On Sun, 7 Nov 1999, Arne Tengelsen wrote:

+++++ [CLIP] +++++

> I joined this list to find out whether a museum or an art collector
> (or a group) would be able to buy a complete art collection worth
> $300 Million. Judging by the lack of funds in the museum world, it
> seems next to impossible.


Arne:

I wasn't quite sure whether these were serious questions - particularly
your first paragraph (above).

I am quite sure that no Museum - indeed no collector either - in history
has ever been able to buy a complete art collection valued at $300 million
- and I doubt if they would ever want to take a "job" lot, even if they
were buying with an unlimited budget and as though there was no tomorrow.

The same is true of the art trade.  You don't say what area(s) of art the
collection covers or what its status and reputation is in terms of
critical evaluation, connoisseurship or provenance (including legal
considerations - export/import documentation in the latter cases) but even
if the collection consisted of - say - 50 absolutely undisputed world
class masterpieces there's no way that even a consortium of perhaps half a
dozen of the world's top dealers would be able to but it, at least not
with the intention of keeping it together.  The only possibility in
relation to the sale of such a collection would be to break it up - either
in one glorious auction (which would probably break the financial
resources of the art trade and their key clients, leading to very
depressed sale prices for everything except the more outstanding and
already world-famous "stars"), or more likely through a judiciously spaced
series of auctions or private tender sales over a period of years.  The
nearest parallel in history might be the forced sale of the collections
of Randolph Hurst ("Citizen Kane") in the late '30s, where most of the
collection went for only 10% - 20% of what he had paid for it.

Rightly or wrongly, throughout modern history major collectors have
certainly wanted to keep their life's work together after their death, but
they have ensured this by either establishing and endowing their own donor
memorial museum to house and care for the collection (as with the Kimball
Museum in Fort Worth or the Paul Mellon Center for British Art at Yale) or
Mellon pere & fils' gifts of collections and endowments of the National
Gallery of Art in Washington.  If your collector client has a collection
now worth $300 million then presumably he or she still has $20 million (or
whatever) left with which to set up a permanent museum centred on this,
(or could make a few judicious disposals to establish an endowment before
creating his/her own, world-renowned, memorial museum?

With respect, the accepted word for someone who builds up and art
collection with the aim of eventually selling it at what would presumably
be a substantial profit is not "collector" but at best "investor" and more
likely "dealer".

So far as your other points are concerned, I think you misunderstand the
funding situation of most museums around the world.  The majority were
created for the public benefit with either private or public endowments or
funding, and with the intention of making their collections and services
accessible to the greatest number of people either freely or for the least
possible admission charge.  True, with the decline in the value of
endowment income (due to low inflation) or cuts in government and public
authority taxation and hence funding of services museums are having to
raise and increasing proportion of their costs from their own income
generation programmes.  In many countries this is already being done in a
highly professional way with the assistance of qualified and experience
marketing etc. specialists.

To take just one example, the (government funded) London National Gallery
(which still retains the free admission policy established as a
condition of receiving its founding collections in the 1830s) has
increased its marketing and commercial wing from just one press & P.R.
officer 11 years ago, to marketing, public affairs and membership
departments with a total of two dozen staff now.  In addition, its
commercial and publishing activities, often in external partnerships (e.g.
with leading restaurant companies, publishers or with Microsoft in
producing the world's most successful art CD) raise very considerable sums
each years.


Patrick J. Boylan
(Professor of Heritage Policy and Management)

City University, Frobisher Crescent, Barbican, London EC2Y 8HB, UK;
phone: +44-171-477.8750, fax:+44-171-477.8887;
Home: "The Deepings", Gun Lane, Knebworth, Herts. SG3 6BJ, UK;
phone & fax: +44-1438-812.658;
E-mail: [log in to unmask];  Web site: http://www.city.ac.uk/artspol/

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