Collecting Art Is Easy. Running a Museum, Not So Much.

Sometime this fall, a new art gallery space dedicated to contemporary Native American art will open in Katonah, New York, a name yet to be determined. “We’re in brainstorming mode,” Laura Phipps, the recently appointed director of the yet-to-be-named space, told the Observer. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about this art space—besides the fact that there will be no admission, café, gift shop, or other typical revenue producers—is that the entire 750-piece collection of paintings, drawings, sculpture, prints, installations, film, textiles, and wearable art comes from one collection: the Gochman Family Collection. The Gochmans join Albert Barnes, Henry Clay Frick, Eli Broad, Peter Brant, Norton Simon, Christian Levitt, Henry Walters, Raymond Nasher, David and Carmen Krieger, Sterling and Francine Clarke, Emily and Mitch Ralls and a few others who have chosen to set up their own museums to display their collections rather than donate works to an established institution.

The Gochmans would have followed the example of Historic New York Board of Trustees Chair Agnes Hsu Tang and her husband, Oscar Tang, who donated 150 works of contemporary Native American art to this museum. Donations solve the problem of older collectors whose children may not want to collect what their parents collected and do not want to pay a large inheritance tax; Selling everything generates a capital gains tax that can be as high as 40 percent. (Donating works to qualified nonprofits also allows collectors to deduct a significant portion of their value from their taxable income and estate, which keeps many accountants and museum administrators busy this time of year.) But the family decided to keep their collection together, and refused to let the museum’s curators pick and choose what they wanted or thought was important to display, leaving the other items — perhaps most of them — in storage. Their vision and support of contemporary Native American artists has proven to be more important than dollars and cents. However, the Gochman Family Collection space will not be a museum, although, according to Phipps, it will contain “exhibits, as well as programs such as readings, performances, concerts, workshops, and sort of a wide gamut of different types of programming.” Like the museum, it has a mission to generate “a vision for the artists in the collection.” The galleries will also serve as a showroom. “We are working hard to make the collection fully loanable and easy for other institutions and spaces to borrow.”

Many other art collectors have taken this route, and not all of them have been successful. Chicago businessman and President Reagan’s ambassador-at-large for cultural affairs, Daniel Terra (1911-1996), created a museum—actually two museums, one in Chicago and one outside Paris—to display his collection of 750 works from the Hudson River Valley and American Impressionist painting. Both were closed as a result of failure to achieve financial viability. The Terra Foundation for American Art then donated the bulk of its collection to the Art Institute of Chicago and shifted its focus to grantmaking. Donald and Shelley Rubin, Himalayan art collectors, opened a museum displaying more than 1,000 objects in a Manhattan building that was formerly a Barneys department store, but after 20 years, they closed the project due to budget shortages. The Rubin Museum of Art now operates as a “museum without walls,” lending objects to institutions seeking to display and research Himalayan art.

Another cautionary tale is the Hammer Museum, which Occidental Petroleum Chairman Armand Hammer (1898-1990) opened in 1990 three weeks before his death. Its large collection of early 19th-century European paintings and drawings was highly acclaimed, but by 1992, museum officials had negotiated with the University of California, Los Angeles, to take over the entire affair. Running a museum cannot be just a trivial project for someone with money and ego.

It’s one thing to have your name on a museum door; Keeping the place open and financially sustainable is another thing entirely. The Barnes Foundation was founded by Dr. Albert Barnes (1872-1951), who established his collection of 2,500 works of Impressionist, Post-Impressionist, and Modern art at a museum in Merion, Pennsylvania, and required strict adherence to its often unwelcome rules. The museum was available to visitors by invitation only, and was open only two days a week. Prospective visitors had to apply for permission to attend, taking an oath to certain artistic theories espoused by Barnes. In the 1960s, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office urged the Barnes Foundation, as a tax-exempt educational institution, to be more accessible to the public, but admission was still very limited—100 visitors per day. As a business model, it didn’t look promising.

By 2002, Barnes’ board, facing a rapidly declining endowment, petitioned the courts to amend the foundation’s charter to allow the move to Philadelphia, where several foundations and philanthropists pledged $150 million to erect a new building and endow the transplanted foundation. This new building opened to the public in May 2012, without those restrictions, and it could not have been further from the wishes of Dr. Barnes, who wanted nothing to do with the Philadelphia community – but continuing on the path Barnes originally set was no longer possible. Today, there are many engaging programs at Barnes, including a monthly First Friday evening program featuring music and access to the collection, a film series, and a lecture series, classes and workshops. By highlighting Barnes’ commitment to racial equity and social justice, the exhibitions and films celebrate Black, Indigenous, artists of color and women, “many of whom have been overlooked during Dr. Barnes’ tenure,” a Barnes spokeswoman said.

The experience of these single-collector museums has taught other wealthy collectors to plan ahead and perhaps be a bit more modest. In 1955, the 68-year-old social activist and philanthropist Marjorie Meriwether Post (1887–1973) purchased a 36-room Georgian mansion on 25 acres in the northwest section of Washington, D.C. to display her collections of Imperial Russian art, Sèvres porcelain, vases, and goblets, as well as English and French paintings, sculptures, and tapestries. Its initial plan was to donate its entire collection to the Smithsonian Institution. The Smithsonian held the collection for four years, but in 1977, the institution restored everything and established its house and grounds as a museum. “Converting Hillwood into a museum was Plan B,” said Kate Markert, executive director of Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, and required a complete rethink of what should happen there and how to support it.

Post left a $10 million endowment covering Hillwood’s operating budget in the 1990s, but at some point, interest in the endowment could no longer keep up with the costs of maintaining the building and grounds. The museum began fundraising, seeking membership, holding special events, charging admission, and producing exhibitions that displayed not only objects collected by Post, but also other objects on loan from institutions elsewhere. Most importantly, Hillwood abandoned an admissions policy that limited the number of visitors — 110 in the morning, 110 in the afternoon — who were required to make advance reservations, similar to Barnes’ establishment. This new business model has helped the company earn more money and more repeat visitors.

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