Let’s get this party started!
On its AAMDIndy Twitter
page, the Association of Art Museum Directors listed this as one of the hot-button topics to be discussed at last month’s annual meeting:
Exhibition of private collections in museums: clear protocols and
guidelines needed.
Nothing more on this has emerged publicly since that meeting, but at least the need has been recognized and maybe will, eventually, be publicly addressed.
Let’s address it now: What are your views on shows like the recent “Skin Fruit” exhibition of Dakis Joannou‘s contemporary collection at the New Museum, the Julie and David Tobey collection of old master drawings now at the Metropolitan Museum, and other such shows that privilege a privately owned trove not promised (except for a few Tobey works) to a museum? I’d welcome your own examples of such shows and your opinions regarding them.
What (if any) ethical issues should be considered in mounting such collector-centric displays? What specific “protocols and guildelines” (in AAMD’s words) should be brought to bear? And what about exclusive enclaves for collectors’ benefactions within museums’ permanent-collection galleries, such as Walter Annenberg‘s Impressionists and Post-Impressionists, given their own rooms at the Met?
Tell me what you think, art-lings! You can start sending me your comments and questions as soon as you see the posting box at the bottom. I’ll come online at 3:30 to start posting your remarks and responding to them. Please keep it short, keep it civil, keep it on topic. Just type in the box at the bottom and click “Send.” (Oh, and make sure you start by clicking the button in the middle of the box below.)