Open Letter to the Adams Trust

On the Subject of William Turnage:
An Open Letter to the Trustees of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust

William Turnage, still from the Ric Burns film Ansel Adams (2002)

William A. Turnage’s public and backstage actions over the past three months, in his role as managing trustee of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust, have proven nothing short of reprehensible and scandalous. His behavior demonstrates that Turnage has come to see himself as master of all he surveys and king of the Adams empire. The time has come to depose him — in the several senses of the word.

Turnage began exceeding the prerogatives of his office visibly, and prominently, in August 2010, with his grotesque public comparison of Rick Norsigian, Arnold Peter, and others in that group to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

Most recently, and far more damningly, evidence has emerged indicating that, secretly, Turnage has flagrantly abused his official role as managing trustee in order to bully Katharine Martinez, the recently installed director of the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, into taking an unprecedented and entirely inappropriate public position concerning the authenticity of the negatives in the collection of Rick Norsigian and claimed by him as the work of Ansel Adams. Documentation of this scurrilous campaign, a chain of emails between Turnage, Martinez, and members of the University of Arizona administration from earlier this fall, has been made public recently by Norsigian attorney Arnold Peter.

Katharine Martinez, incoming CCP Director.

The facts are synopsized in a few brief paragraphs in Reyhan Harmanci’s article, “Ansel Adams or Not? More Twists” in the New York Times, November 9, 2010, that read as follows:

“Mr. Norsigian and his lawyer, Arnold Peter, are battling back [against the lawsuit filed by the Adams Trust]. This week they released e-mails they said they had obtained through a public records request. The e-mails Mr. Peter released indicate that the center issued the statement critical of Mr. Norsigian’s effort only after the managing trustee of the Adams trust, William A. Turnage, threatened to end his ’34 years of support and assistance’ for the center if it did not take a public stand. In earlier e-mails center officials had said they hoped to remain neutral.

“‘In my opinion,’ Katherine [sic] Martinez, the center’s director, wrote in one of the e-mails, ‘CCP staff should not be drawn into debate about the negatives.’

“The center declined comment on the e-mails.

“The Center for Creative Photography may have a continuing role in the debate because further forensic testing could require reviewing Adams negatives there.”

(Note: Because both the Center for Creative Photography and the University of Arizona are federally and state-registered nonprofit educational institutions, according to the laws of the state of Arizona their internal and external correspondence can be accessed for examination by members of the public. Thus Team Norsigian obtained these documents legally, and through the proper channels, via the “public records request” cited in Harmanci’s report. Since they’re de facto public documents, over which neither institution nor any of the parties involved can claim any right to privacy, their release by Team Norsigian is also entirely legal, as are any quotations therefrom in my reports and elsewhere.)

By pursuing this course of action, Turnage poisoned Martinez’s administration at its very outset, perhaps terminally. He thereby also corrupted the Center for Creative Photography as a research institution, not just by demanding general allegiance to the Adams Trust as its primary sponsor but by dictating to Martinez the public position he required the CCP to take on the Norsigian negatives controversy. Overriding her initial demurrer, Turnage blackmailed Martinez into doing his bidding by threatening to remove the Trust’s financial support for the Center unless she did exactly as she was told.

Regrettably, Martinez failed to stand her ground, instead bowing to Turnage’s wishes by issuing a statement on August 27th titled “A Message From the Director” that read, in part, “We have no reason to believe that these negatives are, in fact, the work of Ansel Adams, and we support the efforts of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust to protect its rights in this matter.” (Note: This statement, drafted not by Martinez but by the University of Arizona’s Office of General Counsel, appeared on the main page of the CCP’s website on August 27, 2010. It has since vanished therefrom without a trace, and without explanation. The link above will take you to a PDF version thereof that I archived, and which I certify as a complete, unaltered copy of that publication.)

This carefully worded sentence has no actual probative value, and in fact I could have said — indeed, have said — pretty much the same thing myself: I’m not convinced so far by Team Norsigian’s evidence, and the Adams Trust has every right to protect its valuable trademark. The statement isn’t harmful in itself, if offered as an individual’s professional opinion, even on the witness stand. But the making and publishing of it in the name of the CCP is self-evidently intended to undermine Norsigian’s case; it’s a partisan act.

And issuing it at gunpoint is deeply injurious to all those in whose name it was asserted. In so doing, Martinez and the University of Arizona weakened the very position she had so recently assumed at the Center, compromising its integrity and independence from undue influence. Turnage’s actions, Martinez’s acquiescence thereto, and the UofA’s active participation therein merit the condemnation of the academic world and the photography community as well.

