Ownership, Reimagined
For museums and other cultural institutions, the practice and politics of collecting are paramount. Acquiring and stewarding over art and other artifacts is a complicated enterprise – an enterprise that is invariably constrained by the financial resources of individual museums. In recent years, cash-strapped museums have increasingly turned to joint-acquisition strategies (in which two museums partner together to purchase a work of art) as a means by which to make purchases beyond their means. This turn towards co-ownership is mirrored in the private sector, where companies like Masterworks have successfully securitized artworks and a spate up recent Web3 start-ups have promoted “decentralized” and fractionalized investment in art as an asset class.
This project sets out to chart a history of co-and fractional ownership, as pertains specifically to the acquisition and stewardship of art. “New” as such ownership practices may ring, their history far precedes our contemporary moment. In 1972, notably, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre announced a program of cooperation between the two institutions that looked to facilitate joint ownership, exhibitions and exchanges of selected artworks. This program commenced with the two museums’ joint purchase of Tree of Jesse, a thirteenth-century German ivory sculpture.
The subject of co- and fractional acquisition is, on the one hand, a highly administrative one. As the Metropolitan Museum of Art-Louvre agreement exemplifies, the issue of co-acquisition is inextricable from such broader institutional concerns as rising insurance costs and global competition to acquire new works. On the other hand, the topic of co-acquisition raises complex philosophical questions about the very nature of ownership itself, and how institutions might, moving forward, imagine new and more inclusive ways of arbitrating property. Co-acquisition agreements can make artifacts more visible to more audiences (the respective audiences of both institutions). It can promote productive partnerships across institutions and communities. It can also bolster the ability of less-established institutions around the world to build their collections, while at the same time allowing more-established institutions to diversify their collections with an urgency that meets our present moment.
How, when and where does co-ownership come into play as a relevant and necessary museological maneuver? What are the historical, political, institutional and economic conditions that define its rise and development? How does co-ownership morally and administratively relate to present debates on the restitution and repatriation of cultural heritage? In what ways might co-ownership be more strategically leveraged to the benefit of institutions, publics, artists and nations alike? Taking the Metropolitan Museum of Art-Louvre agreement as a central example, my research traces the historical arc of institutional co-ownership against the backdrop of these and other questions, combining archival research and interviews to advance our art historical understanding of a subject – ownership – that stands at the very heart of what museums are and can become.