On July 2, 2014, the Save the Corcoran Coalition, a Washington D.C. non-profit corporation, filed a complaint and petition to intervene in the cy près proceeding of the Trustees of the Corcoran Gallery of Art. The complaint alleges that the Trustees breached their fiduciary duties, mismanaged fundraising efforts, wasted assets, and made misleading representations in support of their request for cy près relief.
The Coalition, which consists of students, alumni, faculty, staff, donors, and members of the Corcoran, filed this lawsuit in response to the Trustees’ petition that was filed on June 25, 2014. The Trustee’s petition seeks a court order to amend the Deed of Trust under which the Corcoran has operated since 1869, and authorize a recently announced deal that would allow other institutions to take over the Corcoran’s property.
According to the New York Times, the Trustees reached a deal which will, if court approved, permit the Corcoran to “cede its collection of more than 17,000 pieces, rich in American art, to the National Gallery” and transfer its building to The George Washington University, “which would use it for classes for students of the Corcoran College of Art + Design.”
In their complaint, the Coalition, which opposes the deal, claims that “the charitable purpose of the trust may yet be practicable, if managed properly,” and argue that the Corcoran’s bad financial situation is attributable to mismanagement of the gallery’s money through “self-dealing, conflicts of interest, hiring unqualified management and profligate spending on consultants whose advice was ultimately ignored.”