When the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington — one of the nation’s oldest privately supported museums — announced in May that its artwork, landmark building and venerable school would be taken over by the National Gallery of Art and George Washington University, the arrangement was presented as a done deal.
But on Wednesday, a group of museum donors, current and former students, and former faculty and staff members went to court to try to block the dismantling of the Corcoran, saying it would violate the 1869 deed and the charter of the museum’s founder, William W. Corcoran, a banker who gave his art for the “perpetual establishment and maintenance of a public gallery and museum” to promote painting, sculpture and other fine arts. The opponents, members of a group called Save the Corcoran, contend in court papers that museum trustees want to “commit the gravest form of fiduciary breach: to destroy the very institution they are charged with protecting.”