Less than 8% of DIA's art is on display

[majohnson]

Less than 8% of the DIA art is on display.

For those that want the DIA to be preserved, over 92% of it could be used without changing a single item on display.

“Museum officials confirmed Friday that Artvest Partners in New York has been hired to put a price tag on the museum’s 66,000-object collection, of which about 5,000 pieces are on display.”

Detroitnews.com, June 13, 2014

New York appraisers to evaluate entire DIA collection

http://www.detroitnews.com/article/2...#ixzz34rLpTlLa

[corktownyuppie]

All of what you are saying is true. And if there were a way to lease out the 92% of the art that is not displayed, thereby "monetizing" it, then I don't think you'd see any objections. But we can't find a way to do that. The same went with Belle Isle, which is why we have the lease where the DNR gets control of the island, and in exchange they pay for its operation.

Neither the court nor the creditors can force a liquidation, the title of many of the paintings will not allow for a liquidation, and a liquidation will compromise the future operations of the DIA.

So given that being the case, what would you do if the 92% of the art that is not displayed would allow all debts to be paid?

[Thruster315]

Am I supposed to be shocked or disappointed that the other 92% is not on display for the public to see? I don't see this as an issue for any art museum as I'm sure they rotate art in and out to keep things fresh. I didn't see anything in the article stating what the 92% is doing at the moment either. Is the work being cleaned, restored, re-framed, photographed, x-rayed, scanned properly, or having some other procedure being done to it?

[Jason]

That's normal for museums. Some of the art is rotated, and some of it is lent to other museums. I think the art in storage is also available for academic work. The rest is basically hoarded. The museum acquires what it can and tries to build the best collection it can.

In order to actually display all the art... Think of how big the DIA is, and then imagine that making it 10 times as big still wouldn't make it big enough to display all the art. They'd love to be able to display it all but it's not practical.

[majohnson]

corktown, yes they can easily lease the art if they wanted to monetize

Thruster, no 92% percent is not being cleaned etc

Jason, that's the point, hoarding what they can't even hope to display
If they put rotated one piece a day it would take 180 years to rotate through the stock. I doubt they put out one new piece a day or make that average with sudden massive display changes.

People complain that any change to the DIA works an robbery of the future's cultural inheritance. When in fact, leasing/selling 92% of it would be undetectable to DIA visitors.

[Vic01]

corktown, yes they can easily lease the art if they wanted to monetize

People complain that any change to the DIA works an robbery of the future's cultural inheritance. When in fact, leasing/selling 92% of it would be undetectable to DIA visitors.

"Neither the court nor the creditors can force a liquidation, the title of many of the paintings will not allow for a liquidation".

"Leasing" yes, selling is "off the table" so get over it already. Also, if you think leasing it is so "easy" then why don't you find someone to lease it and present the offer to the DIA as a goodwill gesture.

[EastsideAl]

This is absolutely normal for major museum collections. In fact, at 8% the DIA is able to show a larger percentage of their total collection than most. Most major museums can only show about 2 to 4% of their holdings. The mammoth Metropolitan Museum in NYC generally has only about 1% of its total collection of over 2 million pieces on view at any given time.

Museums do generally move pieces in and out of display rather regularly [[although the 'greatest hits' almost always remain in the galleries). They often loan them out to other museums for shows [[this is generally done at the cost of shipping and insurance as a reciprocal courtesy). And they make them available to art scholars.

It has become fashionable in recent years, mostly due to cost cutting, for big museums to mount "in-house" shows that pull together pieces actively shown in the galleries and others not normally shown in order to spotlight certain artists, periods, etc. DIA has not been able to afford many of these even. Several other major museums have put sizable parts of their collections into "visible storage", with the artworks crowded together behind clear plastic. But DIA can't afford that and doesn't have room for it either.

But the bottom line is that the DIA isn't doing anything unusual, underhanded, or incompetent [[in fact, quite the opposite) by showing 8% of their art at any given time.

