As an independent collections manager/registrar, I have this fantasy/nightmare about meeting with a new private collector client, and with the ink still wet on the NDA, I greet a famously stolen object, like the Vermeer from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist, in the parlor of their Upper East Side townhouse in New York when I visit their collection for the first time. A decision confronts me: report the work and face a lawsuit for breaking my confidentiality and confidence with my client and who knows what else, versus remaining silent and, consequently, excusing the actions that led to the acquisition of the object.
The situation forces you/me to make a decision we were not prepared to make. There might be a morally correct option here, but neither option is straightforward: you either navigate years of legal bureaucracy trying to “do the right thing” or bear an enormous personal, ethical weight. Neither of which you signed up for. I will name this the “Registrar’s Dilemma.”
Is the Registrar’s Dilemma another iteration of the “Trolley Problem”? Or, as critics of the problem say, is it an unrealistic or even detrimental thought experiment?
Recently, many scenarios have come to light surrounding the nefarious dealings and acquisitions of collectors and institutions. From the large number of restitution and repatriation cases to the Pandora Papers to the dubious business operations of board members, I have thought about the topic a lot from the point of view of my job, seeing the news articles, and recently co-hosting #ARCSchat episodes on restitution and museum funding.
In many ways, how the accused react matters as much as the initial infraction. Often, people or institutions acted dubiously because of a trend or the context of the era like looting or operating through shell companies. I do not want to excuse these sly, often intentionally deceitful acts that straddle the legal threshold or simply dare authorities to respond, but when the actions form part of a broader trend, they set a standard for accepted practice at a given time. Everyone does this, so it must be OK.
Now, however, as the public sees these institutions naked, apparently for the “first” time (again!), they start to look more like your grandparents at a nudist colony instead of supermodels at fashion week. How can they regain the public trust, however? How you react in the moment truly defines the institution.
I am not a museum director, however, so I do not have to make these complicated decisions. Do registrars have to face the Registrar’s Dilemma, though? In our charge we could know where they bury the bodies because we process the invoices, input the provenance data (or lack thereof), see the objects in storage that will never greet the public again, and/or organize the shipping of objects to a “new home” in Delaware for 5 minutes before returning them to their Manhattan residence. Let me be clear, I personally, have not stood at this crossroads but have merely conceived of it as a possibility through my work and conversations with colleagues.
This speculation on my part amounts to no more than day dreaming (this is how my novel will begin, after all) as I do not know of any registrars that have blown the whistle on their institution, but does that actually reflect a choice they made?
