For Sendak, perhaps it's only 'Au revoir'

The imminent departure of 10,000 Maurice Sendak books, manuscripts, and original art from the Rosenbach of the Free Library may raise civic hackles, and this is absolutely the healthy response - the arts, heritage, and business communities coming together to rightfully defend the city's cultural identity. Had outside forces prevailed in purchasing a significant Thomas Eakins canvas (The Gross Clinic) and a uniquely luminous Maxfield Parrish-Louis Comfort Tiffany glass mosaic (Dream Garden), our city would have been diminished.

The Sendak estate's recent decision to recall the 98 percent of Sendak items housed at the Rosenbach is irrevocable, and it is a loss. Sendak and Philadelphia have had four decades together, and one suspects neither will fare as well without the other.

But there are key differences between what's happening now and the happily thwarted departures of the Eakins and Parrish. Practically speaking, it doesn't matter where the Sendak materials live or who owns them. Any exhibition uses only a few dozen items at a time, and loans are common in the world of arts and literature. In theory, if the Rosenbach and the Sendak trustees agreed, a steady stream of Sendak shows could continue to flow through the Rosenbach, and as far as the backstage legal status and residency of the collection goes, the public would be none the wiser.

Do the leaders of the Rosenbach and Free Library have the will and ambition to make it happen? That wasn't clear in Free Library president Siobhan Reardon's flaccid response to the Sendak collection's removal to Connecticut - it's in the "very nice to have" category, she said, but "not the be-all and end-all of the total Rosenbach collection."

Perhaps she was just having a lipstick-on-pig moment or floating a savvy negotiating stance. For there is something critical still at play: the frequency of loans the Sendak estate will grant the Rosenbach.

In his will, Sendak made clear he wanted a museum established in his former home. A 1969 agreement explicitly stated the Rosenbach did not own these 10,000 items. But he also directed the Rosenbach and the estate to work out details of what is displayed where. Was he hedging his bets? To do justice to an author and artist whose work is complex and endlessly worthy of interpretation, he needed those who survived him to build connections to two constituencies: the scholar to explore, and the public to appreciate (and to continue to buy his books).

Many a court battle has been waged over fidelity to the intent of a will - remember Albert Barnes - but what's striking here is how beautifully aligned the interests are of those who have standing that is, if not legal, then at least artistic and moral.

The Sendak trustees have every reason to give the Rosenbach all the borrowing access it wants - to curate and organize exhibitions, and even send them on the road to a network of other museums. At the same time, establishing and funding a new museum is a tricky business, and though there is more than one gauge of success, the prospect of a single-author house museum 60 miles from New York City drawing enough of a visitorship to make an impact seems remote.

Cape Cod's Edward Gorey House drew just 8,300 visitors in 2013. In Amherst, Mass., the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art, founded by the author of The Very Hungry Caterpillar, drew 47,062 visitors in fiscal year 2014, a very nice number. But it is a much larger operation, with 40 percent of its material by Carle, and 60 percent by a wide swath of others.

Indeed, Sendak's lawyer, Donald Hamburg, indicated the proposed museum in Connecticut would be more squarely aimed at the scholar than the child or parent. If you've been entrusted with advancing a legacy, catering to the scholar leaves the job just half done. Sendak deserves better.

In fact, the Rosenbach has organized Sendak shows and sent them on the road for years with great success - in venues from the Morgan Library and Museum in New York to the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyo. When it sent There's a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak to the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco for four months in 2009-10, the show drew 50,000 visitors, including 200 school tours.

"Sendak is certainly one of the biggest names in the picture-book world," Carle museum executive director Alexandra Kennedy said. "We are slowly but surely seeing more museums interested in picture-book art exhibitions, even large ones," she said, citing last year's Jerry Pinkney show at the Philadelphia Museum of Art organized by the Norman Rockwell Museum and the Ludwig Bemelmans/Madeline show now at the New York Historical Society, mounted by the Carle.

The Rosenbach and Free Library are buttressed by being in a big city with a large potential audience, as well as intriguing curatorial possibilities drawn from their own collections. Sendak, the Free Library, and Rosenbach were not thrown together by chance but by common interests. Sendak first learned about the Rosenbach from a visit to the Free Library in the 1960s. Both places spoke to him and helped develop his taste in literature and art. A.S.W. Rosenbach was an avid children's book collector, and he left his cache to the Free Library. Sendak is, in a way, a child of the Rosenbach - a debt he acknowledged by leaving it his collection of rare books.

Synergies both scholarly and popular await, and potential shows promise something for everyone. The estate's core responsibility - not merely keeping the flame, but brightening it - would be ensured. The Free Library would have a powerful vehicle for drawing children to an accessible author who is, in turn, a gateway to worlds upon worlds of literature. The Rosenbach would get a golden chance to advance relevance beyond the rare-book aficionado.

In one of those destiny-determining accidents with a storybook ring to it, Sendak died the same month the Rosenbach first approached the Free Library about a merger (not consummated until 18 months later). If the merger had happened sooner, and the Free Library had had a few years of proving to Sendak how it could create a bigger audience for him, perhaps he would have left his 10,000 items in Philadelphia.

But it's not over yet. As this tale nears conclusion, the author long since retired from the scene, it is not too late for its actors to pick up the pen and write a happy ending.

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