The Met Museum bursts with 5000 years of objects. We recommend a program to reduce its obsession with storing objects of fancy.
Exhibiting Signs of Hoarding
It is time for the Met to stop stockpiling stuff. Of its 1.5 million pieces of art work, roughly 4 percent is on display at any one time.
Bursting with objects and visitors, leadership pushed for an expanded architectural footprint a few years ago, only to shelve plans following a budget-challenging 2020.
So now it’s back to a measly 2 million square feet within which to squeeze. Any New Yorker can relate; the Met solves the problems like so many of us, stowing items in storage.
Upon founding, the Met’s original charter was, paraphrasing slightly here, to establish and maintain a museum of art, encourage and develop the study of fine arts, and advance general knowledge about art. A subsequent update in 2015 added that “the Metropolitan Museum of Art collects, studies, conserves, and presents significant works of art across all times and cultures in order to connect people to creativity, knowledge, and ideas.”
That is very clear and admirable. All of it can be achieved without creating a behemoth, where 96% of holdings are hidden from the general public.
Reframing the Met
Imagine the Met not only as a building, not only as a storage room for acquisitions, not simply as a physical structure at all. But rather, keeping to the intent of the charter, the Met is a resource for general public and scholars alike, a supporter of the arts, an educational vehicle. Freed from the physical requirements of those goals, the Met could be open and accessible to more without adding to the already over-crowded locations currently in Manhattan. This new Met is impressive and inspiring but not overwhelming. Curators can still buy or receive art donations. Its investment of money and effort furthers the name and prestige of the Museum. It is an active supporter in efforts to preserve the world’s heritage.
In cases where art is acquired from a public institution already displaying the work(s) and placing it in storage or storing existing works to make room for the new, the Met leaves the work wherever it hangs, stands, projects or exists. Call it free range art.
When a museum has to sell a work to keep its lights on, the Met can swoop in with its checkbook, but the item remains where it is. When archeological discoveries are made, the Met can contribute to the recovery, care and restoration needed to preserve and protect. The item remains on the scene or in the local museum of the region where it was found.
The standards that the Met sets still apply. Whatever designation it has for determining a “significant work of art” stays in play. The Museum just won’t haul that significant work of art clear across the planet to sit in a building on Fifth Avenue or further uptown at the Cloisters.
Picture This
Let’s take a generic example. A local museum somewhere in the United States determines it must sell its most valuable artwork to keep the lights on and remain a resource for its people. The Met purchases the piece, perhaps with a discount, given the work will continue to remain in the place where it lives. The agreement includes reasonable and clear language around ownership of the work and loan guidelines. Terms and conditions can be brokered and overseen by an independent body such as the Association of Art Museum Directors.
On Permanent Loan
The work gets a designation clearly stating that it is brought to the viewer by the Metropolitan Museum of New York. This could be a symbol and a grander display than the small cards that adorn a loaned or donated work at many museums. But whatever shape the designation takes, it’s clear that the work is on permanent loan from the Met, an entity that promotes, educates and supports artwork around the world. In cases where the Met has purchased multiple artworks, the local museum could designate a whole room, wing or garden area as being part of the Met’s collection.
If the point of a museum is to protect and make accessible humanity, that can happen anywhere at any time.
The cumulative effect over time and place will be to grow in the minds and hearts of people like the Red Cross. The Met shows up wherever and whenever it’s needed; instantly recognizable by the qualities it espouses.
A Modern Approach to Antiquities
With this spirit, the Met could return art works in its own collection that may have come from questionable practices in previously amassed antiquities. If it also provides ongoing care and support for the original local environment, then the label could note the journey of the work, along with the Met’s role in acquiring the works, where known. This would ensure necessary returns and reparations, while educating the public on why artwork should not be taken without permission from its original environment or even why “permission-granted” might be reconsidered after decades or centuries. The Met would be modeling behavior against stolen or ill-begotten antiquities.
