Museums Seek New Ways to Court Art Gifts

When the philanthropist Eli Broad announced this year that he would not donate his extensive contemporary art collection to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art — where he is a board member and major donor — but would continue to use a lending-library model instead, museum directors and curators across the country panicked that more donors would follow suit, The Wall Street Journal reports.

“Museum directors are having some sleepless nights,” says Elizabeth Ellis, a principal at AEA Consulting, an arts consulting firm. “The rise of private museums is causing a lot of fear and anxiety.”

Collectors may be holding off on museum donations for several reasons, including a change in the tax law in 2006 that made such gifts less financially attractive. But other collectors fear that their works will be immediately sold as art prices skyrocket and museums seek quick profits, or that their works will not be on display due to lack of exhibition space.

Museum directors are not going down without a fight, however. The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, for example, is currently showing an exhibition titled “Collecting Collections” that displays about 250 objects from more than a dozen collections given to the museum over the years, as part of an effort to attract future donors.

While many museums also continue to put prominent art collectors on their boards as a way to encourage donations, others are undertaking more-aggressive campaigns to win donated artwork. Both the Dallas Museum of Art as well as the Seattle Art Museum have successfully courted several donors to donate large collections together.