The Rise and Rise of the Private Art Museum

Georgina Adam

• Publisher: Lund Humphries
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781848223868
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Museum Studies

The private museum has become a phenomenon of the 21st century. There are some 400 of them around the world, and an astonishing 70% of those devoted to contemporary art were founded in the past 20 years. Although private museums have been accused of being tax-evading vanity projects or 'tombs for trophies, ' the picture is far more complex. Georgina Adam's investigation into this extraordinary proliferation, based on her recent visits to over 50 private spaces across the US, Europe, China, and elsewhere, delves into the reasons behind this boom, the different motivations of collectors to display their art in public, and the various ways in which the institutions are financed. Private museums can add greatly to the cultural life of a community, giving a platform to emerging artists, supplying educational programmes, and revitalising declining or neglected regions. But their relationship with public institutions can also be problematic. Should private museums step in to fill a gap left by declining public investment in culture, and what are the implications for society and the arts? At a time of crisis in the museums sector, this book is an essential and thought-provoking read.

1

What is a Private Museum?

The private collector’s museum has become a highly visible and aspirational model for a growing number of influential wealthy collectors over the last two decades.

Georgina S. Walker, The Private Collector’s Museum: Public Good versus Private Gain¹

Today, the term ‘private museum’ covers a diverse range of institutions, from sculpture gardens or single-room displays to vast, architect-designed buildings funded by a luxury goods company or a real estate magnate. They tend to be primarily intended to house and display the founder’s art collection, and generally lack the ‘full services’ of a publicly funded institution with conservation, research, education and curatorial departments.

In this book, the term ‘private museum’ is used to designate a not-for-profit art space, open to the public and established and funded primarily by an art collector and destined to show their collection. It may also designate a museum funded by a company, such as the three Pinault museums, two in Venice and one in Paris. In many cases private museums are used to display thematic exhibitions, with borrowed works shown alongside the core holdings. Some – following the Kunsthalle model – do not have the collection on show and hold exhibitions of loaned works, but often mixed with works from the founder’s collection.

There is also a growing trend for artists to have their own museums – among them Damien Hirst, Bernar Venet, Thomas Schütte or Pierre Soulages. And finally, there are even a few museum ‘chains’, notably in China. The UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, for example, has three locations – Beijing, Shanghai and Beidaihe. The OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (OCAT) group is in four Chinese cities: Shanghai, Beijing, Xian and Shenzhen. François Pinault, as noted above, has three museums, two in Venice and one in Paris.

In fact, the very word ‘museum’ is problematic: this is a slippery term that means different things in different countries. In the United States, a museum is defined by the Office of the Federal Register as a public or private non-profit institution, open to the public, which owns and displays the objects in its care. These can be artworks, or anything else: for instance, ethnographic artefacts, wooden boats or even cable cars.

An additional problem is that virtually all American museums are ‘private’, in that they are not established and funded by the state, although they have charitable and tax-free status, and often some public funding. They must also conform to the guidelines laid down by professional bodies such as the American Alliance of Museums. ‘Museums in this country are for the most part privately governed which isn’t the same as privately owned,’ says American art historian, curator and former museum director Maxwell Anderson: ‘The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a public institution in that the building is owned by the city of New York, but the collection is owned by a private group of trustees. It is a bit of a hybrid situation, but we make the clear distinction in the USA that a private museum is typically classified as a foundation with 501(c)(3) status.’² We will come back to this in Chapter 3.

Private museums have existed since the 19th and early 20th centuries, and many early private museums survive to this day – London’s Sir John Soane’s Museum or Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum are just two examples. However, a characteristic of more recent creations is their emphasis on modern and contemporary art. Indeed, the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (CIMAM), part of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), which represents 20,000 museums from 136 countries, now admits private museums under certain conditions. They must be not-for-profit, have been open for over five years, comply with ICOM’s code of ethics and have an appropriate governance structure.³ Even so, fewer than 20 private museums are members, including UCCA in China and the Garage in Russia. This is not necessarily because others do not qualify, but because they may not have applied.

