Phill Casaus: Naming rights controversy gives Vladems a lesson in Santa Fe
Oct. 8—Bob Vladem, a guy who can afford to live just about anywhere, sounds like he wants to leave his current residence, which happens to be Santa Fe, New Mexico.
"I would be open to that," he said at a downtown coffee shop last week. "Because I thought we were giving a gift to this community. And the community includes us, and we don't feel, I don't feel, a part of the community."
The gift, Bob and Ellen Vladems' $4 million donation to help build a state-operated contemporary art museum that would bear their name — Vladem Contemporary — is the latest firefight in The New Mexican's letters to the editor, our fair burg's equivalent of the office watercooler.
For some people here, the construction of the museum, which should be complete by late winter, came at a price — one far higher than the Vladems' $4 million gift to the Museum of New Mexico Foundation.
As the walls of the Vladem Contemporary went up, an old and not particularly well cared for mural came down.
The result: A Santa Fe Special. A debate about class, wealth, power, history, art, gentrification, roots, the future.
Bob Vladem, a businessman and self-described "private equity guy" originally from Chicago, concedes he didn't sign up for this. By giving the money, which spurred a stuck-in-the-mud fundraising campaign to build the museum on what was the site of the old Halpin Building near the Railyard, he thought he'd be helping the cause of contemporary art in a town where all kinds of art are welcomed.
Anyone in Bob Vladem's line of work is not constructed of linguine and lace. His penetrating stare and direct manner tells you he's plenty tough. But he admits the anger over the museum — and the naming rights that came with the donation — is stunning.
More than once he referred to the criticism as a "baseball bat to the forehead."
Which is interesting. Because when they arrived in Santa Fe, the Vladems thought they'd hit a home run.
They first saw the place in 2010 because one of their daughters was looking at St. John's College. Bob went with her for the visit and was smitten. He contends it changed his life.
Ellen, a retired nurse whose career spanned emergency rooms to oncology, followed soon afterward.
"I came here for a weekend," she said, "and I fell in love with the city."
"I'm still in love with the city," Bob Vladem interjected. "I'm just not sure about it."
Ellen Vladem is sure. "He knows I want to be here," she said, "and I don't want to go anywhere else."
Once they rooted in 2013, the Vladems joined the city's arts crowd, and their money did, too. The Vladems estimated they have given about $15 million, most to the Santa Fe Opera. They didn't put a calculator to it, but both Vladems say the size of their gifts here far outsize their philanthropic efforts in Chicago, though they were involved in educational nonprofits there.
Now years into the controversy, the Vladems seem genuinely puzzled by the tumult. Their love for the arts is deep, and it's plain Bob Vladem — who said he didn't grow up with money and couldn't attend art school to pursue his passion because he couldn't afford it — still revels in art's possibilities and creativity.
Instead of art school, he attended a commuter school, the University of Illinois-Chicago, and became an accountant. And later, a millionaire.
"I'm certainly no billionaire," he said. "I know quite a few billionaires."
In a state where the motto should be, "Tell me who you run with; I'll tell you who you are," such realities may never win Vladem warm and fuzzies with those who resent the arrival of money into Santa Fe — though truth be told, the horse escaped that barn many, many years ago and long before the Vladems arrived.
I'm just guessing, but I'll bet there are plenty of millionaires living here who haven't put their money where their mouths are, regardless of the receptacle. If nothing else, the Vladems did.
"I think there has to be a conversation about the fact that ... they have all these opinions, and there's honest-to-goodness, real human beings with blood in their veins and their hearts are beating. And they're taking the brunt of this," Bob Vladem said, referring, of course, to himself and his wife.
The Vladems, especially Ellen, hope people will see them the way they see themselves: two newcomers who've been fortunate but love their new town and give their money rather than flaunt it. They take pains to point out they've never flown first class on an airplane. At a recent unveiling of the reproduction of Gilberto Guzman's mural — a museum spokesman said it's 5 feet high and 24 feet wide, and will hang in the lobby above an education classroom at the Vladem Contemporary — they say they were treated well and enjoyed the company.
It might be the foothold toward a better day. Someday, maybe the Vladem Contemporary will be old news; pushed aside by another Santa Fe Special in some other place.
No one, certainly not the Vladems, has a crystal ball. But one thing is certain. In Santa Fe, there are plenty of baseball bats.
Phill Casaus is editor of The New Mexican.
