Museums and galleries are not as proactive and accessible as they could be when it comes to loaning objects from their collections, despite some excellent examples of good practice.
Maria Bojanowska, the head of national programmes at the British Museum in London, says there is a lack of uniformity in lending practice across the sector.
“Small things could shift the culture of lending in the UK,” she says. “Across the board, more could be done to enable borrowing from regional collections.”
This includes standardised loan agreements, which the Touring Exhibitions Group (TEG) says could facilitate better lending. The Network of European Museum Organisations (Nemo) has developed a standardised loan agreement that encourages “widespread collaboration between museums working towards a common cultural aim and to increase the mobility of works of art in Europe”.
Bojanowska is optimistic that a cultural change is now taking place in the sector, which has been fostered by programmes run by the British Museum, the Art Fund, Arts Council England (ACE) and others.
Her simple advice to being loan-friendly is for organisations to have a point of contact on websites with details about borrowing, which can then be forwarded to the appropriate person.
“One of the inhibitors is where to start and who to contact,” Bojanowska says. “There should be a very straightforward way into that organisation because it can be a bit daunting.”
State of the nations
Last November TEG published its Lending and Borrowing Experiences Report, which included the findings of a survey carried out between May and July among 230 UK museums and galleries (about 9% of the total).
Almost a third of responders said they found it difficult to access information about objects to borrow. This is unsurprising when 55% (mostly made up of local authority museums and galleries) said they did not publish information online on how to borrow.
TEG found that 80% thought lending was “very important” to increasing access to collections, while 61% to thought lending helped to increase their profile.
Diversifying or developing audiences was important to 60% of lenders. Only 7% used lending to fulfil a funding or statutory requirement.
Scheme savvy
Specific schemes, such as Object in Focus Loans, run by London’s Horniman Museum and Gardens, can help increase awareness of a museum’s collection and encourage loan applications.
Object in Focus, which has been running since 2011, aims to loan objects that have been in storage for a number of years or which were on display with only limited information.
Unusually, the Horniman offers the object as part of a package including a showcase, lighting and transport. It also provides interpretation, with the option of an expert talk and publicity. Costs, including transportation and marketing materials, are covered by ACE.
Since July last year, Romanian decorated eggs from the Horniman’s collection have appeared at Bruton Museum, Brent Museum and Archives and East Grinstead Museum, increasing its profile in the regions.
Andrew Herdon, the Horniman’s collections access officer, says the museum averages “eight or nine” loans of its 16 objects selected for the scheme each year, mainly within southern England.
Venues have to be vetted for the standard of their facilities, such as lighting and security, but otherwise only have to add the loaned items to their insurance. No applications have been turned down as yet, although Herdon says he takes a hands-on approach by approaching suitable venues.
“We are more proactive, working with venues to find solutions to the restrictions that loans from all museums have,” Herdon adds.
His colleague Adrian Holloway, the Horniman’s collections manager, adds that there are further advantages to recipients in terms of building skills and confidence.
“Often they think it is beyond their resources, but we do as much as possible of the enabling process,” Holloway says. “For example, UK Registrars Group forms can be quite off-putting, but we take the time to go through them. I don’t think anyone does this type of thing quite the way we do it.”
In Wales, the Cyfoeth Cymru Gyfan (Sharing Treasures) scheme has supported loans and sustainable partnerships between Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum Wales) and other national institutions and local museums.
Small museums
Size shouldn’t matter when it comes to proactive lending. The Library and Museum of Freemasonry in London makes about 10 loans a year from its 20,000-object collection, to borrowers based in the UK and abroad.
Mark Dennis, the museum’s curator, believes in thinking laterally about possible loans.
“We’re a specialist museum, but when you think ‘how does this relate to anything outside?’, you realise that all objects have multiple relevance – all these objects were owned by people that did not just have Masonic lives, they have multiple stories,” he says.
Dennis is a firm believer in using loans to spread the word about a collection and to build relationships with other museums and galleries.
“It’s now in our mission statement that we should have a number of loans,” he says. “One year, as an exercise, we went through every exhibition in London. We reckoned we could have loaned to three-quarters of them.”
He uses publications such as the Salon newsletter of the Society of Antiquaries of London to seek out forthcoming exhibitions and offer items. Dennis says he begins with a simple email to the prospective recipient. He encourages lodges around the country to approach museums and helps to broker relationships, as well as promoting his own institution’s collections.
Dennis says that the museum has benefitted from this approach, particularly from loaning items to exhibitions where the main subject is not freemasonry – such as 2012’s Britain in Palestine exhibition at the Brunei Gallery at Soas, University of London.
“Our items are set in new and often surprising contexts, allowing a fresh view of them by all concerned,” he says.
Dennis warns against museums being tied by best practice guidance. The Spectrum 5.0 collection management standard states that no research should be done “off message”, but Dennis believes that if applied strictly, many opportunities will be missed.
“Do think outside the box, but make sure your mission statement will allow you to,” he adds. “You only need a line to say we will encourage loans where appropriate.”
His advice to first-timers is just to run through collections to see if they have “other lives” and then approach a suitable borrower: “Learn what their standards are – it can be pretty scary letting something out on loan. Know why you are doing it, be clear what the benefits are and maintain control – you need to be reasonably careful about what they are going to say about it and if the exhibition is ‘on message’ to what you do.”
Thinking big
Once partnerships are established, they can lead to big things.
When the Yorkshire Museum in York closed for redevelopment in 2009-10, it provided about 50 medieval items to the British Museum – one of the largest and highest profile loans from an English regional museum to a national. This started a relationship that saw joint ownership of the Vale of York Hoard and production of the current touring exhibition Viking: Rediscover the Legend.
