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posted 10-02-2006 11:52 AM            

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In a desperate attempt to light a fire under my forum, I reflect here on a recent offer from a collector to LEND a quite magnificent piece of Victorian sterling for a long term (3-5 years was the thought). I pair that with another recent comment heard at a luncheon that a major collector refused to donate objects to a major museum because that museum wouldn't promise permanent exhibition of said objects.

So what's a curator to do?

Long-term loans are a problem that many museums in the US have responded to by making it a policy not to accept them. And yet you do see things on loan in "permanent galleries" all over the place. Collectors feel they want to share their collection with the public, but don't actually want to give things away. For them, the long-term loan is a great idea. For the museum, however, such arrangements, unless there is a promised gift document somewhere in the file, simply mean the museum is promoting a private collector's object, increasing its value, and paying insurance--all for nought. When most museums don't have enough exhibition space for permanent collections, hence relegating things to storage for a lot of the time, they are understandably resistant to taking in loans for which there is no long-term benefit to the museum.

I'll carry on in a second post with the "buried treasure" idea.

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posted 10-02-2006 11:42 PM            

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This is actually a serious proposal. Take a museum gallery, install cases and rent them to major collectors. Have a set period for the lease, say 3 months. Offer to publicize and help with the display. Have minimum type standards. Help the collector set days and times to be there to personally show and explain the collection. Get publicity, which would probably be free. Urge the collector to arrange tours for schools etc. I have known a number of antique malls that did this, and they always had great response. Something about a large collection of barbed wire through the ages or copper hemispherical ceramic cone space heaters appeals to people who would otherwise never go into a museum. Great way to expand your market. I do of course expect a royalty snark.

There is a museum somewhat like this in Rockford IL. The collector had an enormous collection of clocks and did not like the museum terms, so he made his own museum. Built a large conference center motel around the museum, to provide financial support. AIR he also set aside space for other collectors to do short term displays. A very popular attraction, complete with parking, lodging and restaurants.

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posted 10-03-2006 09:18 AM            

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It's a funny proposal, and not without a certain charm. However, the very phrase "take a gallery" suggests that a museum--mine for example--has enough underused space to allow for this. In THEORY I love the idea of a "collectors' gallery" wherein we charge rent for collectors to display their things, presumably the rental covering the cost of the cases. But then we have the issue of who will moderate and manage this--because there's a lot more work that you might think. No museum can take in objects on loan--even for such a venture as this--without using the Registrar to do condition reports on every object. This would create an enormous amount of paperwork that would take away from the already packed worktime of the staff. You can't just let collectors bring things in willy-nilly, because you know for sure that as soon as something went wrong, the museum would be blamed and sued. It's not so easy to run a museum, and even the loan of, say, 30 objects, can take many hours of work to manage.

[This message has been edited by Ulysses Dietz (edited 10-03-2006).]

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posted 10-03-2006 02:54 PM            

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Back in the '50s and '60s the Virginia Museum of Fine Art used to have regional offices in other parts of the state, and I think they could arrange exhibits and local loans with more freedom. But those are long gone, and the traveling replacement, the ArtMobile, I think had the same kinds of controls mandated as most museums.

One solution would be to charge the collector for the cost of processing the loan. Few would probably do it then, but if you think about it that would be much more fair: after all, the collector's piece(s) would generally become more valuable through the association with a museum, so if they lend something they're basically taking free profit from the museum. Not to mention free storage, security, sometimes insurance....

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posted 10-04-2006 04:01 PM            

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quote:

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For the museum, however, such arrangements, unless there is a promised gift document somewhere in the file, simply mean the museum is promoting a private collector's object, increasing its value, and paying insurance--all for nought.

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Knowing the variety of human behaviors, I find it difficult to conceive that all collectors would have the same monetary motivation in offering a loan. Some might genuinely want to share a unique or otherwise important object, thereby actually doing the museum a favor. One would think that such a loan would not be entirely one sided if the object in question were worth exhibiting, as it should lend some presitge (for want of a better word) to the museum for being able to exhibit it, and provide an opportunity to attract additional visitors who might want to view it.

Do you feel the same about short term loans? When perusing old exhibit catalogs, there is often a significant portion of the exhibition made up of objects owned by private persons and not the museum. Such loans flesh out the museum's holdings, and provide an opportunity of avoiding repetition of "all the same old things" in subsequent exhibitions on the same or related themes. I seem to recall a notice not long ago of a museum actively soliciting offers of loan material for an exhibit.

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posted 10-05-2006 06:29 PM            

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I have to follow up on that collector I noted in my first entry. After I responded to him by email and explained why we couldn't take his piece on long-term loan, he actually telephoned me and thanked me for making our position clear. Apparently people brush him off politely without explaining why they don't want a loan. He just sounded relieved to understand.

Anyone care to know why we don't want long-term loans?

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posted 10-05-2006 06:40 PM            

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Yes

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posted 10-05-2006 11:06 PM            

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Of course.

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posted 10-06-2006 06:11 AM            

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Nothing (almost) in life is black and white.
Most good museum galleries are themed.
A missing piece of the story/theme may be filled by a long term loan and in this instance there is a pay-off between the advantage to the museum/curator and the advantages to the owner.
My experience is that the longer a piece remains in a gallery, the greater becomes the chance of the piece eventually being donated (or sold) to the institution concerned. This is another reason to consider accepting a special object.
Recently, a gallery that I had spent years getting 'right' was deprived of two 'key' pieces (after about three years) because the kind owner/lender had become sick and the new curator wasn't prepared to
respond in as positive a manner as the owner thought fitting . The result is that the pieces now reside in an institution where their contribution is much diminished ...

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posted 10-06-2006 10:52 AM            

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Silver Lyon said it well. Here is exactly what I said to the person seeking a long-term loan:

Although silver is one of my great passions, and your [object]would look pretty dazzling in our 1885 Ballantine House, I'm afraid it is against our general policy to accept long-term loans. The bottom-line problem is that there is no advantage to the Museum for taking in such long-term loans unless there is a promise of gift attached to them. Like most museums--even the Metropolitan--we face a critical shortage of exhibition and storage space. For every loaned object we place on display, we must relegate other pieces to storage. Most of my silver collection here remains in storage at any given moment, a frustrating circumstance for which there is no short-term solution.

But what Silver Lyon says about filling in a gap in a story in a thematic gallery is exactly right. Here's the tragic reply to that: for my 25th anniversary exhibition I tried to borrow some key colonial silver to fill in a huge gap we have in our silver collection. The owner, who is an old friend, refused to lend. So I ended up pillaging my permanent galleries to flesh out the early part of my exhibition from our own slim collection of colonial silver. It worked out well, but the bitter sting of rejection still smarts.

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