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I have been discussing the process of acquiring a new masterpiece for the collection, and in my first installment, I introduced the object, a bronze image of Shiva from southern India. This sculpture was cast by the master artisans who created numerous temple icons in bronze under the patronage of the Chola dynasty, which ruled southern India from the 9th through the 13th century. In my previous entry, I noted that a Chola-period bronze was one of the types of objects we were targeting for the purchase we hoped to make in honor of my predecessor.

Chola bronzes have long been considered the apex of Indian sculptural achievement. These images feature outrageously sensuous figures, with soft, curving bodies and long, languorous limbs, usually only minimally clothed but with plenty of jewelry that drapes to accentuate the contours of the torso. The males have impossibly broad shoulders; the females have enormous round breasts. They don’t look like real people, but they’re not supposed to: they’re gods, and as such, they are supposed to be more beautiful, more relaxed, and more powerful than any human could ever be. To see what I’m talking about, please have a look at our image from behind.

Shiva as Chandrashekhara, view of reverse. Southern India, Chola period, c. 970 A.D. Bronze. Height 25 inches. Brooklyn Museum, Gift of the Asian Art Council and other donors in honor of Amy G. Poster, 2007. 2.

Nice, huh?

Chola bronzes have been the darlings of collectors since they were first “discovered” by Western art historians in the late 19th century. As a result, most of the really great examples have already made their way to museums in India, Europe, and the U.S. (there are still quite a few being worshipped in temples in southern India as well). Any museum wishing to boast a good collection of Indian art should have at least one Chola-period bronze. Some museums have rather large holdings of these beautiful figures; the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena has dedicated an entire room to their exquisite collection of South Indian bronzes – leaving curators from other museums feeling green with envy. Several museums with otherwise fine collections of Indian art, like Brooklyn, have a few minor Chola pieces but would really like to find one show-stopper. Hence, the appearance of a Chola bronze on our “wish list.”

Actually, we really can’t say that Brooklyn only had minor examples of Chola bronzes. The truth is that we were given an important bronze in 1992 by a donor with a very good eye. The image is of the Hindu goddess Durga, and I am illustrating her below.

Durga. Southern India, Chola period, c. 970 A.D. Bronze. 57.2 x 20 cm. Brooklyn Museum. Gift of Georgia and Michael de Havenon in memory of William H. Wolff, 1992.142.

She isn’t as curvy or as sensuous as most female figures produced by the Chola-period craftsmen (most of the goddesses stand with one hip thrust dramatically out to the side and the rest of the body swaying back to compensate). Nor is she as large as many images of the period. As a result she is a bit of a sleeper. However, she was included in both of the big, splashy Chola bronze exhibitions that took place recently in the U.S. and London because it turns out that images of Durga are extremely rare, and she is quite early in date. So Brooklyn can actually boast one very important Chola bronze.

So why were we looking for another one? Well, a museum collection isn’t just a trophy cabinet, it’s a teaching tool. When using our collection to teach people about the history of Indian art, it is nice to be able to point to specific objects and talk about how they reflect major themes and trends in taste or aesthetics, religious belief and practice, or patronage of the arts. And the truth is that our Durga does not do a great job of reflecting the major themes and trends of her period because she is simply too unusual. If you really want to illustrate the important art-making period of the Chola kings, you need an image of the Hindu god Shiva, who was far and away the most prominent deity of the time, or possibly an image of his wife, Parvati. So in looking for a Chola bronze, we were really looking for an object that could stand in for the tradition as a whole. This was not going to be an easy thing to find.

Next time, the curator and her supporters begin their hunt…

Last time I wrote about how we happened to have the money and the initiative to look for a major new acquisition for the Asian collection. This time, I’m going to talk about how we developed a shopping list before hitting the market.

All curators keep a mental list of types of objects they would love to find for their museum’s collections; some museums require their curators to compile written lists every few years so the Director and Development staff can help keep an eye out for good candidates. Usually these lists are populated by types of art that aren’t well represented in the museum’s collection. The categories can be as broad as “Cubist painting” or as specific as “a fish knife to replace the one that’s missing from the flatware set we already have.” But generally the categories are cited because they would complement or round out the existing collection.

The Brooklyn Museum’s Asian art collection is quite good, with most major cultures well represented. But the gaps were pretty clear: Chinese painting, Chinese stone sculpture, Japanese Buddhist sculpture, and Indian bronze sculpture, preferably of the Chola period. We already have some very nice Chinese and Japanese sculptures, but they’re all a little on the small side, or else they’re fragments of something much larger. (I’m illustrating our best Japanese sculpture here, the head from a painted wood figure of a guardian deity – really a fabulous thing, but think how great it would be to have the whole figure.)

Head of a Guardian Figure. Japan. Kamakura period, 13th century. Hinoki wood with color, inlaid rock-chrystal, and metal. 22 1/6 x 10 1/4 x 13 15/16 in. (56.1 x 26.1 x 35.4 cm). Brooklyn Museum. Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alastair B. Martin, the Guennol Collection. 86.21.

I know that looking for a big object sounds kind of petty, like buying a painting because it goes with your couch, but the sad truth is that size matters. When putting together a gallery, it’s really nice to have one large, important, eye-catching object that draws people in and anchors the whole gallery, both visually and conceptually. It’s certainly possible to highlight an exquisite little object in a gallery, but if you have lots of exquisite little objects, the impact of each object diminishes. And we already had quite a few exquisite little objects. So we were hoping to buy an object with some serious physical presence.

