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Should an important Picasso painting be in a private collection? Isn’t it an important part of our artistic heritage? Shouldn’t it belong to all of us, to appreciate and enjoy and learn from, instead of belonging to a single private individual? In short, shouldn’t it be in a public museum?
Of course, many such paintings are not. And no one suggests that it is wrong to own a Picasso or that art collectors are social pariahs. On the contrary, they work with museum curators, lend their paintings for important exhibitions and allow scholars to study them. With the advent of the computer, there is little difficulty in keeping track of where the paintings are, and because of their value, collectors almost always take excellent care of them.
Judging by the prices major paintings bring at auction, they are worth more, much more, in the public marketplace than Dead Sea Scrolls.
Collectors of Near Eastern antiquities have a problem that few of us really appreciate. Perhaps that is because major collectors of these antiquities are, by definition, very wealthy. Obviously, so we think, they have no problems with their multimillion dollar collections.
But that is not true. Major collectors never collect simply as an investment or to make money. They invariably have a collector’s mentality. They love what they collect. They treasure their collections and desire nothing more than having others appreciate their collections.
So what is their problem? They can’t provide for their collections after they die. True, there are some collections that museums would love to have. There are individual pieces that museums vie for. But owning these treasures involves enormous responsibilities—and outlays of lots of money. Museum curators frequently are unwilling or unable to bear this responsibility. They have questions. Do they have space to display—or even store—the items? Do they have the funds to care for them? Do they duplicate what they already have?
Often contributions to the museum simply go in the basement, rarely if ever seen again. Collectors fear that this may happen to their treasures. Many people have told me that items in private collections are often better cared for and conserved than similar items in museums.
The truth is that the amount of artifacts that have been excavated far exceeds the capacity of museums to store and conserve, let alone display. And new finds—both important and trivial—are coming out of the ground every year. Those incontrovertible facts must be the beginning of any discussion as to what should be done with these artifacts.
What museum wants—or is prepared to display—another couple hundred seals or bullae, or another thousand ancient coins? What should be done with the tens of thousands of ancient figurines? Or the hundreds of thousands of pottery vessels that have been recovered—with no end in sight?
One thing is clear. They cannot all be displayed in museums.
The most important thing is that we have some record of them. Fortunately, the advent of the computer has made that relatively easy. And photographs are what scholars mostly use anyway.
Can we really say that objects in a private collection are less accessible than in a museum? Is that true of a Picasso? These are just some things to think about.
Should an important Picasso painting be in a private collection? Isn’t it an important part of our artistic heritage? Shouldn’t it belong to all of us, to appreciate and enjoy and learn from, instead of belonging to a single private individual? In short, shouldn’t it be in a public museum? Of course, many such paintings are not. And no one suggests that it is wrong to own a Picasso or that art collectors are social pariahs. On the contrary, they work with museum curators, lend their paintings for important exhibitions and allow scholars to study them. With the advent […]