The Met could use its purchasing power to sponsor local efforts where art and antiquity is being recovered and restored, in situ. At the scene of a recovery project, the Museum could be listed as a sponsorship partner, so when a visitor is half way around the world, marveling at the dig underway, she will see the Met symbol and know that this is a “significant work,” supported by an institution called the Metropolitan Museum of New York, which she may someday be lucky enough to visit in person.
Even if the Met is not involved in the actual recovery, it could still offer investment in guarding and guiding local efforts against looting and visitor mischief. Guards and guides could wear Met uniforms, like the blue helmets of the United Nations’ peacekeeping forces.
And speaking of peacekeeping, the Met could identify and designate select artworks threatened by war, human neglect or natural catastrophe, and advocate on behalf of those works to be protected. Like so many past efforts in this area, the outcome may not be successful; artwork(s) may still be lost to the destructive force. But a moral voice from the Met would underline one of the goals of its charter to “conserve.” That word should apply to any item that fits the Met’s qualifications to be protected, regardless of where it actually lives in the world.
Now on Display
The Association of Art Museum Directors is a North American body whose stated goals include “fostering excellence in art museums.” Among other activities, they set guidelines for accessioning (acquisition) and deaccessioning (shedding or selling from ones collection). Deaccessioning is a path some museums take over their history to sustain or change their collections. The damage to a museum’s professional reputation for deaccessioning is storied; suffice to say the group’s members look brutally upon selling from a museum’s own collection for any reason, even in cases where a cultural institution faces financial ruin without action.
AAMD guidelines have been practiced for decades, but then 2020 rolled round, flattening museum visitations. Retail and admission revenues dried up. The AAMD loosened its deaccessioning rules and museums began to sell works to support their very existence.
When a museum sells, the artwork doesn’t necessarily go to another museum. It can as often be bought by a private investor or an art lover. What happens after that is up to the buyer. She can donate it, loan it, place it in a private residence or put it in storage. She can neglect it to the elements, hang it over a tacky couch or store it in the attic. It’s entirely up to the buyer. Barring loan or donation to a public institution, however, that artwork is no longer on public view. Regardless of the hard budget decisions a museum must make to remain open, its desire must surely be that the public would still be able to visit the sold work even when it is no longer within that museum’s own four walls.
If the Met were to embrace its role of protector and supporter of art regardless of its location, it could buy these works of art under the agreement stated earlier. The AAMD, recognizing the intent and spirit of the Met’s actions, could sanction and support this type of deaccessioning, using it as an example to contrast against other deaccessioning practices it deems detrimental to a museum’s mission.
Donor Dilemma
This could solve for another problem some museums, perhaps even the Met, face. Donors. No doubt donors are a good aspect of building and maintaining an institution, but they also come with challenges. Well-meaning estate planners have been known to leave entire collections to institutions with implied or clearly negotiated terms. The museum is not to sell the works and sometimes the gifter stipulates that the work must be on display for some portion of eternity. The Met has whole donated collections forever left in storage, like the clock handed down from an earlier generation, which arrives at your carefully-laid-out apartment where there is simply no place to display it. Donor collections are a similar problem, just on a colossal scale.
But unlike your parents who may never realize that the clock ended up in storage or was sent to Goodwill, the Met does honor the gift, and either displays or stores the work. This might explain in part how it amassed 1.5 million pieces.
Were the Met to go through its epic storage unit, it’s possible that some large percentage of its holdings would delight and sustain a small local museum somewhere else in the world. One museum’s forgettable sculpture could be a treasure to a poorer relative. In its new role, the Met could donate these pieces on permanent or rolling loan, clearly explaining how the program works and labeled as belonging to the Met. The argument may be that donors could balk at their works being housed elsewhere, but given the lifelong purgatory in storage, it should be preferable to know that the Met will do something responsible with ones collection. The displayed work would carry the Met label along with the donor’s name, which is more than can be said for an eternity packed away in a wooden crate.
