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September 5, 2007
The real story about museum acquisitions
Greg Allen is the latest to contribute a smart post taking apart Lee Rosenbaum's op-ed in yesterday's LAT: "Rosenbaum's op-ed... is so wrong in so many ways, even Tyler Green can't keep track of them all." So Allen pitches in and his post is awfully good. Picking up where he leaves off...
Rosenbaum goes on and on about how museums can't compete with the big, bad market, about how museum collecting is drying up. True: Museums don't buy $80 million paintings. (And like I said yesterday, they probably shouldn't, except for when the Getty's or the Kimbell's portfolio managers discover that they were invested in a Google-driven venture capital fund.)
Rosenbaum is in such a hurry to string together random news bits in an attempt to make an overly broad, and, as Allen points out, little-informed 'argument,' that she suggests that American museums are no longer able to collect and that they're not able to purchase art. Which couldn't be any more remote from the truth.
To pick some examples at random: In the most recent year for which I have tax filings, SFMOMA spent $2.1 million on acquisitions. That's not chump change: That's nearly 10 percent of SFMOMA's operating budget. The Walker Art Center dropped $2.3 million, more than 10 percent of its operating budget. What about encyclopedic museums? The Philly Museum spent $5.5 million on acquisitions in the most recent tax year available, also more than 10 percent of its operating expenses. On a percentage basis MCASD did even better: Last year it spent $1.4 million on art, 18 percent of its operating budget. That's commitment! (And a couple of new building commissions, I suspect.)
The story isn't the market and museums' failure to buy high-end, high-dollar works. That's existed since the beginning of museo-time and always will. It has nothing to do with fractional gift laws -- and I have no idea what that has to do with the rest of Rosenbaum's op-ed. (Furthermore, the recent tax law changes are not a deterrent to art donations, they are a deterrent to people receiving tax breaks for art donations.) The story is that American museums, especially contemporary art museums, are extraordinarily committed to purchasing art, and that this serves us (and artists) quite well. The commitment American museums have to acquiring art is one of the great under-told stories in American museumdom (which is part of why I try to spend so much time on it here on MAN). Throughout the rest of the week, I'll post some examples of how well American museums are doing when it comes to buying art...
Posted September 5, 2007 9:51 AM
