Dear Listserve members: Please excuse any cross postings of this message. I am a graduate student in museum studies at Seton Hall University. I am currently doing research to write my thesis on museums collaborating to acquire works of art together. Recently, the Whitney Museum, the Tate London, and the Pompidou Center in Paris teamed up to jointly purchase a video art piece, “Five Angels for the Millennium” by Bill Viola. The three museums plan on sharing all costs of the purchase, storage, display, and preservation of the piece. The flexible nature of new media art has made sharing this work between the museums a viable option. I would like to discuss the influences of technology related art on this new collecting initiative and how the challenging nature of collecting new media art has affected acquisitions in museums. Art made from new forms of media, such as video, digital, and Internet art, lend themselves to joint purchases much more than traditional artistic mediums. Many new artworks require a large amount of room to exhibit and are more difficult and more expensive to store and preserve. Art market prices are still rising steadily while acquisitions budgets stay the same or are cut. Many museums are not able to afford to buy new art created from technology related mediums and must compete against private collectors and galleries. By combining resources, museums can ensure works stay publicly accessible. Joint acquisitions can ensure a much larger audience for the artwork, will facilitate preservation, and will allow works to be on display and out of storage for longer. I am writing to see if anyone has any experience dealing with joint purchases and co-ownership of art or objects within your own or other museums. I am especially interested in legal issues of co-ownership, past examples of it in museums, possible advantages and disadvantages, personal experiences with joint acquisitions, etc. I would also appreciate any sources of information or leads on where I may find more information about this topic. Please reply to me directly at [log in to unmask] Thank you in advance for your help! Marisa Morigi __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? The New Yahoo! Search - Faster. Easier. Bingo. http://search.yahoo.com ========================================================= Important Subscriber Information: The Museum-L FAQ file is located at http://www.finalchapter.com/museum-l-faq/ . You may obtain detailed information about the listserv commands by sending a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "help" (without the quotes). If you decide to leave Museum-L, please send a one line e-mail message to [log in to unmask] . The body of the message should read "Signoff Museum-L" (without the quotes).