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 disregarded the New Museum's plans to use its resources to show the collection of a private individual and trustee, I invited NuMu director Lisa Phillips to discuss the museum's plans. Our Q&A will run in two parts. Update: For archival purposes, I've tacked the second part onto this post as well. [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 with New Museum director Lisa Phillips. [Image.]

MAN: One of the things non-profit institutions and their curators are supposed to do is determine what work has value to a society, value that is beyond the mere monetary. That's what scholarship and curatorial consideration is for. How do these kinds of shows do anything but exhibit and sort of validate the spending habits of certain influential collectors or trustees?

LP: Because I think it goes back to the work itself, the work that's in the collection. I don't think that it's just about validating spending habits or only about artists who have proven value because there are lots of artists in the collection that no one has heard of. There's a lot of obscure work. There's a lot of Greek artists. There's a lot of work that's not been seen.

I would say in Dakis' case that challenge and experimentation have been part of his approach, which is similar to ours. He's always pushing himself beyond. He started 25 years ago with artists who weren't known and he's continued in that vein. He continues to challenge himself. The adventure, his deep engagement with artists and their issues... [This] is a highly unusual situation. There are a lot of people who collect, there are a handful of people [who collect] in this way.

I think it's a model collection. I think he's a model person. He's incredibly generous. He's had an unbelievable impact on his city. He's had a consistent commitment to bringing in curators and critics, and he's made Athens a destination for contemporary art, like Eugenio Lopez in Mexico City. These are people who have been influential in turning the culture of their cities around, and in being advocates. He's sometimes way ahead of the rest of us in exploring where he's going. Curators learn from collectors too.

MAN: Why should a non-profit's resources be used to promote an individual, his collecting acumen and his collection? If a collector wants his collection seen, there are obviously other, better ways for him or her to do that, such as the so-called 'Miami model.'

LP: Because were an educational institution and we're here to share new art and new ideas. That's our mission. We're here to share that with the public and to be open and to be fearless in our approach. So we feel it's very relevant.

In this case, both the framing the terms of the debate and having the conversation around public-private partnerships is worth meeting head-on and having the conversation. It's worth partnering with a collector who has an extremely distinctive and high-quality collection that we do not have ourselves because we're not a collecting institution and working with that collection and making something of it.

And why is Miami model better? I think Museums would disagree that the private museum model is better than collectors collaborating with local institutions. But it doesn't have to be either /or, but both /and.

MAN: Do you worry that your decision could reinforce the notion that art is a luxury owned by the privileged few rather than a means through which artists engage communities and nations and societies in a broader discourse?

LP: I don't see it that way. I just see it as a way to enrich the public's experience and as an opportunity to present really great material that wouldn't otherwise be seen by the public. Visitors will first and foremost be engaged by the artists' works.

I guess I just have to repeat myself and say a redefinition of public-private partnerships has to be explored. Museums often can't compete in the marketplace very effectively and there are tremendous expenses involved with storage and maintenance of a collection that for a mid-sized institution like us presents a really big dilemma that could tip the balance of things. Add to that the dilemma that collectors face of not being able to share works with the public, or having them disappear into the black hole of storage -- even after they have been gifted to a museum -- and you have an interesting challenge to try to address.

I'm not sure that it's even consistent with our mission of being about new art and new ideas to collect in a traditional way. At the same time there are a lot of advantages to having a collection. You can draw from it and create exhibitions regularly and they provide the foundation for the institution. Well, is it possible to work with a group of private collections and [to] be able to draw on that resource, as a foundation? That's something that I think is worth exploring. I don't know that we'll do it, but that's were thinking about. We're really, really mindful of ethical conflicts. I wrote the ethics policy for the Whitney, I wrote it for the New Museum.

Our mandate is to push things forward in full awareness of complexities and the issues involved, but nevertheless propose new models and new ways of approaching things.