Hot Market Burns Public Museums

Posted by Jennifer Yap Jan 13, 2007

Two days after Toronto’s Art Gallery of Ontario received its Bernini sculpture as a gift, there’s again news in the sculpture world.

This time, the story is about the adverse impact of the red-hot art market on American museums. High prices are driving museums to come up with creative ways to acquire new work, while tempting them to sell masterpieces from their collections.

Private collectors have been increasingly willing to pay astronomical sums for art. Their wallets are sometimes deeper than those of non-profit institutions, even well-endowed ones, thereby starting a trend of museums jointly buying new work.

Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo bought British sculptor Rachel Whiteread's "Untitled (Domestic)" together and will rotate exhibiting the work. You can read the Pittsburg Post-Gazette’s article and view a photo of the sculpture here.

(This follows on last month’s joint purchase of Thomas Eakins' painting "The Gross Clinic" by the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, foundations and others. They bought it from the city’s Thomas Jefferson University amid a storm of controversy. Read on for details…)

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times’ Christopher Knight contrasts the de-accessioning practices of Philadelphia's Thomas Jefferson University and Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery.

Both plan to capitalize on the hot art market to fundraise, but instead of divesting themselves of the worst pieces in their collections, they are selling some of the best, most irreplaceable ones.

Thomas Jefferson University managed to sell Thomas Eakins' "The Gross Clinic" to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and a host of partners, meaning that the work remains accessible to the public.

Meanwhile the Albright-Knox Art Gallery plans to send 170 pieces, many of them antiquities, to Sotheby’s in June 2007 where they will most likely be snapped up by private collectors and taken from public view.

Read his article here and shake your head at the power of the almighty dollar.