D'Offay Offs Broad: Parading a Different "Paradigm"

Look familiar? Here are two works from Anthony d'Offay's collection, which have twins in Eli Broad's collection:

Damien Hirst, "Away from the Flock," 1995
© Damien Hirst

Robert Therrien, "No Title (Table and Four Chairs)," 2003
© Robert Therrien / ARS, NY and DACS, London 2008

Their collections may have similarities, but you can't have much more of a contrast between art donors' approaches to museums than those embodied by Los Angeles collector Eli Broad and retired London dealer Anthony d'Offay.

Broad wants to lend works from his 1,900-piece collection to public institutions, while retaining control and ownership, personally or through his private foundation. What's more, he wants his "lending library" concept to become a "paradigm" for other mega-collectors who might otherwise donate their works outright to existing institutions or create publicly accessible museums for their own collections.

D'Offay yesterday announced that he will give some 725 contemporary works (including the two above) to the Tate Modern and the National Galleries of Scotland. For this he will be paid £26.5 million, reportedly his cost in purchasing the works, which are now said to be conservatively valued at £125 million.

According to the above-linked London Times article, the British government is also "understood to have written off £14 million in tax as part of the deal."

According to the Tate:

The guiding principle for the creation of Artist Rooms [as d'Offay's gift has been named] is the concept of individual rooms devoted to particular artists. The collection of 725 works comprises 50 rooms by 25 artists and includes major bodies of work by seminal figures such as Diane Arbus, Joseph Beuys, Vija Celmins, Gilbert & George, Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, Jeff Koons, Jannis Kounellis, Robert Mapplethorpe, Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha and Andy Warhol. These are accompanied by an additional ten works by seven artists. Many of the rooms were conceived as specific installations by the artists themselves and have been assembled so that the work of important post-war artists can be seen and appreciated in depth.

You can go here on the Tate's website and click on artists' names to see what those rooms may contain. The press release is here.

"Now," writes Bloomberg's Martin Gayford, "we begin to understand why Tate Modern needs its extension."

Broad would undoubtedly argue that his approach is a better financial deal for museums, which don't have to pay to acquire the works or to store them when they're not on display. He is also justifiably disturbed by many museums' focus on temporary exhibitions, which consume so much gallery space that major works from permanent collections are usually off view.

Having recently marveled at the current Collecting Collections exhibition at the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, I can well understand how Broad, the founding chairman of that museum, feels. At LA MoCA's lively, eclectic show (which out-dueled the Broad-centric display at the Los Angeles County Museum's new Broad Museum of Contemporary Art), I gazed appreciatively at major Rothkos, Klines and Rauschenbergs that came to LA MoCA from the Panza Collection, as well as a top-notch Pollock from the Schreiber Collection. Most of the time, though, those works are preempted by a robust temporary exhibition program.

This understandably rankles Broad, who negotiated with the Panzas in the early 1980s, nabbing the collection "very inexpensively---$11 million over seven years, without interest. It's probably worth $1 billion today."

The solution to the problem of hidden masterworks should be a nationwide cooperative effort among museums for collegial collection sharing. That Pollock should never be off view. If Los Angeles can't show it, Minneapolis should get it on loan.

What we don't need is major collectors' keeping their troves under private control in perpetuity. Anyone who believes in museums, as benefactor Broad undoubtedly does, knows the importance of a permanent collection that visitors, curators and scholars can get to know and understand over time, because it is readily and consistently accessible to the public and to the experts.

In addition, private stewardship is often not as professionally responsible as public stewardship. Broad himself revealed to me that he needs to do something about the climate control for some of his collection, which is not up to museum standards.

And let's not forget the serious concern that if a museum gives over its space to a large number of works from a single collector, that art may later be sent to market, its prices significantly enhanced by the museum's imprimatur.

Broad reiterated to me, during our conversation, his oft-stated promise that he, his foundation and the future officials of his foundation after his death would never sell. But as Christopher Knight points out in his article on the Broad Collection in yesterday's LA Times, "'Always' is a long time."

Broad did concede that, theoretically, the works could be sold. We just have to trust his pledge. Then again, isn't he the one who once stated that he would donate much of his collection to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art?

Who knows what the future may bring?