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February 20, 2007

Art Collectors Open Their Own Museums

A growing number of private collectors have been opening their own exhibition sites—from casual warehouse spaces to full-fledged museums—to show off their holdings and assert their aesthetic views, reports The New York Times.

Many of the collectors have started nonprofit entities that run the sites, but others are not getting any tax benefits from making their artworks available to public view.

Mickey Cartin, a contemporary art collector and a longtime trustee at the Wadsworth Atheneum, in Hartford, Conn., had given money to other museums, but said he had grown frustrated with “the general inefficiencies” he perceived, from conflicts among trustees to a tendency to make creative decisions by committee.

“It was becoming more and more difficult for me to see how gifts that I was making were being used,” said Mr. Cartin, who since 2004 has displayed art from his collection in his own 4,000-square-foot exhibition space.

Other factors fueling the trend include an enormous flow of disposable income, increased public interest in art, and practical considerations: Given that so many artists are now working on an outsize scale—room-size installations or attention-demanding video art—even a mansion cannot serve as an exhibition space, the newspaper says.

“The growth of these spaces has impacted tremendously upon public institutions,” said Roland Augustine, president of the Art Dealers Association of America and a New York dealer. Because galleries and artists generally prefer to sell to museums, he said, a collector who starts one may gain an advantage.

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