Malibu-based real-estate tycoon Edward R. Broida has given 174 works to MoMa, carefully chosen by curators John Elderfield and Ann Temkin, including 36 by Guston (the museum already had 12 paintings) and dozens of works by Vija Celmins.
I don't celebrate. In fact, I think of it as a near-tragedy. One hundred and seventy four works that will not be seen again in many years. I've been thinking about it lately: giving to MoMA is not a good idea, for it means putting the art away and hidden, as much as it was in the private collection.
I cannot grasp, and would like to ask a curator, why MoMA would want fifty Philip Guston when in the whole life of the museum only, say, twenty of them will be exhibited. I cannot understand why the Modern accepts and seeks more and more donations of works, numbering hundreds of thousands, when at any given time, no more than 100 contemporary pieces are shown. Why have 100,000 if you can only show 1000? Is keeping in storage most of the collection defendable for a museum that serves the public? We want to see more.
The Dannheisser collection, the recent gift of the Robert Gober majestic church-like installation presented at Matthew Marks this very same year, now the Broida collection. Will we enjoy these works ever? Whenever a significative gift is announced, the museum mounts an exhibition to show the works. Then, the vault. Darkness.
The Guggenheim Museum's collection is 98% in storage. The Whitney was given dozens of outstanding modern art masterpieces (Pollock, Barnet Newman, Jasper Johns and the likes) in 2002 by a group of collectors and philanthropists headed by Leonard Lauder. They were shown in a temporary exhibition to celebrate one of the most important gifts ever assembled for and by a museum. Afterwards, will we ever see them again? The Whitney Museum does not even have permanent galleries for its Post-1945 collection (blame it in the trustees, who endowed permanent space for the Modern, but not the Post-War). Why gather twenty major Jasper Johns, then? For the enjoyment of conservators and archivists?
I have always favored giving to lesser-known museums. If St Louis or Iowa City lack a Koons, why not give your Pink Panther to them, instead of bequeathing it to MoMA or the Guggenheim and never see it again? Why fifty in one place and one or none in other?
The riches of this country are truly impressive, but -just as its wealth and democracy- not well spared.
In this sense, the planned gift and dispersion of the Samuel Kress collection of Old Masters stands for me as the ideal type of philanthropic giving with practical means.
Kress scattered his paintings all over America, wherever a small regional museum needed a Tiepolo or a Titian, but also giving -the greatest paintings- to the powerhouses (Metropolitan, National Gallery). It was a gift to the nation, global and aiming to have a lasting, positive impact. He greatly succeeded.
Private collectors may not have the broad intention of benefiting the whole nation Samuel Kress had and may be attached to a specific museum and place regardless of the existing collections and conditions, but my thought lately is some gifts actually harm the museum affected by overloading.
If we cannot stop collectors from giving to MoMA instead to the Des Moines Art Center, at least MoMA could implement a plan to show its treasures in the style of "the dispersed Prado". The Museo del Prado in Madrid has a collection of some 20,000 works, of which only 1,500 are in exhibition in the galleries and around 10,000 are in storage. "The dispersed Prado" has long scattered lesser-value paintings and other artworks around Spain (numbering more than 4,500), hanging in public institutions, museums, schools, offices and even embassies abroad. The visibility of the collection is thus assured (although the conditions of it are said to need improvements).
MoMa could and should put the Robert Gober church installation on permanent view at its space in Queens (the former MoMA QNS) or any warehouse/exhibition space it owns. Visible storages following the succesful installations of the Luce Study Center of American Art at the Metropolitan and Brooklyn museums would be a seemingly reasonable solution for accepting the continous stream of works donated to MoMA and assuring its public exhibition.
And above all, billionaire collector: Please think of Des Moines when generously giving away your art. Midtown Manhattan is just too damn crowded with everything. Seeing a dozen Pollocks in an ATM-size of a room as to create a fuzzy effect of blurry nothingness or a Clyfford Still devouring a Rothko, fighting for space while the Barnett Newman bangs its edges struggling to breathe, all in a narrow space severely mobbed by the dangerous tourist crowds makes me sad and sick.