[corktownyuppie]

corktown, yes they can easily lease the art if they wanted to monetize....
People complain that any change to the DIA works an robbery of the future's cultural inheritance. When in fact, leasing/selling 92% of it would be undetectable to DIA visitors.

Where are you reading that the art can easily be leased? The DIA and the City have repeatedly tried to do so with no success. The DIA has never objected to a lease, and I believe they would be quite receptive to doing so. I certainly would be receptive in supporting it.

[Vic01]

The Detroit City Council this morning voted for the second time this month to endorse the transfer of art and other assets at the city-owned Detroit Institute of Arts to a charitable trust as part of a proposal to protect the art from being sold off in the city’s bankruptcy case.
The council’s second-ranking member, George Cushingberry Jr., said federal mediators involved in the bankruptcy case determined the council’s first resolution — passed on June 5 — was not satisfactory.
The first resolution indicated that the council supported the art transfer. The resolution passed today reads that the city council approves the transfer. The first resolution also referenced some additional questions the council had about the transfer, corporation counsel Butch Hollowell said today.
“This is a final and full-throated approval of the transfer of assets,” Hollowell said after the council’s unanimous vote.

http://www.freep.com/article/2014061...ouncil-DIA-art

Or... we could keep on discussing selling the art and beating the dead horse?

[MikeyinBrooklyn]

Agree with above posters about the 92%. First, it is common for museums to have things rotated in and out, being repaired/cleaned, loaned out, available for special inquiries, etc. Second, the notion of selling the off-display collection presupposes that the 92% would be of equal value, per item, as the 8% on display. What's not on display is not likely masterpieces by Cezanne, Rodin, Rivera, and Bouguereau.

[nain rouge]

I would like the DIA to find a way to showcase more of its collection. I'm not a fan of how much space is continuously dedicated to the same Renaissance portraits. I understand the historical importance of such paintings, but I wouldn't mind seeing some other works more often. Rotate, DIA, rotate!

[Scottathew]

I took a tour in Chattanooga, Tennessee today. The tour guide was naming off all the things around town to do including the art museum and he said that it was a great museum, but "nothing like the one in Detroit".

It was cool to see something that we're known for so far away from home.

[Scottathew]

Agree with above posters about the 92%. First, it is common for museums to have things rotated in and out, being repaired/cleaned, loaned out, available for special inquiries, etc. Second, the notion of selling the off-display collection presupposes that the 92% would be of equal value, per item, as the 8% on display. What's not on display is not likely masterpieces by Cezanne, Rodin, Rivera, and Bouguereau.

Very excellent point.

[SDCC]

I took a tour in Chattanooga, Tennessee today. The tour guide was naming off all the things around town to do including the art museum and he said that it was a great museum, but "nothing like the one in Detroit".

It was cool to see something that we're known for so far away from home.

I was in an art class @ San Diego State University and several works of art at the DIA were part of the lecture.

[mwilbert]

The art market doesn't follow an 80/20 rule, but something more like a 95/5 rule. The 92% that isn't on display is almost certainly worth less than 10% of what the portion of the collection on display is.

[Gistok]

The last scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark isn't that far from the truth, when it comes to larger museums. The Smithsonian alone, which only displays 1% of its' collections, probably has several of these warehouses... https://infocus.emc.com/wp-content/u...l-Figure-3.png

[EastsideAl]

Part of the reason for the holding of art that may now seem out of style, inferior, or of low value is that fashions, curatorial trends, and the art market in general do change.

A case in point is the work of Bouguereau, mentioned by Mikey above. He was a very popular artist in the 19th century. His work came to be seen as embarrassingly overly romantic and backward-looking French academic painting [[some would still say that it is), and museum storage areas were full of his paintings. Now though, his work is very much back in style and once again hanging prominently in museum galleries around the country, along with the work of a lot of other similar pre-modern academic painters.

Hell, for a long time a lot of museums wouldn't even hang most of their 'overly florid' Sargents, and now they can't show enough of them [[and the DIA has a few wonderful ones).

[SDCC]

Part of the reason for the holding of art that may now seem out of style, inferior, or of low value is that fashions, curatorial trends, and the art market in general do change.

