When at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego I was engaged in the
negotiations with a donor who had the same desire, and his collection
would have brought in substantial important objects to the collections --
however, there was also a fair amount of trash.

We successfully (but,,,? see below) negotiated a plan for his gift to be
accompanied by a cash gift toward naming a gallery, said gallery to be
devoted to installations from the permanent collections -- and one third of the
installation at any time would be of objects from his gift.  Objects
donated by him could be sold by the museum, the results used for other
acquisitions still to bear his name.  The museum could designate at its
own discretion which objects it would choose to keep or to receive in
order to market again.  His gift was substantial, but it represented
about one-third of total collection (we suspected he wanted to build the
value of the remainder of his holdings through our plan).

His gifts were to be made in installments (he wanted to test us that we
would follow through with the plan); unfortunately his first set of
objects included a substantial number of culls (cleaning out his drawers
to see how cheaply he could get off?).  When we let him know the museum's
choices and rejects, he canceled the plans in a huff.  It was hard to let
go of such a collection, but the museum needed his best stuff.

Ahhh...

Richard Perry
UC San Diego
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