ingenlivsgnist
Should private collectors have an obligation to share their art with the public?
With the super rich outbidding museums and hiding their art, more and more art is becoming out of reach for the public. For many rich private collectors, art is a secure investment, especially so called Blue Chip art. Blue Chip art works are highly sought after art piece that is expected to keep or rise in value regardless the world economic condition. These art pieces are often bought by the super rich, the so called 1%, and kept in high security storage. They are bought mainly for their expected rise in value, and not for the appreciation of the artwork or the artist.
The artworks are often “hidden” in tax havens, so called freeports. These are warehouses that specialises in storing high value goods with the sole reason being avoiding taxes. One of these freeports is the Geneva freeport, in 2014 it was estimated that over 1.2 millions artworks where being stored in this port alone. What does this mean for the appreciation of the artworks and what art is meant for?
With these artworks being locked away for years and decades they are in a sense disappearing from the face of the earth. What can be done to share the art with the public, and not just have it locked away as an investment?
There are already people trying to make private collections more accessible to the public. A lot of large private collectors are opening up their own museums displaying their art, but expecting every private collector to open up their own art museum may be to much to ask. Therefore a newly opened museum in france, MoCo, Hôtel des collections, is aiming to make more private collectors share their artworks with the public. This is a museum without their own collection, instead they display different curated private and public collections throughout the year. The development of the museum has been led by Nicolas Bourriaud who said “We want to empty the freeport…it is a shame that so many artworks, and so many amazing ensembles of works, are hidden…making them public is the real ethical drive for us” in a article from artnet.
Others are using social media and the internet to spread private collections to a wider population. Private collectors Jessica and Evrim Oralkan has founded Collecteurs.com. A website where private collectors can share their artworks to everyone with an internet connection.
Even though many private collectors hide their art in storage there are still people and collectors motivated and willing to make the hidden artworks more accessible to the public. Maybe with the rising spread of connectivity, internet and social media, more of the hidden art can come back to the light to again be appreciated by the public.
https://news.artnet.com/exhibitions/nicolas-bourriaud-moco-montpellier-1589449
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/arts/design/art-collection-digital-museum.html
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