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Ethics Q&A: Auction houses
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September 2001
An auction house has contacted our museum. It is handling the sale of a collection of paintings by a local artist which has surfaced following the recent death of a private collector.
The auction house is offering to loan a selection of these works for exhibition at the museum for four days, just prior to the sale. It would be wonderful for our museum to be able to host a first-time showing of previously unseen (and unknown) works by this artist, before the collection is sold and split up.
But we are keenly aware of the potential problems arising from the public perception of a museum linked with an auction house in this way.
This is a tricky issue. While no curator would wish to deny public access to work by a significant local artist, it will be difficult in practice to avoid the appearance that a public museum is acting as an extension of a commercial auction house's saleroom.
You could exhibit the collection without prices or auction catalogues and point out that it was not a private view for a select few private buyers. But the public will inevitably be aware of the impending sale and so it will be virtually impossible not to give the impression that this is a sale preview.
In so doing, it is difficult to see how the museum can avoid appearing to promote the sale and adding value to the works on display.
There are considerable benefits to the auction house from an exhibition in the museum in generating interest from just the sort of buyers they want to reach. By being viewed in a museum, the works are perceived by visitors to be of 'museum standard', which might not be the case.
By exhibiting them, the works are publicly endorsed by your museum. You do not mention your museum's own interest in any possible acquisitions from the collection. If the resources are available, they might be better deployed in acquiring one or two select items for the permanent collections.
If the museum does wish to make acquisitions, both to exhibit and then to purchase, it would raise questions about the relationship between museum and auction house, which might appear too cosy.
If the museum really believes the exhibition is worth doing, it is worth doing properly. The museum's normal standards of presentation should not be compromised. The museum, not the auction house should decide which works are selected for display and how they are hung.
There must be a good level of interpretation and placing of the works in context. Labels, guide, catalogue, educational and evaluative programmes: all the usual methods for providing maximum public benefit from a show should be provided.
The auction house may well believe that it is acting altruistically, so it is incumbent on the museum to act graciously towards it. The museum should explain the ethical problems that acceptance of the auction house's offer will pose.
On balance, therefore, it is probably wisest to decline the offer on the following grounds: that the commercial benefits to the auction house outweigh the limited benefits to the public and that consequently the integrity of the museum will be called into question.
Apart from selective acquisition to the museum's permanent collections, perhaps the most constructive and long-term public benefit that can derive from the auction house's offer would be to arrange for the museum to hold a set of photographs of the collection as an archival record.
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