The National Gallery dispatches Rembrandt, Renoir and others in the United States
Angelica Daneo, the chief curator of the Denver Museum of Art, called Rembrandt “one of the most famous artists of the 1600s” and an artist who “played a key role in the development of European art,” but until recently, residents of Mile High City had visited other places unless any other paintings were made. The artist has created nearly 300 paintings in his career, but not every museum has one. Fortunately for Denver residents, this situation has been corrected for two years, thanks to at least the new nationally established program by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., which is a loan work from permanent collection to smaller and medium-sized museums across the United States.
The purpose of the program is to be shared with museums in the permanent collection of artworks in the National Gallery, many of which are in rural areas, mainly in western states, which the West does not have the ability to display in its communities. Ten museums (Anchorage Museum in Alaska, Boise Museum of Art in Idaho, Denver Museum of Art in Colorado, Figuere Museum of Art in Iowa, Flint Institute of Art in Michigan, Peppermint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina, North Carolina, New British Museum of Art, North Gas Lake in Northern Utah, North Gas Lake in Northern Utah, Art Museum in Northern Utah. The Nevada Museum of Art in Reno is part of the first round of loans, with more expectations in the coming years.
“We have a lot to offer; our collection is here to offer the country and we feel we lack the opportunity to share with more people,” Kate Haw, an official at the National Art Gallery’s program, exhibition and audience participation, told Observer. “Many people may not be able to come to Washington to see the collection on our campus. While we welcome four million visitors a year and are very generous in providing generous donations to special exhibitions and museums across the country and around the world, we feel we can do more for the country in our community. And, since we are a national museum, we do want to share our sharing more actively.”
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The National Gallery curators have compiled a list of 700 American and European artworks from their collections, representing paintings and photographs, dating back to the 15th century. Works by Flanders artists Hans Memling, along with Sandro Botticelli and Andy Warhol were sent to the Flint Accipting of Arts, while others received 19th and 20th centuries French works (the painting graves of Henri Matisse, Auguste Renoir and Paul Cezanne and the Nevada Museum of Art received 70 photos of dorothea Lange).
“The Nevada Museum of Art organized an exhibition called “Sagebrush and Solitude: Maynard Dixon of Nevada,” Ann M. Wolfe, senior curator and deputy director of the museum, told Observer. Dixon is a painter, “married to Dorothea Lange, and we want to follow up with the exhibition at the Dixon exhibition.” The National Art Gallery has a large number of photos of Lange and offers to share Trove with the Nevada Museum of Art. “This partnership is a great opportunity to work with the National Gallery.”
All 700 pieces of art available through the country are in storage, which means it doesn't matter if you're in DC or not – you can't see them anyway. Pulling fragments from storage space solves two problems: how to make sure there is always space in the art library and how to commemorate the works collected by the museum. The National Gallery makes their offer more attractive by paying for money, shipping and insurance for artworks borrowed for them. For their part, lending museums need to demonstrate that they have adequate protection, proper climate control, and the ability to physically protect the work. Some staff were invited to the National Gallery for training.
The largest museums have massive collections that are kept in storage and rarely make it to the exhibition galleries—the Met in New York has two million objects, while the Art Institute of Chicago has north of 300,000, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has roughly 450,000 and MoMA has around 200,000 paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, photographs, media and performance artworks, architectural models and drawings, design objects and movies, except for about 2 million movie stills. In many cases, the work is for good reason: some are fragile, packed, moved, and even displayed. “Many objects need 'rest',” said Charity Charts, executive director of the Midwest Museum Association, told Observer. “For example, it is unwise to show what is shown over a prolonged period of time that may disappear due to light exposure.”
But other objects are still in storage, as museum curators choose not to display them. They may have exhibited enough musical friction, or the corner of the gallery is a model for the artist’s work. Over the past few decades, donors offloaded large quantities of artwork to museums, conditions that could not be sold, loaned or traded, and past museum curators and directors often accepted a lot of material, some of which might have been misunderstood or forged – because they really had a bunch of gems. (Today’s museum officials accept donations that include conditions and find the possibility of a way to pick what they really want.)
Museums try not to quit static with art and other items in the gallery with stored items to expand their story about art history and to provide loans to other institutions that are organizing special exhibitions. But this still leaves a lot of items owned by the museum and may never see the light of the day.
As for why more major museums in the country won’t lend more works, consider that artworks in the museum’s permanent collection are not without risks. Jonathan Stuhlman, senior curator of American art at the Mint Museum, told Observer that loans can create “wear and wear on objects. Do you want to know, do people who borrow these works know how to take care of them?” In addition, lending arts can incur costs because promoting loans requires back-end work on both sides and agencies must hire a registrar to track where the debris are and when they expire.
Haw said choosing a work of art also takes time and effort. “We entered the series and looked at works that had no restrictions on donors or any other conditions, which made them too vulnerable.” After identifying a group of 700 works, the National Gallery curators sought peers at smaller institutions across the country to allow them to choose their works from our collections. “They are the ones who decide. We don't decide who to be with,” she clarified.
Museums often provide works to other museums, and special exhibitions in institutions are often borrowed from various museums borrowed from the United States and elsewhere. “The Metropolitan Metropolitan lends to museums of all sizes nationwide as part of its active and upcoming loan program,” a spokeswoman said. The Smithsonian Agency in Washington, D.C., works with more than 200 museums and libraries nationwide to coordinate special performance loans for subjects, while the Crystal Bridge Museum in Benkenville, Arkansas has established a similar program, the Bridge of Arts, which expands access between collections by promoting long-term loans and travel exhibitions to promote long-term loans and travel exhibitions and promotes all models between various museums. Chicago-based Terra Foundation has its own loan program that provides works for special exhibitions for the American art collection.
The difference between national art galleries nationwide is that their loans are not fixed in specific exhibitions, but are intended to strengthen or fill gaps in permanent exhibitions. The works of famous artists have introduced tourists. “Renoir, Mattis, Cezanne, we don’t have this work and this title recognition in our museum,” Amy Chaloupka, the chief curator of Whatcom Museum, told Observer. “When people see these names, people are attracted to the museum.”
Kahla Woodling Desmit, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Museum Association, told Observer that the entire national plan would not happen in a better moment. “Previously, federal agencies like the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Humanities Foundation would fund exhibitions and often help address these costs,” she said. “However, in the current government situation, many of these grants have been terminated within the last month, which has left many museums and cultural institutions concerned that their planned exhibitions may never be open, or that they will have to bear the costs that were once paid by federal grants.”
