The Art Business Conference, New York 2023
In the Air: March 2023
A constellation of recent discussions relating to art and artifact collections management.
How do you not know who owns the Van Gogh? Ask the person who keeps the records (if there is one). Standing downwind, this story about the dispute in ownership of a Van Gogh painting loaned to the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) reeks of collectors who do not hire proper managers of their collection.
Who’s the collections manager?
When you have a trained collections manager, you always know who owns your multi-million dollar works of art. Just sayin’.
Repatriation has surged into normalization in the last several years. While we quickly denounce the lack of transparency or the apparently lethargic pace of returning objects to their countries of origin. However, should we not praise institutions for doing the work to return them?
Some will pessimistically declare that museums benefited from these stolen objects for years or decades prior to their return and do not deserve positive attention for returning objects that never belonged to them in the first place. However, were I a museum director, I would expect a significant amount of due diligence about the origins of the objects prior to returning. These efforts require malnourished museums to divert large amounts of resources from other important projects. That they do it seems noteworthy.
Repatriation
The Art Newspaper reports no less than 7 articles about repatriated objects. Artnet News also has several.
Despite the number of articles, repatriation does not headline the periodicals which suggests to me a normalization of the exercise.
All this repatriation talk mandates me to share this sinister Instagram post.
Lastly, I just randomly learned about that in the first half of the 20th Century, art was an event in the Olympic Games. This podcast explains the history behind what seems “ridiculous” today.
Sustainable HVAC Webinar
Climate Climate Control
In other words, take the principle responsibility of reducing collection emissions off the already threatened collection itself. Do not add more risk by extending travel times by sea or compromising the quality of packing for the sake of less substantial greenhouse gas reductions. We need to track and hunt the biggest game: emissions from our buildings in the form of electricity used to climatize spaces powered by non-renewable energy sources.
Bear Your Teeth
A little over a week ago, I attended a prescient event in New York hosted by the Responsible Art Market Initiative which presented panels on two of the major topics of our time: NFTs and Sustainability in the stark white, overhung walls of the below ground Phillips auction house building on Park Avenue.
