{"id":1334,"date":"2021-11-25T08:14:44","date_gmt":"2021-11-25T00:14:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/?p=1334"},"modified":"2021-11-23T11:37:48","modified_gmt":"2021-11-23T03:37:48","slug":"how-a-curators-new-business-venture-aims-to-be-tinder-for-museums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/how-a-curators-new-business-venture-aims-to-be-tinder-for-museums\/","title":{"rendered":"How a Curator\u2019s New Business Venture Aims to Be \u2018Tinder for Museums\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

This past July,\u00a0<\/b>the\u00a0<\/span>American Folk Art Museum in New York was the recipient of a generous bounty: 40 artworks by the likes of Horace Pippin and Bill Traylor gifted by former AOL Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons and his wife, Laura. The donation came about in the classic manner: Laura Parsons, a longtime trustee and generous supporter of the museum, knew that it would be transformational, as AFAM director Jason Busch later described it.<\/span><\/p>\n

Such a perfect match between donor and institution is more rare than you\u2019d think. Often, collectors looking to donate artworks\u2014for cultural prestige and, of course, tax benefits\u2014approach a museum only to find that what they\u2019re offering doesn\u2019t mesh with the museum\u2019s needs. The cost of storage, insurance, and conservation can make a bestowed artwork more trouble than it\u2019s worth. Many gifts are thus declined, leaving willing donors uncertain where to offer them. Meanwhile, gaps in other museums\u2019 collections go unfilled.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2020,\u00a0Michael Darling<\/a>, longtime chief curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, left his job to start\u00a0Museum Exchange<\/a>, a business meant to remedy such\u00a0<\/span>problems. Working to match the mutual\u00a0<\/span>needs of donors and museums, the company concluded its second gift cycle and opened its third early this past July. So far, Darling said, more than 80 museums from across the United States and Canada have signed on.<\/span><\/p>\n

Museums buy a yearly subscription, access the online platform, and browse through a catalogue of available artworks that remain on view for three months. As Darling knows from his own experience at museums, \u201ccurators and directors are so busy that we need to give them that much time just to look at the things and figure out what to write a proposal for.\u201d From the proposals submitted, donors choose the museum that makes the best case for their piece.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Edward Kienholz\u2019s Mort Soul Searcher,
\n1960, now resides in the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, via Museum Exchange.<\/span>PHOTO JEFF MCLANE\/\u00a9ESTATE OF EDWARD KIENHOLZ\/COURTESY LA LOUVRE GALLERY, VENICE, CALIFORNIA<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Darling said he stays out of the decision, but hopes \u201cthat small museums have just as good a chance as a big-city museum.\u201d Once a match is made, Museum Exchange helps the donor track the gifting process, from following the museum\u2019s acquisition meetings to securing and shipping the work to the museum and procuring an appraisal that in turn produces a tax form.<\/span><\/p>\n

