ACQUISITION WATCH

What brilliant new work will the Phillips Collection purchase, with the “blood money” earned from launching O’Keeffe’s blood-red leaves onto the wind? Given the museum leadership’s taste for artwork that would be considered folk art if only it were visionary, there are reasonable doubts that the museum’s leadership shares the eye of Duncan Phillips. Watch this space for updates, as we track the low-merit, politically propagandistic artwork that the museum’s provincial leadership tastelessly acquires. This deluge of poorly selected contemporary art will further smother the museum’s modern art holdings, as America’s first modern art museum shamelessly and ironically works to erase modernism from American cultural memory.

OKBS RATINGS

As acquisitions are announced, ACQUISITION WATCH will rate the acquisitions on the newly developed O’KEEFFE BETRAYAL SCALE (OKBS), receiving ratings between 1 and 5:

OKBS 5—An exceptional work. All the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe extant on earth, along with all the scholarly monographs about O’Keeffe, could be burned by leftists in a great bonfire on the National Mall, if in exchange the Phillips Collection could acquire this monumental work.

OKBS 4—A meretricious work. It was worth deaccessioning a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe held in a museum collection for over 100 years in order to acquire this work.

OKBS 3—A middling work. Not worth deaccessioning a painting by Georgia O’Keeffe in order to acquire, but a work that, judged independent of that matter, is likely befitting of inclusion in the Phillips Collection.

OKBS 2—A desultory work. Not worthy of inclusion in the Phillips Collection, and certainly not worth the price of “blood money.”

OKBS 1—A laughable work. An outrage to be purchased with “blood money;” and an equal outrage to be included in the Phillips Collection. An insult to the memory of Duncan Phillips. A desecration of Georgia O’Keeffe’s grave.