Readers may recall that I found Martinez’s statement peculiar and disturbing at the time. As I noted — mistakenly — in my August 30th report on this turn of events, “I suspect this resulted from Team Norsigian’s public badgering of CCP management and staff in combination with its attempts to claim that the CCP has authenticated some of its purported evidence . . . ” I continued, “I don’t understand why the CCP has seen fit to issue an opinion on this matter one way or the other, especially since no member of its staff has ever seen any of the original Norsigian materials. I hope this didn’t result from pressure from the Adams Trust, to which the CCP has umbilical ties.” As you can see, I assumed, charitably, that Martinez had opted voluntarily, if wrong-headedly, to bring the CCP into the fray. Now we know that my fears were justified: Martinez did so against her better judgment, and only after Turnage bludgeoned her into submission.

Such a violation of professional ethics and legal constraints on Turnage’s part, combined with the yielding thereto of the Center for Creative Photography and the University of Arizona, may jeopardize the non-profit status of both those entities.

It might have legal consequences for the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust as well. This successful effort by the Adams Trust to not just influence but actually dictate CCP policy could prove especially problematic due to the fact that the Adams Trust is presently involved in a lawsuit it initiated against Team Norsigian — the trademark-violation case presently under consideration in the Federal District Court of Northern California. The mere fact of the Trust’s pressuring the CCP to take sides will not sit well with either the judge or the jury in that case. And if, in its filings, the Trust referred to the CCP’s position as evidence in support of the Trust’s position, the stain of that endorsement obtained under duress will likely spread to the Trust’s case as a whole. The Adams Trust, the CCP, and the UofA could now come under investigation by federal and state authorities — in California, where the Trust bases itself, and in Arizona, where the CCP and the university are sited — for this covert collusion.

Collector Rick Norsigian. Image courtesy of Rick Norsigian.

In the long run, the claims by Norsigian et al concerning Ansel Adams’s authorship of the so-called “lost negatives” will either get proven true or proven false — or will, perhaps, remain forever in the realm of speculation due to lack of conclusive proof. I’m not yet persuaded by Team Norsigian’s arguments and evidence, and may never be. If there is a resolution to this debate, it will in my opinion come about through forensic testing and scholarship, both of which will require serious research — some of which can only take place by comparing the Norsigian Collection glass-plate negatives and related materials with the materials in the Adams Archive at the CCP, and by scrutinizing Adams’s journals and darkroom notes for that period, which are held in the same repository.

For that reason alone, it was imperative in this situation for the Center to remain a neutral ground for scholarly inquiry, a role it should play not only in this case but as a general policy. Regrettably, that’s no longer possible — not only in this case but as a general policy — because Turnage chose, unilaterally, to rewrite the CCP’s mission statement to suit what he saw as the Adams Trust’s agenda.

William Turnage has revealed himself as, to put it bluntly, a thug, and one now caught red-handed. He has severely and perhaps permanently contaminated the Adams Trust’s long-term relationship with the Center for Creative Photography and the University of Arizona, Tucson, where the CCP makes it home. He’s done this by deliberately tearing down the firewall that must exist between the Trust as a source of financial support for the CCP and the Center as a neutral, impartial archive and research resource. He has compromised — probably fatally — the administration of Katharine Martinez, effectively nipping it in the bud by transforming her into his stooge, or, in the current vernacular, making her his bitch. He has made it appear that the Trust considers the CCP its own private fiefdom, subject to its dictates, and has made it clear that the Trust stands ready to use the CCP (and, by extension, the University of Arizona) as a weapon in its own campaigns.

As I see it, with this appalling circumstance having come to light Katharine Martinez has little choice but to resign her new position, which has become hopelessly tainted as a result of her kowtowing to Turnage. Instead of affirming a zero-tolerance policy in regard to outside coercion, she opened the door to more of the same, diminishing her own authority and setting a precedent that will haunt the CCP unless and until it gets decisively reversed. This assumes, of course, that Martinez did not surrender to Turnage’s demands on specific orders from above within the University of Arizona’s administrative hierarchy ― an issue as yet undetermined.

The CCP’s Board of Fellows, and the administration of the University of Arizona, Tucson, thus face not only the task of replacing Martinez but the necessity of finding ways to certify and demonstrate that neither the university nor the CCP are tools of the Adams Trust, available on demand to serve the Trust’s political, legal, and financial ends. From my perspective, it will take them years to rebuild their credibility in the eyes of the scholarly community; they will need to distance themselves from the Adams Trust, condemn its manipulative actions, chastise and possibly remove the CCP’s director (or take responsibility for making her do what she did), and establish a permanent firewall between the CCP and the Adams Trust.