For now, Museum Exchange\u2014Darling and a handful of staffers who work remotely from locations in the U.S. and Canada\u2014is focused on modern and contemporary art, encompassing everything from paintings and sculptures to photographs, prints, drawings, and video pieces. Donors must provide documentation of authenticity and ownership of the pieces.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the fun parts of the job,\u201d Darling said, \u201cis talking to curators and directors,
\nand finding out what they\u2019re collecting so that, when we\u2019re out talking to collectors and donors, we can bring that into the conversation and really try to track objects that would resonate with our museum network. These are mutually beneficial conversations.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Darling doesn\u2019t see himself disrupting the traditional process of museum donations so much as enhancing it. \u201cLet\u2019s say you, in New York, have an artwork that just doesn\u2019t fit with the collecting strategy of the museum you\u2019ve approached. Or maybe they already have 10 paintings by that artist. All of a sudden, you\u2019re out of luck because that\u2019s the only museum you have a relationship with. But you come to us and there\u2019s a museum in, say, Des Moines, that might love that piece, a museum you have no relationship with. It opens up the possibility for you as the donor. And now, that museum in Des Moines has a relationship with you. It benefits both sides. We\u2019re seeing that play out already.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Ethel Fisher\u2019s\u00a0Oriental #2<\/em>, went to the Oklahoma City Museum of Art via Museum Exchange.<\/span>COURTESY OKLAHOMA CITY MUSEUM OF ART<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\u201cWow\u2014I wish I\u2019d thought of\u00a0<\/b>that!\u201d<\/strong>\u00a0That\u2019s what Catherine Shotick thought when she first heard of Museum Exchange. After the Oklahoma City Museum of Art (OKCMOA), where Shotick is a curator, got an account, she perused the first catalogue of available works and found several pieces of interest. She wrote a proposal for one of them, a painting by American artist Ethel Fisher from a West Coast collection, in which she emphasized the museum\u2019s strong representation of artists who, like Fisher, started in the Abstract Expressionist style and then switched over to figural and representational work.\u00a0Oriental #2<\/i>, from 1957, \u201cfit right into that,\u201d Shotick said. \u201cIt\u2019s abstract, but there are hints of representational imagery.\u201d The curator also pointed out in her proposal that the museum owns works by Will Barton, who was an influence on Fisher. \u201cThere\u2019s a r<\/span>eally nice storyline of these two artists, and I was able to make those connections in the proposal.\u201d In the end, the museum got the painting, as well as photographs by German artist Oliver Boberg, from a different donor.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s definitely connected us to donors that we otherwise would never have [known about],\u201d said Shotick. \u201cIt\u2019s opened more doors.\u201d She added that writing the proposal also helped her get more familiar with OKCMOA\u2019s collection, which comprises around 7,000 artworks. \u201cAs I was researching Ethel Fisher and making these connections, I learned more about our own collection. So it\u2019s beneficial in multiple ways. I compare it to a dating website for a museum and donors: we both like each other.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Gary Tinterow, director of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, also made the matchmaking analogy. His institution received a sculpture by Edward Kienholz and a painting by Jonathan Lasker through Museum Exchange. (The museum owns other pieces by Kienholz, which provide context for the new one, but is lacking in works by Lasker, a significant void in its contemporary collection.) \u201cIt\u2019s a marvelous initiative,\u201d Tinterow said. \u201cThis created an opportunity to avail ourselves of works that we otherwise would not have known about. One of the greater advantages is that collectors almost always want to move objects into a place where they will be seen, and will serve a purpose. And that\u2019s difficult. I\u2019ve worked with dozens of collectors throughout my career in museums\u201d\u2014Tinterow was a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for almost 30 years before coming to Houston\u2014\u201cand placing objects is not easy, especially for collectors who have amassed substantial collections, not just in value but in terms of number of objects.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While at the Met, Tinterow came to realize that \u201cthe most precious commodity in the New York art world is not money, it\u2019s not art, it\u2019s museum real estate. There\u2019s plenty of money, there was plenty of art. There wasn\u2019t that much museum space.\u201d And that doesn\u2019t just go for New York. Museums elsewhere may not be landlocked among skyscrapers, but they\u2019re still finite. \u201cMuseums must be discerning in what they are willing to accept so that all the museums themselves are not burdened with objects that they have no intention or need to display, and so that the objects themselves don\u2019t fall into obscurity.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"An<\/div>\n<\/div>
Jonathan Lasker\u2019s\u00a0Landscape for an Absconded God<\/em>, from 2010, went to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston via Museum Exchange.<\/span>PHOTO THOMAS R. DUBROCK\/\u00a9JONATHAN LASKER\/COURTESY MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, HOUSTON<\/cite><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Darling sees his service as one\u00a0<\/b>that can be helpful not only to collectors and museums, but also to dealers and artists. Dealers, he said, \u201care often approached by collectors who want to donate a piece and ask the gallery to make these calls on their behalf. That can be a lot of work, and it can really tax the relationships those dealers have with museums.\u201d As for artists, Darling has heard from both artists and estates holding on to a lot of work and thinking about where they might like it to go.<\/span><\/p>\n

The future for Museum Exchange appears to be in expanding both what they offer and to whom they offer it. \u201cI\u2019m excited to see how it grows,\u201d<\/a> said Shotick. \u201cRight now, they\u2019re offering a lot of contemporary art. I\u2019m excited to see if they move on to include more historical works that will open up the doors even more.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Darling has just such plans in store. \u201cWe can imagine branching out into other types of material that would mirror the departments at an encyclopedic museum,\u201d he said. In the nearer term, he is building up his business to be more than a museum exchange by reaching out to a network of other nonprofit institutions, like libraries and hospitals and universities, that might also be interested in receiving art. That way, he said, for any given artwork, \u201cif we strike out with museums, we have some other options to look at.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Source\uff1ahttps:\/\/www.artnews.com\/<\/p>\n

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This past July,\u00a0the\u00a0American Folk Art Museum in New York was the recipient of a generous bounty: 40 artworks by the likes of Horace Pippin and Bill Traylor gifted by former AOL Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons and his wife, Laura. The donation came about in the classic manner: Laura Parsons, a longtime trustee and generous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1335,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,13,7,4,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artist","category-auction","category-events","category-gallery","category-latest-news"],"yoast_head":"\nHow a Curator\u2019s New Business Venture Aims to Be \u2018Tinder for Museums\u2019 - Investable Art Auctioneer<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"This past July,\u00a0the\u00a0American Folk Art Museum in New York was the recipient of a generous bounty: 40 artworks by the likes of Horace Pippin and Bill Traylor gifted by former AOL Time Warner CEO Richard Parsons and his wife, Laura.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.atelierauction.com\/globalupdates\/artist\/how-a-curators-new-business-venture-aims-to-be-tinder-for-museums\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How a Curator\u2019s New Business Venture Aims to Be \u2018Tinder for Museums\u2019 - 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