What's your motivation??

The November 10^th New York Times article entitled “Dakis Joanou’s Show at New Museum Raises Ethical Flags”, gives an account of a new exhibit to be shown at The New Museum of Contemporary Art in Manhattan. The main issue being raised by this article is that Dakis Joanou is a trustee of the museum as well as a donor and long time patron of the curator. Within the antiquities world, some view this as a conflict of interest, as in these hard economic times, a museum displaying “contemporary” art may increase the value – therefore increasing what Joanou could sell these pieces for if he so chose.

The American Association of Museums has set “guidelines” for this sort of thing and when it comes to exhibiting borrowed objects they state that “transparency, intellectual integrity and institutional control” must be stressed, but the guideline is simply to outline the potential conflicts when members turn into lenders. In a phone interview, Joanou stated that this was a non-issue for him and insinuates that even if he were not a trustee, his collection would still be questioned.

I am leaning towards siding with Joanou in this case, as over the past couple of weeks it has come to my attention that in the art world, people are always going to have their opinions of what others are doing, and sure, it may look like Joanou is attempting to increase the value of his collection, but to be quite honest – this man lives in Athens, he most likely is very well off as apparently he has no problems spending $2700 on a basketball suspended in a tank of liquid – so why would he have any other desire than to share his collection with the American public?

Within the academic world it seems that very often collectors are scrutinized for wanting to exhibit their private collections, because certainly economic motivations are the only reasons they could possibly have for sharing. Even Shelby White, the epitome of “The Good Collector”, has her motivations questioned. I understand that museums and the antiquities world must maintain integrity, but at some point it becomes a paranoid scramble wherein everyone involved must be questioned. And I have to ask, to what point? It is normal for collectors to be trustees and patrons to museums, and the very title “collector” tells us that they collect – so naturally at some point they will want to exhibit their collections. If they chose to go to another museum, would this not cause another tidal wave of “ethical questions”, as they would have seemingly betrayed the museum to which they are a trustee, and they MUST have monetary motivations to this other museum. See… there is no winning!

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/arts/design/11museum.html?scp=1&sq=museum&st=cse