The Met could own the moral argument about the purpose and integrity of preserving mankind’s heritage. Other major museums could follow its example, leading to a new phase in how we think about a museum’s role in the world.
How will receiving museums treat and protect the work? It’s arguable that this is worth a reasonable risk, given the alternative is cloaking the artwork where very few will ever see it. Considering the storage and care expenses the Met must incur, it could supplement the item loan with insurance or services from the savings it realizes by not having to store it.
Now the art is aired and cared for above ground. Scholars or historians who might normally find themselves in the Met’s basement can still visit with the work in its new location.
There are other types of donors, of course; those who write checks. These are people who may want to be associated specifically with the Met; after all, they donated money to one museum and not to another. But if the Met can perfect its disembodied existence and float as an omnipresent entity, the donor will also then be associated with the Museum’s larger purpose and more impressive and prestigious achievements. In competing for dollars, this would distinguish the Met from other institutions of otherwise equal heft, who are still limited by their old-school approach to physical ownership.
Membership Has Its Privileges
Participating museums could benefit by a Met section in their own gift stores, where sales are split between the two entities. This extends the Met’s own merchandising options not just by having another outlet for customers but also from the commercial potential of the previously-stored artwork. Art that is now on display is also now relevant for merchandising books, t-shirts, posters, tote bags, paper products, and so forth.
A restaurant, garden or public space can also be Met sponsored, funded by a donor who wishes to associate his or her name with the local museum as well as the Met.
Art Appreciation
If the point of a museum is to protect and make accessible our shared humanity that can happen anywhere at any time. We all should be within reach of a place to view art. The virtue of having a museum easily and frequently accessible is that it fosters a lifelong appreciation and hunger for more art. The school kid dragged to the local art museum eventually grows into a paying visitor, a donor or even an artist. When the Met reaches out for supporters of its goals or its endowment, those appeals would now be relevant to him, even if he lives nowhere near the Museum. He knows why the Met is important.
And when he has a chance to visit New York City, one of his must-go destinations is the entity whose brand adorned some his earliest memories of being touched by art.
The Met receives an estimated 7 million visitors a year (not counting 2020 where the global pandemic closed or reduced visitor-ship). That leaves just 7 billion other inhabitants of our planet who hadn’t a chance to see the Museum’s marvels in any given year. Many of those souls though do live within a drive or a walk of a local museum that would benefit greatly were the Met to conduct a long overdue spring cleaning of its storage unit. Freeing up space would allow the Met to be generous while still honoring its 150 year old mission.
Curated in Its Own Image
Don’t imagine the Met doesn’t need or seek awareness. Were it not in need of promoting its brand against the Louvre, Rijksmuseum, National Museum of China, Hermitage etc., we’d not see advertising. It could eliminate its paid advertising budget with (the much more effective) earned media that comes from doing something different and notable, and the expanded name recognition by association with local cultural institutions.
The Met’s name would reach far and wide with positive promotion and publicity. It would own the moral argument about the purpose and integrity of preserving our heritage. It would set an example for how to support and enrich a local region’s artists and patrimony, while leaving the item in the origin of its making. Other major museums may follow the Met’s example, leading to a new phase of how we think about a museum’s role in the world.
Next Stop, World
This is an appeal for protecting and airing art to the public, but there are also plenty of benefits to the institution itself, as well as to the residents of New York. It’s important to have both the size and heft of an institution like the Met in the world. New Yorkers can still revel in the prestige that the Museum brings to our city whether we’re at one of its two locations along with half the world’s population or having a more human-size experience at a participating museum in our travels beyond the city.
The Museum can keep its finest works at home on Fifth Avenue and the Cloisters. This will attract people to see the jewels of the crown, but excess holdings should be shared and not stored. If the Met can rid its self image from a physical entity, then it can make art accessible to the world.
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robin rusch
