Major Arts Donor Decides to Lend -- Not Give Away -- His Art Collection

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Compiled by Noelle Barton, Caroline Bermudez, Maria Di Mento, Candie Jones, Heather Joslyn, and Cassie Moore.

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January 08, 2008

Major Arts Donor Decides to Lend -- Not Give Away -- His Art Collection

Eli Broad, the billionaire philanthropist and art collector, has decided not to donate his extensive collection of modern artwork to any one museum, but instead to form an independent foundation that will loan the work to many institutions, reports The New York Times.

Mr. Broad was swayed by the prospect that no museum could assure him that it would display more than a small percentage of his collection at any time. (The remainder would go in storage.) He says the lending approach — which he views as the future of arts philanthropy — ensures that many museums can feature the work instead of just one.

Mr. Broad’s move, the newspaper says, “is a potential embarrassment” for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which enjoyed a close relationship with Mr. Broad and exhibited many of his pieces over the years. Mr. Broad says his decision to form a lending group does not reflect a lack of confidence in the museum.

Mr. Broad gives to an array of causes and has appeared on The Chronicle’s list of the most-generous people in America eight times.

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Comments

This is an innovative approach to leveraging an asset across a wider distribution base given the objective is to have more exposure to the art. To meet art education goals, more visibility on important collections is most helpful.

The model of owning art and exhibiting it sparsely (even though museums do lend to each other for retrospective or thematic exhibitions) is a bit like owning your own jet and using it a small percentage of time. That’s where the fractional jet business took off – sharing an expensive asset across a wider user based lowered the cost for all. Sharing art across many locations gives a better ‘availability value” for all.

While I wince at the term “fractional art”, this may be a valuable innovation to support greater arts education. Mr. Broad’s model may indeed be the example of the future. I would like to hear how museums could shift their model to take advantage of this potential.
-Byron McCann, CEO, Just Cause byron@justcauseit.com

— Byron McCann Jan 8, 06:50 PM #

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