The hidden art worth millions could change our perception of museums.
Recently, I suggested to one of my daughters we visit our local art gallery. It is a contemporary space in a former tea warehouse that bows to no one in its commitment to the bleeding edge. Her reply was emphatic: she had never understood the purpose or meaning of any exhibition she had seen there.
The response, to which I was secretly sympathetic, prompted me to ask friends if they ever ventured there. The replies were uniform, ranging, at the polite end, from “incomprehensible” to “meretricious”. It set me wondering why a publicly, lottery and philanthropically funded institution was unable or unwilling to ignite the enthusiasm of the people – reasonably intelligent, reasonably cultured – one would assume to be its target market.
It begged a wider question: what is the purpose of a museum or public gallery, if not to encourage people to enter? Traditionally it was to educate, to inspire and to enthral, and to extend the consciousness or horizon of the visitor. The permanent collection in a gallery is to an artist as a library is to a writer: a place to practice, to make mistakes, to learn; to become the artist you could be.
A museum is a mecca of self-improvement. The TV philosopher Alain de Botton suggested that, in a secular age, they have replaced churches as places of “contemplation, meaning, sanctuary and redemption”. If this is hyperbolic (redemption, anyone?), de Botton understands galleries and museums help people to understand who they are. He also appreciates they must “serve the needs of modern psychology as they once did theology”.
“The unholy alliance between
art and money stretches back to the Medici”
In order to understand their purpose, museums and galleries must know how to measure success. Is it the critical success of the shows, the P&L, the number of schoolchildren who attend? There has been a shift in focus. Where once they were feted for the quality of their collections, today there is Hollywood-style talk of visitor records and summer blockbusters. It is hardly surprising. As funding is cut, they need to find new means of support – the unholy alliance between art and money stretches back to the Medici – but this has only increased the importance of big shows and philanthropists.
The names of philanthropic grandees adorn entrance halls and their trusteeship is assured. But is a plastics billionaire obsessed with Surrealism best placed to understand how to reach the 80% of the population who never set foot in a museum? A board comprised of artists, theatre directors, psychologists, educationalists, even sociologists, might do better. But money talks. As Thomas Hoving, legendary director of the Met, observed: “Any trustee should be able to write a check for $3m and not even feel it.”
His words point to the problem. Museums exist to serve society, not a fraction of it, and therefore they must feel, and be, egalitarian. Their social impact cannot be measured in purely monetary terms. Opening the new Whitney in 2015, Michelle Obama observed: “There are so many kids in this country who look at museums and concert halls and other cultural places and think: ‘That’s not the place for me’.” While the demographic of museum-goers is so narrow, can the sector be deemed to be doing a good job, regardless of the number of blue-chip bank sponsors or middle-class arts grads queueing around the block?
The stats condemn. In the US, more than 70% of ‘consistent’ (defined as ‘at least once a year’, a low bar) visitors are from higher socio-economic levels, only 21% are from minority groups (30% of the population), and 80% attending ‘museum studies’ courses are white. Only five of 30 directors of museums turning over more than $20m per annum are female.
The reasons are clear. Traditional classical or imperial buildings can be overwhelming, so too the sense of reverence. Ticket prices are prohibitive. Cezanne at the Tate Modern costs £22, which is not always doable for a family of four in a cost-of-living crisis – before travel, catalogue, café and postcards. Many potential visitors fear they do not have the hinterland to engage with exhibits, others that they are being patronised by a curator who has decided what and where and how to show the art. Museums are intrinsically hierarchical.
There are invariably too many works, too varied in quality, often grouped randomly. Explanation is largely limited to headphones or labels. Otherwise, there is minimal insight into technique or context, into artist or period, almost nothing on the science of illusion or perception, on reception or provenance, on why an unknown work might be as worthy as one on the tea towels. The business of art is entirely absent, an inexplicable omission in an age when the money can seem more important than the art itself. There is only the work, hanging at the curator’s behest or philanthropist’s insistence, the reasoning shrouded in mystery.
How can museums and galleries move beyond the orthodoxies of the 19th and 20th centuries to embrace millennials and the modern world?
“Increasingly, curation takes account of Instagram, VR is being introduced, entire collections placed online”
Steps towards digitalisation are apparent. Apps and GPS are being introduced to address interactivity and location. As Sree Sreenivasan, formerly chief digital officer of the Met, explained, his competition was “not the Guggenheim… It’s Netflix. It’s Candy Crush”. Increasingly, curation takes account of Instagram, VR is being introduced, entire collections placed online. The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has made its collection available as open data so people can reproduce or edit works.
It all costs money. For most museums, this means glad-handing billionaires looking to their legacy. This concentrates power in too few hands. They should look to their vaults. It has been estimated 280,000 objects worth between $26bn and $43bn lurk unseen in the basement of the Art Institute of Chicago, a small proportion accounting for most of the value. Some have not been shown for years. Similarly, the Met, with its trustees’ $3m checks falling like confetti, only shows 27 of its 41 Monets, three of 13 Boudins and two of 23 Fragonard drawings. You do not need to be a ROCE-obsessed private equity titan to wonder if they are sweating their assets hard enough, any more than you need to be an art lover to wonder why such works are near-permanently hidden from view.
It has been estimated that if the Art Institute of Chicago sold 1% of the art in its vaults by value, it could build 30% more space or add dramatically to its research capability, or create an endowment, ensuring free entrance in perpetuity. Storage expense would also be reduced. It could rent works to rich men or banks eager to create a focus for an event. A work lent or sold is seen more often, even in a billionaire’s compound, than in the vaults.
All these strategies would raise funds to address the difficulties besetting the sector. Galleries could invest in the digital experience and stay open later. They would be less crowded and commuters could visit after work. Works could be loaned to smaller institutions, creating a more balanced distribution of masterpieces – how many provincial galleries wouldn’t kill to show one of the 14 Monets hidden in the Met’s vaults? How many people find travelling to major cities to see art absurdly expensive? Greater efforts could be made to reach the 80% who never visit and, at the risk of accusations of populism from the elite, shows could be tilted towards contemporary culture.
It is no good museums and galleries claiming the nature of bequests means they are morally prevented from selling or if they do no one will bequeath in future. Anything is possible. The Detroit Institute of Art put its entire collection up for sale when the city went bankrupt.
The answer is to put all assets, exhibited or otherwise, on the balance sheet. This will shine a light on the enormous value lying in the vaults and encourage directors to be more imaginative and proactive with the assets they own. In most industries transparency crunches margins, but in the gallery and museum sector a little sunlight will work like M&A or an activist investor and uncover hidden value. Perhaps one day the Met will loan a Monet to our local gallery and my daughter will be persuaded to visit.
