The hidden cost of sky-high art prices
Museums are less likely to acquire major works
On May 15 at
Whether or not these prices are higher than they should be is an idle question. Who knows how to scientifically convert cultural value into monetary value? If the market continues to rise, current prices will look like bargains in a few years. If the bottom drops out, some people are going to lose a lot of money. So what?
A better question to ask is what if any effect do inflationary trends in the price of art have on people who are not players in the art market? If you think not much, you should think again.
The real problem with a skyrocketing art market is not a moral abstraction; it's not that money turns spiritual objects into profane commodities. It is, rather, the practical impact that it has on art museums and, in turn, on the museum-going public.
In a few years, the Museum of Fine Arts will open a new wing dedicated to the arts of the Americas. There will be new permanent galleries for late 20th-century and contemporary art as well.
The MFA's website candidly describes its contemporary collection as "far from encyclopedic in its representation of critical artistic movements of the late twentieth century through the present." The MFA owns a number of Warhols, but just one painting by Rothko, a relatively minor work on paper from 1969.
Can the MFA fill in the gaps and create an important collection of modern and contemporary art under current market conditions? Curator of contemporary art Cheryl Brutvan says that the MFA is most actively focused on acquiring works by younger, emerging artists whose prices are still within reach. Works of major consequence are going to be much harder to come by. Acquiring them will depend greatly on the kind ness of private donors. (Both the Warhol and Rothko that sold at auction are staying in private hands. )
The upside of the up market for some museums is that the value and prestige of their collections rises. Michael Rush , director of the Rose Art Museum, says that his museum's permanent collection has "taken a great leap in value" since last month's auctions. The Rose owns a Warhol painting similar to the $71.7 million "Green Car Crash (Green Burning Car I)." Valued at $24 million before the Christie's auction, its worth has since more than doubled, Rush says.
A more highly valued collection can be attractive to potential donors who would like to see their gifts in good company. But what also tends to happen in a rising market is that people who own artworks are more reluctant to give them away when they can sell them for exorbitant amounts of money. Rush says that donations to the Rose have dipped since the market began to rise.
Like the MFA, the Rose is in a situation in which the one area that it can still be a player is the acquisition of works by younger artists whose prices have not risen the way those by artists like Jackson Pollock and Jasper Johns have. Recently the museum was able to raise $70,000 to purchase a painting by Dana Schutz , a 30-year - old rising star whose work has not yet become unaffordable.
Museums depending on collectors is not new. Without the manifold forms of support that private collectors can provide, there would not be any public art museums other than those created by governments or private individuals. The trouble is that the more a museum is forced to rely on collectors for money and artworks (loaned or given) , the greater the risk of its losing control over its own intellectual mission.
A museum is not just a building and a collection of valuable objects. It is also, perhaps most importantly, a group of professional , dedicated people whose training, experience, expertise, creativity, and wisdom make the it a vital contributor to the life of culture in general. To do their jobs well, museum curators need to operate as much as possible without concern for how the business side of the institution is doing.
It is at this point where the high price of art might affect the museum-going public. For when the highest standards of museum curating are compromised in order to please a collector who has been or might become a member of the museum's board or a donor of money and art, the museum's audience is the loser.
A collector may very well take the interests of the museum to heart when he or she chooses to help. But collectors have their own interests, too, and they are not necessarily always in synch with those of the museum. In a climate that has turned artworks into super-hot speculative commodities, the potential for conflicts of interest between the collector and the museum may be exacerbated.
A museum board member may urge curators to acquire or to create exhibitions of the kinds of works that he owns, thereby enhancing the value of his own holdings. Or the collector might like the museum to display his actual collection. Neither case necessarily entails abdication of intellectual responsibility on the part of the museum. Excellent shows can be made out of private collections. But when a museum uses its exhibition program as a way to court and retain potential contributors -- a tactic that the Museum of Fine Arts has employed for years -- it is, at best, a distraction from the kind of scholarly, innovative, deeply probing, and revelatory exhibitions that curators ought to be producing and by which the public is best served.
A museum that cannot add to its collection, that can't continue to grow in depth and breadth, is a dead or dying museum. The question for the MFA is, can it build the modern and contemporary holdings that its new galleries deserve without entering into an endless series of Faustian bargains?
The steadily rising price of art is only going to make these problems more difficult to manage. The best we can do for now is to vigilantly watch for signs of compromise and hold to account museums that lower their standards in the hope of short - (or long - ) term gains.
Ken Johnson can be reached at kejohnson@globe.com. 