BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THURSDAY SEPT. 28, 2017) —  Bad politics (like there’s some other kind). That’s the two-word explanation for the disaster happening at the Berkshire Museum (BM) by its own suicidal hand.

The BM’s crass plan to sell its treasures to the highest bidder — works of art, mind you, that were either donated or purchased in a more enlightened time in order to enrich in trust Pittsfield’s future generations — can ultimately be traced back to the failure of the city to put on its “big boy pants” after General Electric left town. Pittsfield made two fatal errors, each political: First, it failed to plan for the eventual inevitability of this gigantic loss. Second, when it had GE at the bargaining table, it let the company off the hook, allowing it to exit without cleaning up the deathly toxicity it bequeathed to the city’s soil, air, and water. Talk about bargaining tough: GE left town laughing at the rubes in exchange for a woefully inadequate “remediation” and a pitiful $10 million dollars of sucker dough.

This set up a power vacuum not even Electrolux could fill. After the GE brain and money drain, a motley collection of parochial, inept, and inbred political amateurs staggered into the void. A generation later, Pittsfield is without an economy, its tax base can dance on the head of a pin, city spending continues through the roof, and The Suits keep feeding Their Own from the public trough. The devolution of the BM and its current situation fits the classic Pittsfield profile:

1. Dump a lot of public money into a failing private enterprise (EV Worldwide, Workshop Live, Spice, Nuclea ad infinitum, ad nauseum)

2. Import ringers from out of town at big salaries, thereby wiping off the local fingerprints from the murder weapon (ad infinitum, ad museum)

3. Load the boards and directors with Good Ol’ Boys and Girls who will be compliant to the inevitable and subsequent rape, making sure pockets are lined in some manner.

How else does a Van Shields end up as executive director at Large $$, a man who evidently had to get out of town in a hurry at his previous museum gig in South Carolina? How else do we get “Buzz” McGraw, a hockey-playing woman who doesn’t live in Pittsfield and doesn’t know it, though she would love to take THE PLANET into the boards?

These are the kind of outsiders The Suits bring in, arrogant snobs who Know What’s Best For The Rest Of Us. Such people have helped continue a process begun 10 years ago, to turn the once hallowed BM into McDonald’s Playland, or haven’t you noticed, for instance, the first-floor great room on the left. The glowing gem booth and the great displays of natural history and science, including that incredible Western Diamondback rattlesnake, have given way to a sandbox, toys, snot-nosed kids, screaming, and desperate parents and day-caretakers looking for a place to stick the miserable brats.

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The BM’s “New Vision” plan looks to amp up this abhorrent trend, taking a venue that once had the sacredness and gravitas of a Gothic cathedral and turning it into Chuck E. Cheese, an immortal turn-of-phrase suggested by one of our dear commentators, That Girl.

The BM’s “New Vision,” a desperate plan intended to mask a decade of financial and programming mismanagement, includes selling off its marquee works, including what is likely the single most valuable piece of artwork in Berkshire County short of the 15th century stained-glass mural above the altar at St. Joseph’s Church in Stockbridge. This director and board have made the BM an outcast in the art, museum, and cultural worlds; damaged every other cultural institution in the county in a trickle-down process; and turned Pittsfield into a national laughingstock. Ah, but we have $6,000 garbage cans on Tyler Street.

Here’s the name names part. You already know of the Executive Director Museum Molester and his gun moll, Shields and McGraw respectively, though not respectfully. Here’s the Board of Trustees. See if you recognize any names:

McGraw, president; Stacey Gillis Weber, vice president; Ethan Klepetar, vice president; Carol Riordan, treasurer; Lydia Rosner, secretary. They have been aided and abetted in their art heist by the regular board members: Mike Addy, Stephen Bayne, Jay Bikofsky, Douglas Crane, Howard J. Eberwein III (yes, JIVE III!), Ursula Ehret-Dichter, Nancy Edman Feldman, David Glodt, Wendy Gordon, Bill Hines (ex- of PEDA fame), Joan Hunter, Eric Korenman, Barbara Krauthamer, Donna Krenicki, Susan Nash, Jeffrey Noble, Melissa Scarafoni (hmmm, where have we heard that name before?). The three honorary Life Trustees are Mike Christopher, Jeff Cook, and Betsey Selkowitz. Run along folks, nothing to see here.

Any of these people who have not publicly condemned the planned art sale must stand indicted as co-conspirators. By the powers vested in THE PLANET by our virtue of the blessed Fourth Estate, we hereby serve papers.

Now for some inside baseball from an impeccable source who told THE PLANET what he (or she) says was the political game-plan to sell the public on the BM’s short-sighted move. We’ll call this person Sunny. Needless to say in a small town governed by political terror, Sunny demanded (and received) anonymity. We wouldn’t betray such a source even if we had to forfeit our Davy Crockett iron-ons.

“The board has long known about [Shields] mismanagement and his ‘carelessness’ with funds.  Many [board members] are in his pocket and at his defense, but not all,” Sunny said. “Finally, in late spring, early summer, there was a confrontation of sorts, with threats to go public. The board managed to put a stop to that. There was a loud, angry discussion about programming, which several board members blamed for much of the financial difficulties. They were basically shouted down, and since then, they’ve been afraid to speak out. I don’t think anyone will.”

Sunny said that once the outraged public and art world began to protest the intended sale, someone on the board — either Shields or McGraw, Sunny thinks — asked board member Bill Hines to ask former Mayor Jimmy Ruberto to get involved. As you may recall, after Hines sold Interprint and began looking around for something to do, then-mayor Ruberto gave him the ultimate no-work, no-accountability plum: executive director of PEDA. One look at the results on the 52 acres of PEDA tells you all you need to know about how successful Hines was at the job.

Sunny says Ruberto wrote a letter to The Boring Broadsheet, as requested. The BB published that earlier this week. This came after Ruberto, Sunny alleges, delivered on a second favor: “Order” [Sunny’s word] state rep. Tricia Farley-Bouvier to come out publicly to defend the sale.  It seems logical. Ruberto recued TFB from curbside, installed her as a city councilor, created a new position for her as the mayor’s “director of administrative services,” then king-made her butt into keeping a seat warm on one of Beacon Hill‘s most distant back benches as one of the State House’s most useless hacks. All she had to do in return was “play ball.” She did.

She acted as her master demanded, an exercise in bargain abasement that can be read in her hysterical, inarticulate apology for the BM’s plan to destroy the institution.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave …

TOMMOROW: Part 4 concludes the series with a look at what the city is losing from a more personal perspective.

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“Now unknown dust on black dress gathers, / and every prayer is being answered / by cripples who masquerade as dancers.” — Dan Valenti, from “December Sunlight.”

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.”

LOVE TO ALL.

The Usual Disclaimer.