Museums As Mausoleums: My LA Times Op-Ed Piece

In my Op-Ed piece in today's LA Times, Museums Can't Compete, I argue that museum collecting is dying and that the time-honored assumption of museum officials that some day, some way, most of the great masterpieces in private hands will end up in their institutions is no longer a given.

Tyler Green argues today in his Modern Art Notes that I don't provide enough examples to bolster my arguments. Suffice it to say that the 1,100-word Op-Ed format doesn't allow for exhaustive documentation of every point. Indeed, a few additional specifics of the type he desires wound up on the cutting-room floor. I could easily write a piece three times the length. But, for better or worse, punchy Op-Eds are higher-profile bully pulpits than longer magazine reports.

Still, let me acknowledge that there is, indeed, another side to the story. Before reading Tyler's post, I was intending to accompany my link to my article with a shout-out to museum directors and curators for their comments, including examples of instances where they HAVE recently succeeded in snaring coveted masterpieces or in otherwise making the most of a difficult collecting environment. It still happens.

While it is true (as I explicitly state in my piece) that museums have always had a hard time competing with top collectors, the best-endowed American institutions---the Metropolitan Museum, the Cleveland Museum, the Kimbell Art Museum and the J. Paul Getty Museum---in prior decades regularly bagged some of the art market's biggest game---including respectively, masterpieces by Velázquez, Poussin, Caravaggio and Pontormo. Now, the purchasing power of three of the Big Four just isn't what it used to be. And the recent changes in the tax law are a major new deterrent to art donations.

As for the longterm viability of single-collector museums, there are many examples (including a few that had to be edited, for space) of institutions that have been at least temporarily hamstrung by their dead founders or by their legacies of uneven collections and/or amateurish administration, including the Barnes, the Terra and the Hammer, to name three.

To "make the case" for the "discernible uptick" in the proliferation of single-collector institutions, go here. (For those who don't have "Times Select" and who don't want to pay for access, it's "Welcome to the Museum of My Stuff," in which Carol Kino describes in detail the "trend" in which a "growing number of private collectors have been opening all manner of exhibition sites---from casual warehouse spaces to full-fledged museums---to show off their holdings and assert their aesthetic views, often subsidized by enviable tax benefits.")

But let me stop being defensive and start being interactive: I invite CultureGrrl and LA Times readers to tell me, in an e-mail, what you think.

I'll be glad to post your comments.

September 4, 2007 10:54 AM | | | Comments (0)

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CULTUREGRRL , the art blog, is your inside guide to the artworld, consulted daily by the most important museum directors and curators, art dealers and auctioneers, collectors, scholars, critics, journalists and art lovers. Bringing wit and wisdom to informed, informative reviews of artworld events and issues, CultureGrrl (aka Lee Rosenbaum) is avidly read for her influential critiques of best and worst practices in the field.

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LEE ROSENBAUM LeeAcrop.jpg I'm a veteran cultural journalist who writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page. I am a regular cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC). I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at Columbia Law School and on museum governance at Seton Hall University.

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MY BOOK
The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf)

IN THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA
NY TIMES OP-EDS:
For Sale: Our Permanent Collection (museum deaccessions)
Fashion Victim (Chanel at the Met)
Destroying the Museum to Save It (Barnes Foundation)
Reassembling Sundered Antiquities (Parthenon marbles)

WALL STREET JOURNAL:
Lee Krasner's "Little Image "Paintings
Ando-Designed Stone Hill Center for Conservation and Clark Exhibitions
Los Angeles' New Broad Museum of Contemporary Art
Philadelphia's New Perelman Building
The Walton Effect: Art World Is Roiled by Wal-Mart Heiress

Tricks of the Auction Trade

The Seattle Art Museum: A Work in Progress

Upside Down and Backward, Yet Tame (Boston ICA)
Edith Wharton's Library Is Now an Open Book
Extreme Makeover: Smithsonian Edition (American Art and Portrait Gallery renovation)
This Museum's Expansion is Simply Effective (Minneapolis Institute)
Truth in Booty: Coming--and Staying--Clean (antiquities controversies)
A Betrayal of Trust (NY Public Library's art sales)
The Lost Museum (MoMA's art sales)
Endangered Species (single-collector jewel-box museums)
Money in Motion (the Guggenheim's finances)
The Fine Art of Genocide? (appraisals of Hitler's art)

LA TIMES OP-EDS:
Make Art Loans, Not War
Museums Can't Compete (public collecting endangered)

PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Her Art Came First: Anne d'Harnoncourt's Labor of Love

ART IN AMERICA:
Refreshing the Smithsonian (the renovated SAAM and NPG)
The Atrium That Ate the Morgan (Renzo Piano's addition)
Hot Pots and Potshots (controversies over museum antiquities)
Musings on Museums (book review of "Whose Muse?")

NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO:
Criticism of AAM's Cultural Diplomacy Initiative

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO:
Museum of Arts and Design Opens
New Met Director, Brian Lehrer Show
Tom Campbell Named Met Director
Whitney Museum's Expansion
Fake Coptic Art at Brooklyn Museum
Spring '08 Art Auctions
Should Veterans or Newcomers Lead Arts Organizations?
Murakami at Brooklyn Museum
Whitney Biennial
Guggenheim Director Steps Down
Philippe de Montebello's Retirement
Fall '07 Art Auctions
Metropolitan Museum's "Age of Rembrandt" Show
Commentary on the Art Market
Tour of Sculpture Gardens, with Slideshow
Audio Commentary on the Met's New Greek and Roman Galleries
Glenn Lowry's Unorthodox Compensation Package
Commentary on Fall '07 Art Market

PHILADELPHIA PUBLIC RADIO:
Philadelphia Museum's "Gross Clinic" Deaccessions
Museums' Purchase and Sale of Eakins' Works (about one-third of the way into the program)
Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts' sale of Eakins' "The Cello Player"

BBC-TV:
Impressionist/Modern Auction at Sotheby's

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About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on September 4, 2007 10:54 AM.

The Grrl Is Back (as if she ever left) was the previous entry in this blog.

The Rejuvenated, Web-Wise NY Philharmonic is the next entry in this blog.

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