Objects of desire

September 8th, 2008

As any good PR knows, profile and impact are everything. When Bob Geldof wants to make a noise about writing off international debt he not only drafts in a retinue of global pop stars but also gets Pink Floyd to reform after 20-odd years for a one-off performance to give Live 8 extra cachet. In museum exhibitions, too, high-profile, high-prestige items can turn up the volume of the whole show, gaining wider attention from the media and boosting visitor numbers.

In 2001, for example, Madonna lent a Frida Kahlo painting from her private collection for a temporary exhibition at the Tate Modern, in London. An arrangement with such an A-lister is great news for profile, with each big name promoting the other in a virtuous circle.

For the larger national museums such showstopping items are easier to come by. With many blue-chip artefacts already in their collections, the nationals have the infrastructure and facilities to keep them safe.

This in turn provides assurance on security and care to potential lenders. But what about smaller museums? How easy is it to borrow the equivalent of a Rembrandt or a Chinese terracotta warrior?

Larger museums are increasingly open to loans of all types, while private collectors often make less stringent stipulations on how their objects should be handled, displayed and insured. With careful consideration and preparation any museum or gallery should be able to display high-value, famous or important items as part of its exhibition programme.

And once you have got the security and environmental standards in place, future loan applications become much more likely to succeed.

“Borrowing a prestigious item with connections to your museum or locality can increase visitor numbers, as well as improve your security long-term,” says Jane Bowen, the curator at Amersham Museum, and a Sharing Collections adviser to the UK Museums Association.

For a major loan application, a space in your museum may need improving to meet security or environmental control standards, so be prepared to invest time and money.

“It’s absolutely worth the investment, but it depends on the level of ambition at your museum or institution,” says Alexander Sturgis, the director of the Holburne Museum of Art in Bath, which has regularly borrowed works from national and private collections.

Making a case

The best place to start is building your case for the loan. There should already be a willingness to lend, but you are more likely to secure an item by presenting a strong case for its place in an exhibition.

“Any museum can approach a larger museum with a request, but do your homework and be clear about exactly what you want to borrow and why. Lenders may have multiple requests, so you may need an argument of why you want it,” says Freda Matassa, an independent museum consultant and formerly the head of collections management at the Tate.

Look around, too. There are sources of prestigious items in public collections apart from those in the national museums. The loan process itself, although involving paperwork, should be seen as a discussion between the lender and the borrower, rather than purely a box-ticking affair.

And the earlier you start that discussion, the greater the likelihood the object will be available and the more time you will have to iron out any snags. As a rule, an application should be submitted at least six months before you want the item, earlier if possible.

Security and indemnity

If you want to borrow a valuable or famous artefact, then security and insurance are probably going to be at the top of the list of concerns, for both borrower and lender.

There are two ways to get insurance in the UK: commercially, from an insurance company; and through the Government Indemnity Scheme (GIS), a system in which the government carries the risk to any article loaned to a UK public museum. Independent museums can also be approved as eligible for GIS cover, as can overseas venues borrowing from the UK’s public collections.

With both types of insurance, a high-value or iconic item will almost certainly require a visit to your venue to assess its facilities, environmental controls and security. For the GIS, this is carried out by the Museums, Libraries and Archives (MLA) security adviser, who can advise on your museum’s facilities and provide guidance on making your application.

Along with the building’s security features, a lender or insurer may also want to know about your emergency procedures, including how you would move an object out of danger in a disaster.

For most public museums the indemnity scheme will be the preferred option as it saves money on commercial insurance. But when borrowing from a private collector, mutually-agreed security and insurance arrangements might be simpler and more practical.

The indemnity standards, although flexible to a degree, are fairly stringent, so indemnity for even very high-value items is possible. The security adviser or lender may insist on specific additional conditions, depending on the nature of the objects to be loaned. As a result, a bespoke assessment by the security adviser will probably be required.

And because no two venues are identical it is impossible to list all of the precautions you may need to put in place. Areas you may need to look at include:

Where to start

To get the process going you will need to provide the lender and security adviser with an up-to-date facilities report on your building, covering some items from the list above. This can be “a big form to take on”, says Bowen.

But once complete, an electronic version of the report can be easily amended to account for changes in the venue, and used for future loan applications. Completing the report can also get you thinking about the environmental and security conditions you may need to put in place to safeguard any loans.

Lending museums in England also use the MLA security adviser to check the suitability of destination venues. Earlier this year, the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London lent a precious 11th-century Anglo-Saxon reliquary cross to Winchester Discovery Centre’s Alfred the Great exhibition.

The V&A had never lent to the venue before, but went through standard checks of seeking approval from the security adviser and receiving facilities, display case and environmental control reports in advance. The V&A also sent a courier with the object to oversee installation and de-installation and provided a specially-made mount.

Although insurance costs can be covered by the indemnity scheme, the lender may expect you to pick up some “out-of-pocket” expenses such as transport, cleaning, conservation, photography and mounts. Transport for valuable or vulnerable items is likely to require specialist couriers, so it is worth being clear about who is paying.

Where possible, many larger museums will absorb some of these costs when lending to public venues, perhaps by providing technical expertise. The Scottish National Portrait Gallery, for example, offered skills and tips on packaging, handling and hanging when it lent paintings by John Byrne to the Moray Art Centre in Scotland in 2008. The exhibition of the artist’s work also features pieces loaned by private collectors.

Professional trust

Using the indemnity scheme as a benchmark for security and care means there may be many standards to meet, but remember that discussion, flexibility and professional trust are really the keys to successful loans.

The V&A, for example, says that, as long as it knows about potential problems beforehand, it will start a discussion with the borrower based on the requirements of the object.

The lending museums will often be able to help with skills and expertise as well as equipment, so if you are not totally prepared at the outset it does not mean that there is no point making an application. There may be relatively simple solutions, too, for example having an invigilator to observe the object for the duration of public access.

Borrowing means taking lots of precautions, but with a co-operative lender and specialist advice, high-prestige loans are within the reach of smaller museums. In 2006, the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath in the West of England was able to show original Rembrandt prints loaned from the British Museum as part of a touring exhibition organised by the Hayward Gallery in London. And this year Colchester Castle Museum borrowed 43 ancient miniature terracotta figures from Xuzhou Museum in China. In this way, an investment in infrastructure now could mean a string of star objects visiting the museum for many years to come.

This article was written for Museum Practice, Autumn 2008.

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