Boy Scouts of America is being forced to liquidate some of their historic Norman Rockwell paintings to help compensate hundreds of former scouts who had been sexually abused, the Associated Press reported on Friday.
The collection of over 300 classic works is valued at over $60 million. The Boy Scouts, founded in 1910, filed for bankruptcy in 2020 when more than 80,000 men submitted claims saying they had been abused as children by troop leaders across the country. The $2.46 billion settlement with victims allowed for payments ranging between $3,500 and $2.7 million. More than 86% of the survivors voted to support the agreement in bankruptcy court.
Barbara House, a retired bankruptcy judge who is overseeing the survivor’s settlement trust said, “The idea that an iconic art collection that the Boy Scouts have assembled over many years is being liquidated in order to pay survivors recoveries and to bring them some measure of justice I think is very significant.” In addition to the paintings, the Boy Scouts have also liquidated over 30 council properties over the past month.
Rockwell is known for his iconic cover paintings for the Saturday Evening Post and worked with the Boy Scouts of America for 64 years, doing artwork for Scout Life, the organization’s magazine. Some of his most memorable scouting artwork features a family welcoming a Boy Scout home from camp and another of a Cub Scout seeing how he measures up to his older brother, who is a Boy Scout.
“The reality is for most survivors, all this resolves is the bankruptcy, it doesn’t resolve their pain and it doesn’t resolve what was taken away from them,” Doug Kennedy, a survivor and co-chair of a committee representing victims, told the outlet.
In May, the organization announced they would be changing their name to Scouting of America come Feb. 2025 in an effort to be more inclusive and increase membership amidst a changing demographic. Between 2019 and 2021, the Boy Scouts lost half its membership, according to the New York Times. Current enrollment stands around one million members, down from 2.9 million in 2006 and its peak era in the 1970’s of close to 5 million.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.