In addition to something of size, we were looking for something we could exhibit pretty much permanently. For this reason, we decided early on not to go after a Chinese painting, even though it’s the area where the collection could use the most help. Chinese paintings are made with materials that react poorly to exposure to light. The silk used for early paintings darkens over time, and the inks used even today are very susceptible to fading. Museums must protect their objects, so we keep most of our Asian paintings in storage, bringing them out on a temporary basis so they don’t spend too much time under the spotlights. We decided that we didn’t want to spend all our funds on an object that we could display only occasionally, so we turned our attentions to sculpture.

I haven’t yet mentioned Indian bronze sculpture, the last category on our shopping list (and the one we eventually bought). I will address that in the next installment, because it’s a more complicated situation. Next time: why one masterpiece isn’t necessarily enough…

In my previous entry, I introduced a wonderful object, an Indian bronze of Shiva from the tenth century. I am tracing the way that this work of art entered the Brooklyn Museum’s collection in 2007, offering an introduction to the various concerns curators address when determining what objects a museum should buy. Today I’m going to talk about the very important issue of backing, both financial and administrative.

If you’re going to consider buying a major work of art for a museum, the first thing you need is cash, or a sense of where to get it. The Brooklyn Museum is not known for spending large sums of money on works of art. Unlike many other American museums, Brooklyn does not have particularly large endowments for art purchases. The Museum has done very well over the years, but primarily through gifts of works of art and very judicious purchases of lower-cost objects in areas that have not yet been “discovered” by the market.

So it was pretty unusual when I was set to the task of finding a major (read: high-priced) Asian work of art to purchase in honor of Amy G. Poster, my predecessor. Amy retired from the Museum in the summer of 2006 after more than 35 years of service. During her long tenure, Amy had attracted a large following of collectors and donors, many of whom had made contributions over the years. A while ago, the Museum received as a bequest a large collection of Indian and Southeast Asian art that contained a lot of objects that were not up to our standards (as well as some good things). We sold off the minor pieces and kept the proceeds for future acquisitions. As a result, there was some money in our coffers, and Amy’s retirement was such a momentous event that we felt inspired to spend it all on one object. After a quick tally of available funds, we had a good sense of how much we had to spend. Suffice it to say that it was less than $1 million. In other fields, that would be chicken feed, but luckily most types of Asian art are still relatively affordable and we were confident of our ability to find something great within our budget.

Throughout my discussion of the acquisition of this object, I will be using a lot of “we.” It’s not a royal we, believe me. It’s plural. First of all, the process began before I even arrived, and even before Amy’s last day. I came in on it after a period of searching but before the perfect work of art was found. Amy really led the search, which might sound a little presumptuous given that the object was supposed to honor her, but it actually made loads of sense because Amy knows the market better than almost anyone, and she certainly knew what sorts of objects the collection needed. Her involvement guaranteed that she wouldn’t be disappointed by the object that bears her name. The idea to purchase a work of art came from several of our Trustees, who are ardent supporters of the Asian art collection and its activities. They were involved in all the discussions and decisions. They also presented the idea to our Director. It’s really a good idea to make sure that the donors and administrators are behind you before embarking on a search for a major acquisition. As in any aspect of life, you’re far more likely to get better results if you involve your funders in big decisions, rather than suddenly plunking some really expensive object in front of them and saying “buy this for me now.”

On that sage note, I will sign off for now. Next time: the curatorial shopping list…

I have been an art museum curator for almost eight years now, and I can tell you that the one aspect of my job that has consistently offered the headiest mixture of fun and stress has been the search for new acquisitions, especially those purchased using Museum funds. Spending other peoples’ money on beautiful art sounds like a ball, and there is a certain vicarious thrill that comes from shopping in a much higher price range than my wallet will ever allow. But I’m not buying for an individual, I’m buying for an institution, and I’m not buying something that someone will discard when they’re finished with it, I’m buying something that will be saved for posterity. The most pressing question, when suggesting a potential purchase, is not “will the Director like it?” or even “will the public like it?” but “will my successors twenty or one hundred years from now like it?” Every museum can point to a few objects in its storage rooms that some past curator convinced the institution to buy for a very high price, only to have his or her successors discover that the object is flawed in some very significant way (maybe a fake, maybe just heavily restored, maybe in a style or by an artist that is now considered insignificant or just plain tacky). No one wants to leave that sort of embarrassing burden for subsequent generations.

Luckily, no curator shops alone. There is a complex network of people and processes that the curator works with (and through) in order to make sure that the institution stands behind every new acquisition. The purpose of this series of blog entries is to explain how museums arrive at the decision to buy the objects they do. There are lots of different ways that works of art enter museum collections. Obviously, many museum objects are given by private collectors, and there’s a whole different set of issues that comes with the process of attracting gifts, assessing their appropriateness to the collection, and then graciously accepting or rejecting them. Maybe I’ll get to that later. But for now, my task is to describe, through one particular masterpiece that was purchased for the Brooklyn Museum collection in the spring of 2007, the many steps and precautions taken by museums and curators when acquiring a work of art.

It’s a little bit like spoiling the surprise, but I am going to begin by introducing you to the object in question. It is a bronze image of the Hindu god Shiva, about two feet high. It was made in southern India, probably in the modern state of Tamil Nadu, during the reign of the Chola kings, around 970 C. E. Its picture appears here. I’ll get a reverse shot of the image for you shortly, because it’s even more handsome from behind. I’ll offer more information about Chola bronzes and the god Shiva in future entries, but for now let me just tell you that this sculpture is extremely rare, of a date and quality that simply does not appear on the market anymore. And that is precisely the sort of object that we were looking for.

To be continued…

Shiva as Chandrashekhara. Southern India. Chola period, c. 970 A.D. Bronze. Height 25 in. Brooklyn Museum. Gift of the Asian Art Council and other donors in honor of Amy G. Poster, 2007.2.