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| Opportunities & Exposures: Art |
Creative Curators
Emily Rafferty
07/01/2005
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New art collections are born every day. People who discover a passion for art or
have recently come into wealth seek to learn how to put together an art
collection. Most collectors start slowly, with, say, decorative glassware, then
graduate to antique glass and art glass.
Each new generation produces collectors. More young art lovers, especially those
in their 30s and 40s, are taking an interest in collecting, whether it be modern
art, sculpture or photography. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, we have a
group known as the Apollo Circle, for ages 21 through 29, which offers private
minicourses on art collecting and connoisseurship.
At the Met, we can encourage and inspire new collectors. While it would be
unprofessional of us to advise them on the quality and price of artworks on the
market (that is the function of galleries and specialist advisors), our curators
often establish long-lasting relationships with individual collectors. This may
lead, in time, to the museum borrowing items from that collector for special
exhibitions or, in some cases, acquiring part of the collection for the Met.
Part of the mission of the Metropolitan, as it has been since its founding in
1870, is to collect, but we also have a long tradition of receiving gifts from
outstanding collectors. These people are a virtual roll call of corporate
leaders, including J.P. Morgan, the Havermeyer family, the Annenberg family,
Julius Bache, Roy R. Neuberger and Benjamin Altman.
The Met is an ideal showcase for their bequests. It consists of a vast complex
of 21 buildings that comprises essentially 18 museums under one roof. With a
staff of 2,500 people, an operating budget of $200 million per annum and a
capital fund-raising project of $900 million, we are in effect a sizeable
corporation. We just happen to be a business whose assets consist of more than 2
million works of art spanning 5,000 years of world culture.
I mention this because I find that the business community is not always as aware
as it could be of how professionally we run such nonprofit and cultural
institutions. In many cases, these are very sophisticated operations; the
administrative staffs are highly accomplished and bring to bear any number of
business skills. I always stress these facts to reassure donors and collectors
that these institutions are capable, responsible and worthy of their trust.
Nonprofit Motives
As the new president of the Met, I benefit from the counsel of 45 elected board
members, many of whom come from the business world, including the current
chairman, James R. Houghton, chairman of Corning Glass. Likewise, the staff can
call on the collective wisdom of a distinguished board of trustees, among them
Leon Black, Michel David-Weill, William C. Rudin and Steven Rattner, who is the
chairman of our Business Committee.
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