by Jon Lackman | 11 February 2008 | Contemporary, Museums
What percentage of art museum collections are on display at any time? If the percentage is too small, should the art travel more so that it can be seen? What about the risk to the works? According to the New York Times, Eli Broad recently made the surprising decision not to give his contemporary-art collection to Los Angeles County Museum of Art, which is about to open the Broad Contemporary Art Museum, “a $56 million addition”:
“I have total confidence in Lacma,” he said in an interview last month at his office in West Los Angeles. But he added firmly, “We did not build the collection and are not continuing to build it to have 80 percent of it in storage,” something that often happens with large collections once they are passed along to a single museum. “I’ve seen too much of that happen.”