A key issue is governance. In many cases private museums have members of the family plus a couple of friends filling the board, with the owner-founder responsible for curating and acquisitions. While this is not necessarily a bad thing – and no-one can criticise a founder for deciding how the museum they pay for is run – sometimes interests can become blurred. ‘The issues in contemporary art are complex because of the relationship with the market, the lack of regulation around the market and the potential way collectors can influence and sell works to their benefit,’ explains Elizabeth Ann Macgregor, director of the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art at the time of writing.⁴

In this book, I use ‘private museum’ as a catch-all term, although many founders eschew the term ‘museum’ itself: they call them foundations, institutes, collections, art spaces or centres, they may bear the name of a place or of the founder … anything but ‘museum’ in fact. Others, particularly in Asia, use the description widely. ‘These are not “museums”,’ comments Anderson, stressing the ‘not’. ‘They are collections. The word “museum” is hallowed but is basically being bandied about now with ice cream museums and so on. As a result, it has lost a bit of meaning. The use of the word is in itself the value many founders are looking for – the anointment that accrues from having a “museum”.’

Whatever the designation, I have limited this book to private museums which have a physical space, are accessible to the public and are not-for-profit, belong to a collector/founder or a corporation and have a collection of modern and contemporary art, either on view or from which items are drawn for exhibition. For the sake of simplicity, I use the term ‘private museum’ for all the forms they take.

So just how many private museums are there in the world? It is difficult to say exactly, since the number in China tends to evolve rapidly, but the 2018 edition of the BMW Guide to Independent Collectors lists 270 in 196 cities; of these, only four are in mainland China – obviously far short of the truth. Another listing, The Private Art Museum Report (PAMR), compiled by the website Larry’s List with the aid of the Chinese company Art Market Monitor of Artron, covered 317 establishments in 2016, but of these just 26 were in China, which again is way short of the truth, even if the exact number is a shifting target. This report excludes corporate museums and only includes those belonging to living collectors. I think there are probably at least 400 across the world, although some do not have regular access but are open by appointment only.

What is astonishing is that of the 317 cited in the PAMR report, a stunning 70 per cent were founded after the year 2000; even more startingly, nearly one-fifth of these private spaces were built during the last five years. Just two museums in the listing were established before 1960. We shall return to the reasons why later in this book.

Why are almost all focused on contemporary art?

The reason is simple: today it is extremely difficult to create a museum of art in any historical field because there is just not enough supply of museum-quality material. There are a few exceptions, fuelled by determination and deep resources, such as The Leiden Collection of Dutch Old Masters, built up over 18 years by US financier Thomas Kaplan and his wife Daphne and which includes 17 Rembrandts (the collection is available online only, although it has been exhibited in various prestigious locations such as the Louvre in Paris and the Long private museum in Shanghai).⁵ Another example is J. Tomilson Hill’s hoard of Renaissance and Baroque bronzes. These are part of the hedge-fund mogul’s holdings, which also comprise Old Master paintings and contemporary art, and which are displayed on rotation in his museum in New York’s Chelsea district.⁶

Showing a personal collection to the public is not a new phenomenon; many of the world’s best-loved museums evolved from private accumulations, for example the Frick Collection in New York (established in 1935). ‘House’ museums such as the Frick and others – for instance London’s Wallace Collection (1897), which profoundly influenced Henry Frick⁷– were finally bequeathed to their respective nations and opened as public institutions. But today, wealthy collectors are increasingly retaining control of their art holdings by creating their own spaces. The reasons for this are varied and are examined in detail in Chapter 2.

* * *

Some museums are very small. An example is the Elliott Eyes collection, housed in the home of Gordon Elliott and Michael Eyes in Sydney, Australia. It was founded some 20 years ago in a Victorian townhouse, in which they live with their 300-object-strong collection, which almost overflows the space – even the bathrooms feature works of art. It is very eclectic, ranging from quirky ceramic animals to video, painting and neon, but with an emphasis on figurative art, although not exclusively so. The collectors have modest resources: Michael Eyes works in a bookshop and Gordon Elliott teaches line dancing. “Sometimes we have to pay off a purchase in instalments, when we can’t afford something,” says Elliott; he and his partner aim to meet every artist whose work they collect.⁸ The collection is open to the public, who must pre-book, and Elliott or Eyes take visitors around themselves explaining many of the works and why they acquired them.

There are many other such small, collection-based spaces around the world, including the ultra-focused Le Silo, a collection of Minimalist art north of Paris, housed in a former grain silo. In Vancouver, Canada, the rennie museum shows the collection of real-estate mogul Bob Rennie in a historic building in Chinatown; in Barcelona, Spain, the Fundació Suñol displays, in a couple of rooms, the extensive collection of its founder Josep Suñol, from Balla or Giacometti to Picasso and Miró. However, Suñol’s death in 2019 was quickly followed by the sale of some significant pieces and the future of the museum was unclear at the time of writing (see Chapter 6).

