As you may have read, yesterday the Corcoran Gallery of Art announced that for all intents and purposes it will soon no longer exist. Specifically, the art collection will be largely transferred to the National Gallery and the art school will be sold to George Washington University.
The Corcoran name will go on as the second floor galleries will be run by the NGA as the Corcoran Contemporary. It will feature modern art pieces from the combined collections of the Corcoran and the NGA. Since most of the Corcoran’s permanent collection is pre-contemporary, most of it will no longer be shown at the historic building on 17th St. The NGA is expected to take up to 1/2 of the Corcoran’s collection for display at its buildings on Constitution Ave.
So while the Corcoran name will linger on gallery walls, the institutional continuity of the collection will cease. This is sad for art lovers everywhere, but Georgetown history buffs have added reason to mourn it’s demise since the founder of the Corcoran was William Wilson Corcoran, a proud son of Georgetown.
Corcoran was born in Georgetown to Thomas Corcoran, who himself was twice elected mayor of Georgetown. After a series of failed small ventures, Corcoran began a brokerage firm that eventually became the esteemed Riggs Bank. His wealth supported his philanthropic ventures, including the art gallery.
(Of course, like the bank he founded, Corcoran’s legacy has its own dark spots. He was a slave-owner and southern sympathizer who ran off to Europe in a failed attempt to secure Continental support for the Confederate cause.)
With the demise of the art gallery, the most significant remaining direct legacy of Corcoran lives on in Georgetown: Oak Hill Cemetery, where Corcoran is buried:
One final note: the articles reporting the news did not clarify if GW would continue to operate part of the art school out of the historic Fillmore School on 35th st. A few years ago Eastbanc was under contract to purchase the property to convert it to condos. The deal fell apart. It seemed that the main reason the Corcoran wanted to sell the property was its money problems. Ostensibly GW doesn’t have that same motive. And we all now how much GW likes to buy lots of property! (GM jokingly calls it a REIT not a school) So hopefully the building will carry on in its current capacity.
The Georgetown Metropolitan 