Q&A with New Museum director Lisa Phillips, part one

In Friday's New York Times the New Museum announced that it was beginning a new series of exhibitions of private collections called "The Imaginary Museum." I've written extensively about the problems with non-profit art museums devoting exhibitions to private collections, including this post regarding LACMA exhibiting Cheech Marin's collection. As the NYT write-up substantially disregarded the New Museum's plans to use its resources to show the collection of a private individual, I invited NuMu director Lisa Phillips to discuss the museums plans. Our Q&A will run in two parts. [Image.]

MAN: First, let's fill in the background a bit. Please describe the NuMu's "The Imaginary Museum" series.

Lisa Phillips: We have been having conversations and roundtables, closed sessions and open sessions for a number of years about collecting. Everything from whether the New Museum should do it, if so then how, pros and cons, etc. It's a really big issue for the museum, as you can imagine.

Now we have something called a semi-permanent collection. There was an idea of creating a semi-permanent collection wherein the works would be sold every 10 years and works would be constantly refreshed, but you can't implement that real well. It's a lovely concept but it doesn't work in practice: You can imagine how fraught with problems that is, and it doesn't really help the artists in the end.

We started thinking about what are the issues today in the 21stC. What are the problems and the dilemmas of putting together a collection if you're a contemporary institution? A collection is going to age [require expensive storage and conservation] and so on.

It has been clear that there are so many collections out there that never get seen by the public, that the public just doesn't have the opportunity to experience or see, and there should be some investigation of new kinds of public-private partnerships. You've seen some instances of it and they're increasing all the time. BCAM, the Broad Contemporary Art Museum at LACMA, is one. What the Fishers are doing [in San Francisco] is another. There are many ideas that are happening and sometimes these public-private conversations lead to the establishment of an institution.

We all realize that, and for the last five years we've been talking about how it's time to explore the possibility further and for redefining what these public-private partnerships should be within our strong sense of ethics and integrity and within the level of quality that we stand for. So I think it's really possible. That's what the New Museum is: We're an entrepreneurial institution. We don't feel we have to accept or receive things in a formulaic way.

That's part of what we're trying to do. We will have these discussions, like this, in public as part of it. Where have lines been crossed, where not in certain instances, what can people do by working together. I believe that collaboration is really where things will go in this century.

MAN: You cited BCAM. I'm not sure anyone, including LACMA and The Broad Art Foundation, would claim that's working well, that that model is a success.

LP: I don't know that that's working. I'm not saying that. Eli Broad is searching for a collaboration, some kind of partnership that is going to work. I'm not sure they've found what it is yet. But he's going to try something out at MOCA and he's reserving the right to try other things out elsewhere. I don't know how that's going to end, but that might have a really good ending.

MAN: Some of what The Broad Art Foundation does is interesting, such as how they make foundation works available to museums to help plug gaps in collection galleries and so on. But I don't think you're going to see a whole lot of curators at those institutions doing a lot of research and scholarship on works they don't own, which is a gap in the model.

LP: I've talked to a number of collectors and that's the primary appeal of working with a museum, that there would be research and scholarship that would be done on their collections.

MAN: Well, that's a good segue to something that Christopher Knight wrote when LACMA hosted its Cheech Marin collection show. He said, "We rely on art museums for free and thorough scholarship, which follows wherever the curatorial nose leads. But single-collector shows privatize that public museum role -- publicly funding it to boot." Why is that acceptable?

LP: Well, the collector may not have the expertise to do [that kind of scholarship], they may not have the time, maybe it's not a priority. I don't know.

MAN: Yes, but why should tax-exempt funds and resources go into researching and studying a wealthy person's private collection? It's a private collection, they could pay for that themselves, privately.

LP: In the case of Dakis Joannou [a private collector and decade-long New Museum trustee whose collection will be show at the NuMu in the first 'Imaginary Museum' show], he has involved curators in an active and continual way. But ultimately collectors are individuals. They're not an institution with a mission.

I don't see that as a conflict. This came out of curatorial discussions, and in this particular case if you just look at this collection it was something [our] curators all wanted to bring here ever since we first saw the collection in 2000. It's not just an impressive collection, it's an astonishing collection. Not that many people have seen it. It's the result of decades of looking, the result of passionate involvement. It's a really, really singular thing. I've seen a lot of collections. It's astonishing. The curators wanted it here. There are thousands of works in the collection so it's almost like a museum collection. It's as vast as a museum collection. I would say that this collection provides an opportunity to see contemporary artists' work in depth than any museum could provide.

This is parallel to our interests. If there were objects outside that, I can imagine. But in this case it's a totally synchronous interest. The material is there and the best examples [of artists' work] are there. We have an opportunity to shape it curatorially and share it with a public. It's a pleasure.

Part two to come later this morning.