At the other end of the spectrum are mega-projects such as The Broad in Los Angeles, established by local philanthropist and real estate developer Eli Broad, who died in 2021, and his wife Edythe. It displays their holdings of over 1500 works, now belonging to the foundation which runs the museum. It is housed in an iconic building designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro, with a white mesh-like ‘veil’ covering the entire structure. Entry is free and the building also hosts temporary exhibitions.

In Miami, the Rubell Museum was inaugurated in late 2019, in a new ‘campus’ adapted from a series of warehouses and offering an expansive 100,000 square feet of space. Its inaugural exhibition consisted of 300 works by 100 artists – drawn from collectors Don and Mera Rubell’s vast holdings of 7200 works by more than 1000 artists, probably the largest privately held assemblage of contemporary art in the United States. Even more commanding is GES-2 in Moscow, a converted power station near the Kremlin and the brainchild of billionaire Leonid Mikhelson. In scale, it surpasses London’s Tate Modern. Originally destined to have a grand opening in 2020, its inauguration was delayed by the COVID-19 crisis to late 2021.

Private museums tend to be of two extremes – small and personal on the one hand and immense on the other – but between are a plethora of spaces, some in repurposed buildings, others in custom-built structures. Their founders may take a close – sometimes too close – interest in the curation, or leave the buying and administration up to advisors. Some may have independent governance, others just family members.

Company museums – a branding exercise

Among the most spectacular of today’s new private museums are those built by fashion and luxury goods groups, notably Bernard Arnault’s Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy (LVMH) and Kering, belonging to François Pinault. This industry is dominated by just these two vastly rich groups, who own a plethora of brands – and have given the world a number of private museums, including the Fondazione Prada in Milan, as well as the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris.

The founders of these corporate museums are generally collectors themselves, the prime example being that of Pinault, who rose from a modest background in rural France to become one of the world’s richest men (worth $46 billion in 2021, according to Forbes).⁹ His sprawling empire includes Kering (wine, watches and fashion houses Gucci, Saint Laurent etc.), Christie’s auction house and other investments. He also has about 10,000 works of contemporary art and in the early 2000s attempted to establish a museum in Paris, on an abandoned site on an island in the Seine river. Frustrated by local opposition and administrative delays, he pulled out of this project and bought the 17th-century Palazzo Grassi in Venice for €29 million.¹⁰ Then two years later, in 2007, Pinault acquired Punta della Dogana, a former customs warehouse on the tip of the island of Dorsoduro, on the Grand Canal just opposite the Piazza San Marco. This was rented for 33 years from the Venetian authorities. A third museum in Paris, the Bourse du Commerce, opened in 2021.

‘A company-backed private museum has to be successful because otherwise it has an impact on the brand,’ comments cultural consultant Sébastien Montabonel:

They have to make it good because it is a brand exercise – it is linked to their business. The challenge of companies like Prada is to be perceived as a luxury brand rather than a mass market one. By affiliating themselves with the art world, it helps them to project an image that is now truly top end; in addition, the only time Prada gets press coverage is during catwalks, but everyone is getting attention then. With a big, smart museum you keep the name in front of the public and get attention 365 days a year.¹¹

Certainly, the biggest and smartest of these company museums is the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s building in Paris. This was rebuilt by Frank Gehry for LVMH on an existing, outdated and abandoned museum, to the tune of €780 million in 2017.¹² It is clearly also a machine for promoting the brand, with the shiny LV logo affixed on the entrance and a group of antique leather Vuitton trunks protruding from a wall. Bernard Arnault, the owner of the parent company LVMH, was the third richest person in the world in 2021, with $150 billion, according to Forbes. Much has been made of the rivalry between Pinault and Arnault, who fell out in 2001 with the battle for Gucci (Pinault won¹³), and now their museums look like proxy weapons: why should Pinault need a third museum, except to challenge Arnault on his home turf?

From office blocks to shopping malls

In 2019 I made the long journey from the UK to Jakarta to visit a private museum established by the Indonesian businessman Haryanto Adikoesoemo, one of the richest men in the country. His space, MACAN (pronounced ‘Machan’) is Indonesia’s first museum of modern and contemporary art but is housed in two floors of an office block owned by Adikoesoemo, a way, he said, of saving on rent. On the ground floor are restaurants and a FamilyMart. The museum shows a selection of his 800-strong collection, plus a temporary exhibition (when I visited, there was a retrospective of the renowned Chinese artist Xu Bing¹⁴). Adikoesoemo’s holdings range from the best-known Indonesian artists such as Nyoman Masriadi to ...