BlogBacks on Museums’ Collecting Challenges

You’re not a very interactive bunch: I did not get much response to my call for comments on Museums As Mausoleums: My LA Times Op-Ed Piece, except from my fellow ArtsJournal blogger, Tyler, who has compensated for your silence by flogging me all week.
In any event, here’s some feedback I’ve gotten from readers who have taken the trouble to react more substantively than “Great!” or “Irrefutable!” to my analysis:
—Steve Miller, executive director of the Morris Museum, writes:
In spite of what the public may think when they read about a museum’s actually acquiring something by purchase, the vast majority of museum collections are gifts. With few exceptions (and you named them) museums have never had ample funds to buy things. In the past the competition was disinterest by potential donors, or the market. Today I believe the competition is mainly the market. I’ve been in this field as both a curator (16 years) and director (21 years) and I am convinced that museums are offered far fewer gifts than they were in the past. In my first decade on the job (1970s) I received a call a week, at least, from someone wanting to donate something. Now if we get a call a month, that’s pretty good. People now think whatever they own or find in a yard sale has value. Usually it doesn’t, at least not to meet their expectations.
—Charles Hankin, a Philadelphia artist, writes:
I think what would answer the debate between you and [Tyler’s blog] MAN, about whether museum collecting is endangered, would be for the institutions to report their collecting to a national database that would let us judge their efforts. This could be like Guidestar or other websites that report on nonprofits.
—Donald Wolberg, a museum consultant, writes:
Your thoughts on museums and collections as expressed in the LA Times piece are fascinating and decidedly on target, with one exception I think: The issues addressed are more applicable to large, urban institutions all very entrenched, very expensive to maintain, very stressed economically and more easily harmed by PC pressures. I think there is a growing second tier of art based institutions in second- and third-line satellite communities that are doing very well and will begin to access collections that, while perhaps not of stratospheric value, are substantive.