A case in point is the work of Bouguereau, mentioned by Mikey above. He was a very popular artist in the 19th century. His work came to be seen as embarrassingly overly romantic and backward-looking French academic painting [[some would still say that it is), and museum storage areas were full of his paintings. Now though, his work is very much back in style and once again hanging prominently in museum galleries around the country, along with the work of a lot of other similar pre-modern academic painters.

Hell, for a long time a lot of museums wouldn't even hang most of their 'overly florid' Sargents, and now they can't show enough of them [[and the DIA has a few wonderful ones).

It really does

[1953]

Art cannot be left on constant display for a variety of reasons, including that it fades in less-than-ideal conditions. That's an important reason why its regularly rotated off of display, and is not lent to someone else to display when it is off of display - its secured in environmentally-secure storage areas where it does not deteriorate as rapidly. Think about what would happen to the DIA's DaVinci drawings if they were left exposed to light all the time...

1953

[mwilbert]

Art cannot be left on constant display for a variety of reasons, including that it fades in less-than-ideal conditions. That's an important reason why its regularly rotated off of display, and is not lent to someone else to display when it is off of display - its secured in environmentally-secure storage areas where it does not deteriorate as rapidly. Think about what would happen to the DIA's DaVinci drawings if they were left exposed to light all the time...

1953

This is 100% true, but there are lots of objects that don't have that problem, and in fact the DIA and all museums have a lot of art that is seldom if ever off-display, and if it is, is usually being displayed somewhere else.

[Huggybear]

Forget the fact that there is no market for leasing art. That's been beaten to death. Let's address this:

People complain that any change to the DIA works an robbery of the future's cultural inheritance. When in fact, leasing/selling 92% of it would be undetectable to DIA visitors.

By that logic, you would eliminate 99% of every library's permanent collection because the analysis would show that maybe 1,000 out of 4 million books represented 99% of all reading.

And it's a good thing that such philistinic thinking only occasionally gets into public policy. Because you get things like stealing the marble off the Colosseum because it's expedient for agriculture at the time, burning books because they're cheap kinding at the time, and using the Parthenon as an ammo dump because it has a great hilltop position. Maybe we could strip the copper from a vacant building because we can get four bucks for it today and no current user will notice. This is the thinking of people who can't think past the present, and the City of Detroit's sad state is a testament to the result.

The entire purpose of cultural patrimony is preservation and perpetuation of works of art and culture. And part of that, I guess, is keeping those items safe from people like you.

HB

[rb336]

Agree with above posters about the 92%. First, it is common for museums to have things rotated in and out, being repaired/cleaned, loaned out, available for special inquiries, etc. Second, the notion of selling the off-display collection presupposes that the 92% would be of equal value, per item, as the 8% on display. What's not on display is not likely masterpieces by Cezanne, Rodin, Rivera, and Bouguereau.

yes, they have masterpieces that are not on display. They have a HUGE collection of Rembrandt etchings [[I think it is the largest in the country, and yes, they are contemporaneous and not later imprints) They regularly have Van Gogh's self portrait and Postman Roulin on display, but they have at least two others that are not, they have 7 Rodin's, of which only Eve and The Thinker are regulars

[motz]

DetroitYes' new theme seems to be "Things I thought were common knowledge, but apparently lots of other people weren't aware of". First MCS and the windows, now "THE DIA DOESN'T SHOW 100% OF ITS ART??!?". Of course not, that'd give local residents much much less of a reason to come by. Imagine if every time you went to the movies, the same 10 movies were showing. They are all great movies, but you're going to get burnt out quick.

[Detroitnerd]

I happen to know that the DIA is in the middle of an exhaustive digital archiving project. Needless to say, you'll be able to view a whole lot more of that art in the near future ...

[corktownyuppie]

i happen to know that the dia is in the middle of an exhaustive digital archiving project. Needless to say, you'll be able to view a whole lot more of that art in the near future ...

but will they be able to lease out the digital archives?!?!!