The Cleveland Plain-Dealer reports on the local liberal arts college that decided to sell paintings and prints held in storage as much for the sake of the works of art and ended up making $1.4 million:

“We were one sewer backup from having the collection destroyed,” said spokesman George Richard. “It would be irresponsible for us to do not do something.”

The items — including a Roy Lichtenstein lithograph and works by James A.M. Whistler — were donated to the college by numerous benefactors decades ago, but few people saw them, officials said.

“They were quality pieces, but we had trouble preserving and maintaining them,” said Richard. “We had obligations to protect it.”

The college consigned the pieces to the Rachel Davis Fine Arts in Cleveland. “The Popcorn Man,” a 1930 oil painting by Clevelander Carl Gaertner, sold in 2009 for $230,690, including the buyer’s premium, according to the Maine Antique Digest, which reported on the auctions.

A two-day auction last March of prints and drawings, including “Crying Girl,” a 1963 Lichtenstein lithograph that sold for $30,680, brought in a total of $1.23 million, the digest reported.

All told, 1,761 items were sold by the gallery between August 2009 and July 2010, Richard said.

Baldwin-Wallace College nets $1.4 million from auction of art collection (Cleveland Plain Dealer)