Disney Donates African Art

WASHINGTON (LA Times) – In a move to close his leadership of the Walt Disney Co. with a philanthropic flourish, Chief Executive Michael Eisner announced Thursday that the company would donate its African art collection, hailed by experts as one of the most important such collections in private hands in the United States, to the Smithsonian Institution. In making the gift – 525 objects, spanning five centuries and valued at $20 million to $40 million – Disney turned away suitors including the French government and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and solved a quandary that Eisner said had vexed him for 20 years. "A lot of museums contacted me," said Eisner, noting that French President Jacques Chirac "made several calls . . . and became increasingly aggressive." But Eisner said he wanted to place the collection with a museum that charged no admission fee, and "there's only one Smithsonian, only one museum for all Americans." The gift will become part of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art, which plans a debut exhibition in 2007. Eisner's wife, Jane, has served on the Smithsonian National Board since 1998 and is currently vice chair. Under terms of the gift, said Sharon F. Patton, director of the National Museum of African Art, at least 60 items from the collection are to be labeled the Walt Disney-Tishman African Art Collection and be displayed in the institution for at least the next three decades. The list of items includes Nigerian masks made of wood and antelope skin, a carved ivory-and-metal hunting horn from the area now known as Sierra Leone, intricately carved ivory armlets made for Yoruban kings and Shona stone carvings from the area now known as Zimbabwe. Dozens of wooden carvings range from delicate mother-and-child figures to rough-hewn ceremonial swords. The pieces were first collected by New York real-estate developer Paul Tishman and his wife, Ruth, beginning in the 1960s. Paul Tishman, whose company served as contractor in the construction of Epcot, had been courted by New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art, which staged a special exhibition of Tishman holdings in the early 1980s. Instead, the Tishmans sold the collection to Disney in 1984 for an undisclosed amount.