Robert Flynn Johnson spent 32 years building the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts into one of America's great print and drawing collections — all while quietly assembling a world-class private collection of Edgar Degas works on paper on a curator's salary. In this wide-ranging conversation, Johnson reflects on discovering Degas "below the radar" in 1976 for a few thousand dollars, the heartbreak and hustle of acquiring his most prized drawing, and why he's now selling the collection he spent a lifetime building. But Johnson doesn't stop there. He takes sharp aim at museums cannibalizing their own legacies — from the Phillips Collection selling a Seurat masterwork to fund video art, to the Pennsylvania Academy parting with their only great Edward Hopper — arguing that trustees who treat permanent collections as casino chips are violating an u ...