Collectors & museums

Collectors & museums: relationships that underpin the art world: collectors and museums are intimately linked: collectors seek out curatorial advice and museums rely on collectors' generosity for acquisitions. James Fenton opens Apollo's special issue on private collectors and the public realm by exploring some of the consequences of this complex relationship
Apollo , July-August, 2008 by James Fenton
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It is a scene worthy of a Daumier, or a Rowlandson perhaps: husband and wife being led around an auction preview by an adviser, and pausing before a work of art to consider its merits both in itself and, the adviser respectfully suggests, 'as an addition to your collection'. Every collector can use a little expert advice. Most of it comes from the trade, but some--perhaps it feels just a little more objective, a little superior in quality--comes from museum curators.
Curators are supposed to be experts, and the ones who really are experts are courted by the auction houses, by the galleries and by collectors alike. They are taken to vaults and warehouses, and shown masterpieces. They are consulted in back rooms. They are thanked in catalogues and over delicious lunches. They are doing their job. For a part of their job is to maintain good relations with collectors and trade alike and, if they are generous with their attentions (assuming of course that their integrity, is not compromised in this), they are not abusing their employers' time. A moment will arise when they will feel able to call in a favour--a contribution, a loan, or a gift for their museum.
It is a world in which friendship, diplomacy and tact are mingled with rivalry, mistrust and something that, viewed in a certain light, can look very like greed. No collector likes to be cheated, of course, but there are remedies for that. On the other hand, nobody likes to feel a little foolish, as one well might having spent a large sum on the whole unwisely. For any adventurous collector is taking a considerable gamble with his self-respect.
And any ambitious museum or gallery will be looking for ways of extending the scope of its acquisitions beyond what their usually modest budgets can cover. Securing the cooperation of a group of collectors is an approach which goes back, at least, to Wilhelm von Bode and imperial Berlin.
In a recent, spectacular example, a coordinated group of 53 collectors were encouraged by the Seattle Art Museum to think of themselves as 'a community of collectors and to think of our individual collecting in relation to what others were collecting, with an eye to giving things for the museum'. The result, timed to mark the 75th anniversary of the museum's foundation, was a joint donation of more than 1,000 objects, valued at over a billion dollars. These included promised gifts and 'promised partial gifts'--a reflection of the tax advantages available to living donors under American law. The novelty of the approach--the coordination of the choice of donations, so that the museum would not end up with, as it were, more Warhols than they could possibly need--was more a question of scale than of kind. Dedicated individuals have in the past been encouraged to build up private collections, over the years, with a view to the eventual needs of a specific museum.
None did so on a grander scale than Andrew Mellon, when he built up the core of the Old Masters collection for the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. In 1930 and 1931 Mellon bought 21 major paintings from the Hermitage, for a total of $7m, secreting them, unannounced, in the vault of the Corcoran Gallery. Three years later, when harassed by a large and complicated tax suit, a part of Mellon's defence was that he had been giving paintings to a charitable trust and that his intention was to found a national gallery for the American people. The government contended that Mellon's trust was nothing more than a tax dodge (Fig. 1).
Mellon's attorney, Frank J. Hogan, was effectively announcing the future foundation of the National Gallery of Art when he declared ringingly: 'God doesn't place in the hearts and minds of men such diverse and opposite traits as these; it is impossible to conceive of a man planning such benefactions as these and at the same time plotting and scheming to defraud his government.'
One of the key witnesses in Mellon's defence was the dealer Joseph Duveen, who had been selling paintings to Mellon and was able to corroborate his (scarcely documented) intentions. At the end of the hearings, with Mellon now publicly committed to founding his gallery, Duveen did something stylish: he took the lease of the Washington apartment below Mellon's, near Dupont Circle, furnished it lavishly and filled it with masterpieces. He employed a caretaker and several guards, and simply gave Mellon the key and went back home to New York.
Mellon in due course, as S.N. Behrman informs us in his 1952 biography of Duveen, got into the habit of dropping in on this collection, in his dressing-gown and carpet slippers, and soon the caretaker was reporting back to Duveen that Mellon was inviting guests and giving parties there. Eventually he did what Duveen wanted him to do: he bought the apartment's entire contents, for $21m.
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This kind of acquisition and donation of whole collections seems to belong to another era. In fact, even in Britain, with resources that are limited by American standards, it turns out that it is not impossible. On the grand scale, there is 'Artist Rooms', the enormous collection of contemporary works of art made by Anthony d'Offay and acquired earlier this year jointly by the Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland.

On a more intimate level, there is the collection of prints put together by the London Evening Standard's film critic Alexander Walker (Fig. 2). These were for the most part bought out of the collector's salary (some were gifts from film stars) to adorn the walls of a small flat. There they filled every possible surface, including the bathroom and the wall space around the (never used) stove. As it happened, Walker had collected in areas where the British Museum Print Room had been unable to venture. In due course, when he showed his collection to the museum's curators, that point was not lost on them, and when Walker eventually inquired whether there was anything the Print Room would like him to bequeath, the museum, bearing in mind that Walker had no partner or obvious relict, felt able to draw a deep breath and to say: we would like you to bequeath the whole collection to us. This response, which once again (viewed in a certain light) could have seemed greedy, greatly pleased and flattered Walker.
I serve on the boards of two museums. In one case, the National Gallery, London, accessions to the collection are for the most part major works of art by major artists; but there are exceptions to this rule--notably oil sketches, of which in recent months we have acquired two interesting examples, one by Bonington, the other by the Italian ottocento painter Signorini. The second museum is the Ashmolean, and here it is exceedingly interesting to see the variety of objects, varying in value, donated or otherwise acquired--through acceptance in lieu, the Art Fund and other funding bodies--from grand country houses and from suburban homes.
In the last month for which I have figures, five of the nine items acquired by the Department of Western Art came in lieu of tax from the Oxford home of Jean Preston, the old lady who had two panels from a Fra Angelico altarpiece, supposedly in her spare bedroom. The Fra Angelicos went back to rejoin their altarpiece in Florence. The Ashmolean received paintings by Burne-Jones (Fig. 4) and Watts, as well as three drawings. When a museum--any museum--is engaged in collecting across the board (silver, ceramics, coins, prints and drawings, as well as paintings and sculpture) there is no way of predicting what sort of household may come up with remarkable objects or collections.
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One is used to noticing, especially in the us, the impact made by dedicated collectors, collecting couples or indeed collecting families, on the grandest museums. A part of the character of these museums comes from the gifts of local families, in Chicago, as more recently in Seattle. It is a matter of civic pride and family pride expressing themselves in the same gesture. But for every large gesture of this unmissable kind, there are hundreds of smaller gestures that bind the individual, or the couple, to the museum. The cleverest curators are those who can work at many different levels, making it a pleasure for collectors to contribute.
Finding itself unexpectedly without a chairman, after the newly appointed Sir John Tusa was obliged to step down because of a potential conflict of interest, the v&a was lucky to be able to turn to Paul Ruddock, a financial whizzkid with a passionate interest in medieval sculpture and works of art. And at the National Gallery, the board recently appointed Mark Getty (Fig. 5), representing the third generation of a celebrated collecting dynasty, as chairman, to work with the new director, Nicholas Penny. And so the process goes: museums advise collectors and in due course, where appropriate, collectors end up advising museums.
James Fenton is the author of School of Genius: A History of the Royal Academy of Arts (2005).