As the idea of reducing our dependence on our own staff traveling as a courier with our collections slowly takes hold, one aspect of the courier will become increasingly important: knowing the exhibition venue. Once we commit to not sending a courier or to using a bookend courier as a baseline policy, how do we know that a venue meets our standards? Pre-screening a venue will become an increasingly important action to outsource to a local third partya to not only better understand the conditions of the exhibition and storage spaces but also to get a general sense of the personnel that will handle your loan and installation.

Not every venue will require pre-screening, naturally, and there are many levels of detail and analysis you can require, but initially you must establish a criteria for deciding when to screen. In other words, in your loan policy, specify what types of gallery conditions you require when loaning (which you already do) and then compare them to the venue’s facility report (which you already do). You, also, may have more concerns about the technical capacity to handle an object than about the climate conditions. For instance, if entry into the gallery requires rigging, perhaps you need to have someone take a closer look. Whatever the question, create a threshold over which you think that the venue has potential but you still need more information. This threshold should keep in mind your facility requirements as well as those of your insurance provider. Perhaps it is as simple as you have never heard of the institution, the institution has moved to a new building, or you had some questions about the facility report.

Once you have decided that you need more information on a venue, you must decide how much and what kind you actually need. Will a few calls to other registrars from institutions who have loaned there provide enough reassurance, do I need someone to go and see something in the gallery without meeting with the staff, or do I need someone to go and meet their registrar and take a tour of the building? Ask the potential borrower for references and ask them frank questions.

Should you require someone to visit a facility, you will have to decide on how to choose them. Of course, I provide screened contractors on my site, but can you also go with people you already know too. You want to make sure they have the specific knowledge you need. Perhaps in some cases you want to have a conservator visit because the object in question has certain frailties that make you question the display environment. Similarly, you may want a professional with specific experience in a complicated object type like, for example, time-based media in order to determine if the requested video installation will technically work in the space according to the artists requirements.

Lastly, cover the costs of screening in a loan fee. Again, you will not require this for every loan, but just create a policy in which you can cover the cost of the screening without directly charging an institution for it. A few hours of a contractor’s time will cost less than sending a courier and should not affect the loan. A potential borrower will appreciate the savings.

Ultimately, I hope that institutions do not see this requirement as insulting. I think that it will become more commonplace as we begin to place more trust in our professional partnerships. Either that, or we will develop a system for rating institutions like the GRASP program but for exhibition facilities. It will also provide a sense of security to all parties involved.

I welcome your thoughts and experiences on the topic in the comments below.