Ansel Adams's signature

The Adams Trust, caught brazenly twisting the arm of the CCP’s director, now stands revealed to the world as an amoral entity prepared to suborn the CCP director and corrupt her office in order to have its own way. In so doing, the Trust has demonstrated vividly that it neither cares about nor understands the principles of academic integrity, free inquiry, and scholarly impartiality for which an institution such as the CCP (and the University of Arizona’s Library, of which it’s a component) must stand in order to command the respect of the photography, art, and academic communities worldwide.

University of Arizona President Emeritus John P. Schaefer

Surely this is recognized by Dr. John P. Schaefer, President Emeritus of the University of Arizona, Tucson. It was Schaefer who, in that role, collaborated with Adams on the creation of the CCP, which they established in May 1975; indeed, its full name is given as the John P. Schaefer Center For Creative Photography. And it’s Schaefer who presently sits — in an apparent conflict of interest made painfully obvious here — on the Board of Trustees of the Ansel Adams Publishing Rights Trust as well as the Board of Fellows of the Center for Creative Photography. How he became a party (even inadvertently) to this subjugation and degradation of the very institution whose birth he midwifed defies comprehension.

It’s possible, of course, that Turnage browbeat Martinez into compliance with his wishes without first consulting with his colleagues on the Adams Trust’s board — Dr. Schaefer and Los Angeles attorney David H. Vena. But that seems highly unlikely, especially as the law firm in which Vena was a senior partner before his 2004 retirement, Latham & Watkins, represents the Adams Trust in the trademark-infringement lawsuit filed by the Adams Trust against Rick Norsigian and Arnold Peter’s firm, PRS Media Partners, on August 23, 2010 in the Federal District Court of Northern California. I find it hard to imagine it as purely coincidental that Martinez of the CCP issued the Center’s official statement of support for the Adams Trust’s case a mere four days after the Trust initiated that legal action. This has the smell of conspiracy all over it. Still, absent hard proof to the contrary — such as an email or phonelog trail among the three trustees — throwing Turnage to the wolves (or asking him to fall on his own sword, much the same thing) might get the other two trustees off the hook.

David H. Vena, attorney

If Turnage acted as he did with the complicity and support of the Trust’s other trustees, then the responsibility for and shame of this unethical action rests on all of you. Any and all trustees who endorsed this nefarious course of action should also resign; they share Turnage’s guilt. If he did it solely on his own initiative, then it’s entirely on him, and the board must denounce and repudiate his rogue activity. Regardless of whether you opt to use him as a scapegoat for your collective decision or simply hold him accountable for deeds he committed without your knowledge and approval, clearly the time has come for William Turnage to go.

Turnage’s arrogance and abuse of power patently know no bounds. He has disgraced and betrayed the Adams Trust, publicly embarrassing that entity. He has recklessly endangered the reputations of four substantial enterprises: the Adams Trust, the Center for Creative Photography, the University of Arizona, and the Ansel Adams Gallery. (The Ansel Adams Gallery becomes complicitous in Turnage’s project, de facto, not only because the Trust and Gallery are intimately bound up with each other in all conceivable ways but because Adams’s son Michael Adams and daughter Anne Adams Helms are the sole beneficiaries of the Trust, according to its “Certification of Interested Entities or Persons” filed in support of this lawsuit — and their son Matthew, Ansel Adams’s grandson, runs the gallery.)

Perhaps most significantly of all, under William Turnage’s leadership the Trust has not only besmirched itself but damaged the reputation and abused the name and reputation of Ansel Adams in the guise of protecting them. Turnage has thus made himself into a high-profile liability you and your partner institutions can no longer afford.

You have few options. Either you persuade Turnage to resign or remove him — or else you circle the wagons and keep him on, knowing that he’s become not just a loose cannon but an albatross around your necks. Whichever decision you make, the Trust can’t begin to rebuild its tarnished image, repair the damaged fences, and make public apologies and amends while Turnage remains in office there. The choice is yours, and many eyes are on you.

•

Full disclosure: In 1996 I was honored as the Ansel and Virginia Adams Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for Creative Photography. The CCP houses a substantial archive of my papers, there on long-term loan, and in 2000 the Center published a bibliography of my writings 1968-95.

•

For an index of links to all previous posts related to this story, click here.