by William H. Calvin
My high-school classmates wanted to make an impact with our 1957 senior-class gift to Shawnee-Mission High School, in the Kansas City suburbs.[1] The Senior Gift Committee had the bright idea of buying a painting, which would hang in the entrance lobby where a few thousand students would pass it every day.
Thomas Hart Benton was famous, especially for his murals, and he lived in Kansas City. The $750 budget, raised from pass-the-hat contributions from 524 of us seniors, was only half the asking price, but Mr. Benton accepted our offer, probably because Gail Goodman, who chaired the gift committee, was so persuasive.
For a senior-class gift, it certainly set a new standard. Then, in the following decades, the value of Thomas Hart Benton paintings went through the roof. By the time of our 50th class reunion in 2007, this painting we had acquired, Utah Highlands, was valued at $750,000.
A thousand-fold increase. That’s likely better than any investment made by a member of the Class of 1957, unless one of us was an early investor in Apple or Microsoft. Utah Highlands is now probably worth over a million.
Success, surely. But the trouble it caused….
The rear of the school library. In 2007, my 67-year-old classmates were allowed into the locked room, as close as the previous level of security allowed –that Plexiglas box (below).
| Utah Highlands is about two by three feet, not exactly mural size, but all we could afford. In 2008, other Benton paintings of similar size were going for a million. |
Vulnerable as it was, hanging unprotected in the busy school hallway, it was later relocated to the back wall of the school library, where librarians could keep an eye on it.
Decades passed. By the time our 50th Reunion visited it in 2007, a locked room had been built around it. The room had a plate-glass window that kept viewers further away than the protections of world-famous paintings in museums. The school district was surely paying a lot for insurance and trying not to publicize its jewel.
My 67-year-old classmates were allowed into the locked room, as close as the previous level of security allowed –that Plexiglas box.
But the next year, 2008, the painting disappeared. A color photograph was substituted for it, but the Plexiglas protector was left in place. Inquiries from my classmates led the school district to say that the painting was not lost, merely hidden somewhere they would not name. They did not want to talk about it. That sounds like the insurance company was setting conditions for a cheaper premium.
One suspects the district could no longer afford the insurance premiums for public display, only those for secure storage. The district tried to get the big Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City—the one with the giant Claes Oldenburg shuttlecocks scattered around the lawn— to take it as a permanent loan. By 2015, they finally succeeded. I hate to think of how many lawyer-hours were wasted over this.
So, back in 1957, if we had asked ourselves about the potential side effects of our gift, I doubt that anyone would have guessed that we were creating a burden for future school administrators. But, since we were teenagers, I doubt that we would have cared—we might have even treated it as a bonus. I would have. I was still annoyed with the autocratic principal who told me to take off the beret I was wearing. (“I’m not going to allow any clothing fads in my high school,” he said, with his best stern stare.)
The beret initiative was created one morning in my 1956 carpool. Here they are in 2007, with a few extras. I treasure them all as some of the best friends I’ve ever had.
[1] In 1958, when a second high school opened, the first and only was renamed Shawnee-Mission North. It is located in what is now known to the post office as Overland Park, Kansas, a southwestern suburb of Kansas City.
Great stories. Unintended consequences. Fun facts. The past seems alive.