Re my post : Museums - Financing problems
In reply to further comments by :
Patrick J. Boylan (Professor of Heritage Policy and Management)
City University, Frobisher Crescent, Barbican, London EC2Y 8HB, UK;
Patrick,
Thank you for your comments and clarifications from an academic
point of view. As I said, I am no specialist in this field.
"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"
Maybe museums cannot afford to buy this collection, but this raises
a very important matter. For an outsider like me, most big museums
are excessively rich (maybe like the Vatican), and people think they
do not need any money - so why should they give any? This may be
a false perception, but still very detrimental to getting more funds.
As for the collection, the owner/artist wants it to remain intact,
so I guess the only option is a major corporate buyer. I did not
give out specific info in my post on purpose since it would not be
appropriate to barge in on your e-group in a commercial way. This
collection has a lot of pieces and would need lots of space.
Another collection of masters' paintings is coming later, but that
one has only a handful of very costly and rare pieces. Something
that would be the envy of any museum worldwide. Sorry, I cannot
provide more info on that for now. Both are private collections.
As far as government and or private funding (endowment etc),
I do not know how it works, so your input was quite helpful.
At the same time it shows that when necessary, well established
museums can generate funds by teaming up with major companies.
Since major museums seem confined to dealing with established
or major businesses for prestige or other reasons, I feel that the
smaller museums could do the same with smaller companies and
obtain the same results through joint ventures. One makes profits
from producing and doing the marketing, the other (the museum)
benefits from owning the original product (paintings, sculptures
or whatever) and getting some of the profits.
Although prestigious establishments generally work only with other
organisations of similar importance, maybe for reasons of prestige,
size should not be the criteria. For example, the ten major banks
and insurance companies in Canada may prefer to work with big
business players. Did it stop me (at the time a oneman operation)
from selling to every one of them? Not at all. I enjoyed the prestige,
while the banks made good use of the service I provided - so we all
benefited.
My point here is that when it comes to survival of a museum or
a collection, appropriate means should be developed to keep the
museum and its contents intact so everyone can benefit.
Of course, if a museum can offer free or low-priced entrance fees,
everyone is better off. Unfortunately, from what I can see, there
are many cash starved museums out there filled with dedicated
workers and volunteers. Maybe my suggestions would be more
useful for them than for big, well established institutions.
As mentioned in my initial post, I am not here to tell anyone how
to run a museum. It was only a modest attempt to help people
think of other ways of generating survival funds.
Wish you all great success!
Kind regards
Arne Tengelsen
Groupex Marketing International Inc
Montreal - Canada
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