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| Feature |
The Inner Circles
Suzanne McGee
11/01/2004
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Vital Insiders
Whether they are called visiting committees, collectors
circles or, as in the case of the Houston Museum of Fine Art’s Latin-American
art aficionados, the Maecenas, these often invitation-only groups of insiders
are an increasingly vital part of the relationships between museums and their
future donors. The trend started and remains strongest in cities like New York
and Los Angeles, but has spread to other cities like Cleveland, Baltimore and
Houston, and is helping even larger institutions as they strive to build up
their holdings in particular areas, from contemporary art to Latin-American or
African and African-American art.
Our involvement can begin with something as
simple as an invitation to attend a cocktail party or an after-hours,
behind-the-scenes tour of a hot new exhibition at our local museum. Our art
dealers or art advisors may serve as matchmakers, introducing us to the curators
at, say, New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, with whom we may wish to
discuss the rationale for adding certain works to our collections.
 | | ARTIST STEEL Stillman’s studio is in the art center of Brooklyn’s Williamsburg area. |
Norah
Sharpe Stone and her husband, Norman, influential contemporary art collectors
from San Francisco, attribute at least part of their standing to membership in a
collectors circle. The couple were already veteran art collectors in the summer
of 1987 when, during one of their frequent trips to France, they met a trustee
of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) who happened to be staying at
the same small hotel as they were in St. Tropez.
“We realized by talking to
him that while we had been buying a lot of art, there was a lot more we could
learn about the world of art, things that would enhance our ability to build a
real collection,” Stone recalls. They were already members of SFMOMA but decided
to increase their involvement with the museum’s varied collecting groups, a move
that would give them access to curators and help them understand the constantly
changing world of contemporary art. Within a few years, the couple shifted their
emphasis on collecting to edgier, more contemporary works.
TOP VIEW
Our nation’s leading art museums are enhancing their chances of
acquiring important contemporary collections while grooming a new generation of
donors. By selectively offering memberships to collectors circles, they create relationships that may grow into bequeathals and financial support. For inexperienced art enthusiasts, these groups provide access to the crucial expertise of curators and the time and effort of dealers needed to develop important and satisfying collections. |
“The people we met
through MOMA helped us understand how that art reflects the culture of today;
how these artists were putting their reactions to the things happening in the
world—from AIDS to environmental issues to world peace issues—into the work they
were making,” Stone explains. They assembled a collection of several hundred
pieces by artists whose work now fetches millions at auction—Jeff Koons, Matthew
Barney, Richard Serra, Richard Prince and some of Cindy Sherman’s early art.
These days, the Stones pay more than $100,000 in dues each year to belong to the
elite collector groups at three major museums: the SFMOMA, the Whitney Museum of
American Art in New York and the Tate Museum in London.
Tyro Titans
“Every institution is out there trying to identify the next
generation of benefactors, the next Walter Annenberg,” notes New York-based art
advisor Sanford Heller, referring to the media mogul who donated his extensive
collection of Impressionist artworks to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The
challenge of identifying these future Annenbergs and cultivating relationships
with them grows ever more difficult as the number of affluent collectors
expands, and the world of contemporary art becomes complex. “Looking at a vast
amount of the art that is being produced today can make you feel insignificant,
silly, stupid, inadequate,” Heller says. “A good curator, on the other hand, can
translate or interpret what it is that you’re looking at.”
The museums are
not usually looking at these groups solely as a source of revenue. Indeed, their
preference is often to keep the entry price low—as little as a few hundred
dollars for the most junior level of membership—in order to attract individuals
who may evolve into major donors over time, as they build their wealth and
develop their artistic taste.
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