Purchasing a Major Work of Art for the Collection – part VII
Designer Lance Singletary works with Brooklyn Museum Art Handlers to install Shiva as Chandrashekhara.
After the object has been approved by the Committee, it is assigned an accession number (you’ll notice these associated with all of Brooklyn’s objects; they start with a 2-digit or 4-digit date) and a location in storage. In an ideal world we would put all our new acquisitions out on view immediately after they arrive, but installing works of art in a public gallery costs quite a bit of money. Sculptures often need mounts made, pedestals built, etc. It seems kind of tacky, but sometimes we have to tell a potential donor that we can’t accept their work of art as a gift unless they also give us the cash to pay for its installation. Museum casework has to ensure proper climate and security, and an apparently simple pedestal with a Plexiglas bonnet can cost several thousand dollars. Luckily, we already had a pedestal in the Indian gallery that was just right for our Shiva, and he didn’t need any fancy mount because his base sits flat and steady. So we moved him into the gallery shortly after we acquired him and we don’t have any plans to move him in the future, so he’s probably there right now.
A final word on the accessioning process: it is slow, involves a lot of paperwork, and requires the efforts of dozens of individuals, but it is designed to make sure that we are serious, cautious, and deliberate in our intake of art objects. Every art museum (there may be one or two exceptions) has junk in storage. The majority of it was given, rather than purchased. Often the curator knew or suspected it was junk but accepted it anyway because they didn’t want to offend the donor. There’s something to be said for cultivating long-term relationships with donors, but storage space is finite and we’re supposed to treat all objects with a very high level of care that can be a burden on the budget and staff time. So nowadays we are pretty hardcore about what we accept. And like most museums, we do some deaccessioning, or removal of objects from the collection.
Probably most of you have read news stories criticizing museums for selling off great works of art from their collections. Even when deaccessioning is handled properly (with proceeds used only to support future acquisitions of works of art), it can be newsworthy because a community experiences a loss of “cultural heritage” when a beloved masterpiece leaves the area or leaves the public domain. What you don’t hear about in the press is the far greater number of not-so-great works of art that leave museum collections on a pretty regular basis. And you also don’t hear just how much work museums have to put into the process of releasing objects, many of which will fetch three figures on a good day. We have numerous people from several sectors sign off on the release (including the Collections Committee), we put considerable effort into finding appropriate homes for the objects in other public institutions, and then if we do sell we prefer to do so at auction so the transaction can be as public as possible even though an auction might not be the most lucrative venue for sale. In short, deaccessioning is a laborious and mostly unrewarding process and the aim of the curator is to take in as few future deaccessions as possible.
Let’s not end this long series on a grim note! Instead, please let me encourage you to visit the Asian Art galleries, on the second floor of the Brooklyn Museum. We’re gradually getting more and more of the collection out onto the web, but really nothing beats seeing the objects in person. One of the great things about an in-person visit to a museum is the happy accidents—you go to see a specific show or work of art but you catch sight of something you’ve never seen or heard of before and it becomes the thing you remember, the object that changes your outlook in some way. So come visit our Shiva, and maybe you’ll find some other works of art that are even more exciting.
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Amy Dreher:
January 6th, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Thanks for sharing this process – both the accessioning and deaccessioning of works. It’s fascinating how much work goes into bringing new work to the museum. It’s also interesting to hear about how much it costs to store and display works of art.
Question: when the piece enters the museum for its second inspection, does BMA bring in outside conservator and administrators, or are they on staff?
Hope to hear more about this process here in the future!
Joan Cummins:
January 7th, 2009 at 12:06 pm
Thanks for your comments and question. We sometimes bring in outside conservators to help with treatment or assessment of specialized objects (most often textiles), but the Brooklyn Museum actually has a large, well equipped, and well staffed conservation lab, so it’s not usually necessary to bring someone in to look at potential new acquisitions. The only sort of outside administrative advice we would need to bring in would be from the Museum’s legal counsel, who is sometimes asked to advise on unusual tax and transfer-of-ownership situations.
When trying to assess a potential acquisition, we are most likely to seek outside advice from art historians and other connoisseurs, just to provide a second (or third, or fourth) opinion about whether the object is worth bringing into the collection. That’s something the curator tries to do fairly early in the process.
Francesca:
January 7th, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Thanks for a great post, so enlightening – I ‘ve never even thought about the deaccessioning process before. Finding out the backstory of this objects arrival at the Museum definately makes me want to come and check it out.
indicommons» Blog Archive » Carnival of the Commons:
January 8th, 2009 at 10:42 am
[...] The Brooklyn Museum updates us with an new installment of Purchasing a Major Work of Art for the Collection. [...]
clickykbd:
January 8th, 2009 at 6:59 pm
Arriving from the indicommons blog post… this bit of news was so pertinent to read today. I’m in the middle of reading “The Ventetian’s Wife” a beautiful (both visually and written) fiction about an archivist/researcher who falls into an adventure with antiquities through a painting of Shiva, on a quest to re-unite a long fragmented private collection. I’m sure you folks have read it already… just saying the coincidence in readings is marvelous!
KERA Art&Seek Blog - Tuesday Morning Roundup:
January 13th, 2009 at 9:42 am
[...] Carter Museum blog points us to a post on the Brooklyn Museum’s blog (still with me?) about how art enters that museum’s collection. Jana says the process is very similar to the way things work at Amon Carter, so if you have ever [...]
grace paramaspry:
April 13th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Shiva as Chandrashekhara
Kindly let me know the name of the New York gallery the purchase was made from .
Laura Coyle:
May 19th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
Thank you for the informative and enjoyable series of posts about the acquisition of the Shiva sculpture for the Brooklyn Museum. I teach a course about curatorship for the graduate program in Museum Studies at Johns Hopkins University, and one of my students brought your blog to my attention.
I have just added these posts to the syllabus for the class about curatorship that I will teach this summer. As a vivid, first-hand account, your explanation of the acquisitions process complements beautifully the readings my students will be discussing about collection plans, policies, and procedures; collection ethics, including restitution and repatriation issues; and deaccession policies.
Your peek behind the scenes will also help my students understand better what they need to consider for one of their assignments: writing and presenting an acquisition proposal for an object for the museum of their choice. The object must be on the market, but the students’ acquisition funds are unlimited–wouldn’t that be great?
In any event, I know it takes time to make these kind of thoughtful, well written, and detailed posts, and I thought you might like to know that your efforts are appreciated.
Skye Marie:
August 14th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
This article was so helpful. My teacher recently asigned an assignement that required me to research the decision making process of collecting art and artifacts. This was one of the few resources I could find that was well written enough to take notes on. It’s also nice to be able to see how much effort goes into choosing a piece of art. I never knew it took so much time and effort. With this new outlook on collections I appreciate the layouts of collections so much more.