Galleries Funding Museum Exhibitions

The NY Times just ran a very interesting article about museums pressuring private galleries to assist in funding exhibition of artists they represent.  It is probably good business to do so as it gives great exposure and credibility to the artist, and it many cases adds to the value of a collection. But, in the article you get a sense of perhaps a little over aggression from the museums in seeking funding for the exhibitions.

The NY Times reports

Galleries have always provided scholarly support for museums exhibiting their artists’ work.

Now they’re expected to provide money, too.

In today’s exploding art market, amid diminishing corporate donations and mounting exhibition costs, nonprofit museums have been leaning more heavily on commercial galleries for larger amounts of money — anywhere from $5,000 to $200,000 each time — to help pay for shows featuring work by artists the galleries represent.

The increasingly common arrangement has stoked concerns about conflicts of interest and the dilution of a museum’s mission to present art for art’s sake. Such cozy situations raise the specter of a pay-to-play model and could give galleries undue influence over what the public sees.

“It’s really gotten out of hand,” said Lawrence Luhring of the Luhring Augustine gallery. “It’s the brazenness of it — just the expectation of ‘How are you going to contribute?’ ”

Others say the galleries, which generally earn between 20 percent and 50 percent commission on each sale, shouldn’t complain, because the prestige of museum shows raises the value of an artist’s work, boosting gallery profits. “Museums are giving these galleries the best platform in the art world for free, where they can sell work to their clients on the walls of the greatest museums,” said Jeffrey Deitch, the longtime dealer and former director of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. “If the galleries can contribute, why not?”

The average selling price of a Mark Grotjahn work at auction rose from $322,000 in 2010 to $1.2 million in 2015 partly because of shows featuring his work, like MoMA’s “Forever Now.” Credit Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
Maxwell Anderson, who has served as the director of institutions like the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Dallas Museum of Art, said: “Gallery-supported exhibitions commingle inventory that may be for sale with museum inventory. The self-interest of the gallery can compromise the independence and integrity of the curatorial voice.”

Examples of gallery support abound. For the Whitney’s recent popular Frank Stella retrospective, the installation of two outdoor sculptures was made possible in part by funds from the Marianne Boesky and Dominique Lévy galleries, which jointly represent Mr. Stella.

In listing contributors to its current exhibition on the New-York-based German photographer Vera Lutter, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, names the Gagosian Gallery, which represents Ms. Lutter.

And when the Los Angeles County Museum of Art mounted a Pierre Huyghe show two years ago — billed as the first major retrospective of that French artist’s work — sponsors included the Marian Goodman Gallery, which represents Mr. Huyghe.

“Ten years ago, museums rarely, if ever, asked galleries to support their artists’ museum exhibitions,” said Lucy Mitchell-Innes of Mitchell-Innes & Nash, who said her gallery is called on to support museum shows once or twice a month for $5,000 to $50,000. “Galleries are now regularly asked to support their artists’ museum exhibitions,” she said.

The gallery payments, which museums generally tailor to a dealer’s financial capacity, are directed toward expenses like opening-night dinners, catalogs, shipping, even the costs associated with an artist’s creating new work for a show.

“The only thing I have not been asked for is postage,” said Angela Westwater of the Sperone Westwater Gallery, who said she regularly has to pony up money to museums, with $10,000 being the low end. “Certainly this can be onerous and complicated for many reasons, including potential conflicts of interest.”

Museums have long turned to outside support for their exhibitions, namely corporations and collectors. But as the cost of mounting shows has grown — a result of increasingly pricey line items like insurance — museums have also sought galleries’ financial help. And some worry that museums now favor shows by artists represented by galleries with the deepest pockets.

Nearly a third of the major solo exhibitions at museums in the United States between 2007 and 2013 featured artists represented by just five galleries, according to a recent survey by the The Art Newspaper: Gagosian, Pace, Marian Goodman, David Zwirner and Hauser & Wirth.

These findings “raise questions about the growing influence of a small number of galleries in a rapidly consolidating art market,” The Art Newspaper said, “especially when they often offer logistical and financial support for exhibitions.”

Over all, dealers say they have come to accept this practice as simply another cost of doing business — like setting up shop in the mushrooming number of international art fairs (going rate: $100,000) — and part of their obligation to their artists.

“As funding sources become tougher for exhibitions, museums have an expectation that galleries will assist in identifying potential funders as well as making outright or in-kind contributions,” the dealer James Cohan said. “It’s in our artists’ best interest to support these projects.”

He added: “Gallery involvement in museum exhibitions is part of the ecosystem of the art world. The competition to get one’s artist seen in a noncommercial context like a museum or international survey is quite intense but ultimately hugely gratifying. It’s part of our job to step up to support our artists.”

But small and midsize galleries now have to stretch themselves thin to stay in the game.

“It is certainly burdensome for galleries such as myself, who work with younger artists in the career-building stage,” said the dealer Susan Inglett, who was asked by a museum she would not name for $8,000 to cover shipping on works traveling to a four-person show in the Midwest.

But “I am the first to acknowledge that museum shows certainly help build careers,” she added, “which speaks to a conflict of interest and lack of transparency on the part of museums that depend upon such support.”

In a period when galleries and auctions strive to land the highest prices, a museum show can help significantly. Prices rise for works by artists with a museum exhibition approaching. The average selling price of a Mark Grotjahn painting at auction, for example, rose from $322,000 in 2010 to $1.2 million in 2015, according to ArtNet, partly because of exhibitions featuring his work, like “The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World,” which opened at the Museum of Modern Art in 2014.

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Some galleries request something tangible in return. “With a major four- to five-figure contribution, we will ask a museum for certain sponsor benefits such as tickets to their gala, credit in the catalog or seats at the lenders’ dinner,” Ms. Mitchell-Innes said. “Museums understand that whether funding is coming from a bank, a luxury brand or a gallery, there needs to be some benefit to that sponsor.”

At the Guggenheim Museum, galleries are typically part of what the museum calls a Leadership Committee that includes collectors, foundations and businesses whose “support goes directly toward the costs of presenting an exhibition,” Sarah Eaton, a museum spokeswoman, said.

Jeremy Strick, director of the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas, said his institution was “most grateful for that support.” He acknowledged that depending too much on outside funding can compromise a museum’s “curatorial independence.” But, he said, “The quality of a museum’s program is the ultimate standard by which to judge whether those programs are serving their public purpose.”

The Museum of Modern Art does not seek support from galleries, “other than periodic contributions to our annual events like galas,” said Glenn D. Lowry, the director, adding that a gallery will occasionally host a dinner for an artist the museum is showing, “but not at the museum, and as a gallery event outside the museum.”

But some dealers say museum galas can also be a burden, given that they often include a charity auction to which galleries and their artists are expected to donate artwork.

For the Bronx Museum of the Arts’ coming gala, for example, the Sean Kelly Gallery — along with the artists — contributed two pieces for the auction: a color print by Frank Thiel, which has an estimated retail value of $16,000, and a mixed-media work on paper by Mariko Mori, worth $12,000. The Bryce Wolkowitz Gallery and the artist contributed a José Parlá painting worth $30,000.

“General operating support is the hardest to raise for an institution like the Bronx Museum,” said Holly Block, the museum’s executive director. “We are dependent on this in a huge way.”

Galleries are also asked to pay fabrication costs for works that have debuts in museum exhibitions and international shows like the Venice Biennale.

Ultimately, however, galleries say they feel they have no choice but to play ball, because the potential benefits are mutual. “We all might grumble here or there or sweat and curse a bit,” Ms. Boesky said. “But we do our best to achieve what needs to be achieved.”

Source: The NY Times