buildings were donated to the Museum with the caveat that the archives remain within them by the initial charter of the donors. The buildings were however, soon turned into Corporate headquarters and a host of historians who had relocated to Salem in order to study the archives at the time, were shut out, permanently, in most cases.

The AG at the Time, Maura Healy, (who is now the Governor), put on a show of support for the thousands of protestors, but now, seemingly being in Business with the same administration is showing that she should never have represented the plaintiffs, due to seeming potential conflicts of interest, (See updates throughout this week). Begging the question, are any contracts enforceable in Massachusetts? If lawmakers, themselves are supporting those making these essential "land grabs", tossing Codes of Conduct out the window and completely ignoring the Statutes and Last Wills and Testaments of donors, (anonymous, or otherwise), by both the lower and Supreme Courts, what is law anymore, except a charade to control those with no power and bolster Authoritarianism?

While it may seem like a stretch to equate Authoritarianism with Museums, the fact that foreign influence is often peddled through these "Not for Profit" establishments is not nothing new. Between 2000 and 2025 a good deal of PEM's exhibits, have been for the promotion of Chinese Culture and 
History. The Indian exhibits (Hindu) were a bust, when a good deal of the art was found by the Feds, to have been stolen and the Native American exhibits, that are now part of the permanent collection have a dubious provenance, considering the well known history of domestic genocide.

We have started hearing the words "Cultural Patrimony" being thrown around, (ie, the wealthy feeling obliged to be in charge of all wealth, supposedly to preserve it), including that in both the private and the public sectors. This self appointed "noblesse oblige"  in some cases masks the "hoovering" of private wealth from the elderly by these  influence brokers, who create the notion that donations are status symbols. Then there are. the "common wealth", assets, typically (at least partially), preserved through taxpayer dollars, ie, our dollars. Museum practices of eliminating any provenance, or personal connections, or evidence of the chain of possession of priceless items, and documents eliminates the history of the assets, redefining what a Museum is for, entirely.

Up until now, Museums were supposed to record history and as such, got enormous governmental, educational subsidies in order to promote the edification of the public. A well informed populus is a healthy populus, being the typical Western mindset of a civilized, democratic society. This is not a concern of these new administrations, who in big biz models, tend to "theme park" the most memorable chapters of our local history and eliminate the rest, sweeping away the chaffe, the little guys, us, anonymizing us and our small contributions, which to us, at least, are meaningful so that the wealth may be homogenized and rolled into larger private equity holdings controlled by the few, the1%, often internationally.

De-regulation of accounting in cultural institutions and "not for profits" is a white-collar criminal’s best friend and promotes both domestic and international violations and the creative accounting allowing for probable “freeports.” The fact that the Phillips Library housed historic 
land deeds along an (under-served) historic Port route, at a time when Ports are under threat from foreign enemies of democracy (and concurrent to a number of Pier renovations in Salem), is interesting timing. The intimidation of witnesses seeking to testify, has been an issue as well, yours truly included.

Please sign and share this petition! REQUIRE MUSEUMS TO HAVE MORE 
TRANSPARENCY! End Anonymous Donations, and assets purchased with Anonymously donated funds to Museums. Let's bolster transparency in all big business and considering what happened with the Phillips Library in Salem MA, it seems about time for an audit at Peabody Essex Museum, but that does not seem likely with Governor Healy's administration appointing 
PEM president as part of her Board of "Cultural Economy Advisory Council", who have a stated goal of hoovering up Universities, next. Google what is happening at Lesley University if you want to see a template in action. Shocking no one, that they took the College's most beautiful buildings and turned them from educational spaces into administrative offices. The seat of power on full display.

 

Please be on the look out for my new petitions:

AuditPEMNow

EndCharitableImmunity4ShamCharities

Keep your eye out for updates:)

Best Regards,

Sam Starr Cole

 

Photograph copyrights: Elizabeth Shapiro Gilmore Estate