To my colleagues,

I am a young curator working in a well-known art museum in a large U.S. city 
that maintains a growing collection of a fairly specific group of modern and 
contemporary artists. Recently I have been asked by the director of our 
institution to provide professional advice to certain of its patrons on what 
offerings made at the major auction houses might make good purchases for 
their private collections. Apparently the rationale for giving this help is 
that such purchases could perhaps eventually find their way into our 
institution's collection through the patrons' possible donations at some 
future time.

While I understand that this possibility exists, I still wonder if providing 
such consultations is fully ethical. For instance, if a private patron is 
making tax-exempt donations to our institution and recieves "financial" 
advice in return, is this appropriate? Also, the museum I work for is very 
influential, so doesn't this kind of exchange with a private art collector 
encourage us to nuture our relationship with these patrons by highlighting 
and featuring the works of those same certain artists in their private 
collections, thus supporting and perhaps increasing their monetary value -- 
and enriching the donors financially?

I am new on the job, and find this issue confusing. My director says that 
"all museum curators do this." I have consulted the A.A.M. code of ethics 
webpage on "Guidelines for Museums on Developing and Managing Individual 
Donor Support," and this issue is not addressed. I wonder if anyone has any 
knowledge of how such issues are regarded ethically in the profession? Am I 
naive to question this?

I would prefer to keep my institution's name anonynmous, and I hope I may 
ask this question in a discreet manner.

Thanks for any help and advice,

A.B.

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