Aside from the prestige and increased exposure that a partnership with a national brings, the learning experience is also invaluable, says Andrew Woods, Yorkshire Museum’s senior curator. “It has been ambitious for us and stretched us. It’s exposed us to different ways and scales of working.”
This is particularly true with touring exhibitions. “While we curated most of the exhibition, there is no way we had the skills or time to plan the move of thousands of objects around the UK,” Woods says. “The British Museum is used to doing that. They really want to emphasise skill and knowledge sharing.”
Woods advises any museum to have similar ambitions. “The nationals are looking to have partnerships in a way perhaps they weren’t a generation ago. You will probably find them much more friendly and encouraging than you perhaps anticipate. It has had a transformational effect for us. Do it.”
Maria Bojanowska, the head of national programmes at the British Museum in London, says there is a lack of uniformity in lending practice across the sector.
“Small things could shift the culture of lending in the UK,” she says. “Across the board, more could be done to enable borrowing from regional collections.”
This includes standardised loan agreements, which the Touring Exhibitions Group (TEG) says could facilitate better lending. The Network of European Museum Organisations (Nemo) has developed a standardised loan agreement that encourages “widespread collaboration between museums working towards a common cultural aim and to increase the mobility of works of art in Europe”.
Bojanowska is optimistic that a cultural change is now taking place in the sector, which has been fostered by programmes run by the British Museum, the Art Fund, Arts Council England (ACE) and others.
Her simple advice to being loan-friendly is for organisations to have a point of contact on websites with details about borrowing, which can then be forwarded to the appropriate person.
“One of the inhibitors is where to start and who to contact,” Bojanowska says. “There should be a very straightforward way into that organisation because it can be a bit daunting.”
State of the nations
Last November TEG published its Lending and Borrowing Experiences Report, which included the findings of a survey carried out between May and July among 230 UK museums and galleries (about 9% of the total).
Almost a third of responders said they found it difficult to access information about objects to borrow. This is unsurprising when 55% (mostly made up of local authority museums and galleries) said they did not publish information online on how to borrow.
TEG found that 80% thought lending was “very important” to increasing access to collections, while 61% to thought lending helped to increase their profile.
Diversifying or developing audiences was important to 60% of lenders. Only 7% used lending to fulfil a funding or statutory requirement.
Scheme savvy
Specific schemes, such as Object in Focus Loans, run by London’s Horniman Museum and Gardens, can help increase awareness of a museum’s collection and encourage loan applications.
Object in Focus, which has been running since 2011, aims to loan objects that have been in storage for a number of years or which were on display with only limited information.
Unusually, the Horniman offers the object as part of a package including a showcase, lighting and transport. It also provides interpretation, with the option of an expert talk and publicity. Costs, including transportation and marketing materials, are covered by ACE.
Since July last year, Romanian decorated eggs from the Horniman’s collection have appeared at Bruton Museum, Brent Museum and Archives and East Grinstead Museum, increasing its profile in the regions.
Andrew Herdon, the Horniman’s collections access officer, says the museum averages “eight or nine” loans of its 16 objects selected for the scheme each year, mainly within southern England.
Venues have to be vetted for the standard of their facilities, such as lighting and security, but otherwise only have to add the loaned items to their insurance. No applications have been turned down as yet, although Herdon says he takes a hands-on approach by approaching suitable venues.
“We are more proactive, working with venues to find solutions to the restrictions that loans from all museums have,” Herdon adds.
His colleague Adrian Holloway, the Horniman’s collections manager, adds that there are further advantages to recipients in terms of building skills and confidence.
“Often they think it is beyond their resources, but we do as much as possible of the enabling process,” Holloway says. “For example, UK Registrars Group forms can be quite off-putting, but we take the time to go through them. I don’t think anyone does this type of thing quite the way we do it.”
In Wales, the Cyfoeth Cymru Gyfan (Sharing Treasures) scheme has supported loans and sustainable partnerships between Amgueddfa Cymru (National Museum Wales) and other national institutions and local museums.
Small museums
Size shouldn’t matter when it comes to proactive lending. The Library and Museum of Freemasonry in London makes about 10 loans a year from its 20,000-object collection, to borrowers based in the UK and abroad.
Mark Dennis, the museum’s curator, believes in thinking laterally about possible loans.
“We’re a specialist museum, but when you think ‘how does this relate to anything outside?’, you realise that all objects have multiple relevance – all these objects were owned by people that did not just have Masonic lives, they have multiple stories,” he says.
Dennis is a firm believer in using loans to spread the word about a collection and to build relationships with other museums and galleries.
“It’s now in our mission statement that we should have a number of loans,” he says. “One year, as an exercise, we went through every exhibition in London. We reckoned we could have loaned to three-quarters of them.”
He uses publications such as the Salon newsletter of the Society of Antiquaries of London to seek out forthcoming exhibitions and offer items. Dennis says he begins with a simple email to the prospective recipient. He encourages lodges around the country to approach museums and helps to broker relationships, as well as promoting his own institution’s collections.
Dennis says that the museum has benefitted from this approach, particularly from loaning items to exhibitions where the main subject is not freemasonry – such as 2012’s Britain in Palestine exhibition at the Brunei Gallery at Soas, University of London.
“Our items are set in new and often surprising contexts, allowing a fresh view of them by all concerned,” he says.
Dennis warns against museums being tied by best practice guidance. The Spectrum 5.0 collection management standard states that no research should be done “off message”, but Dennis believes that if applied strictly, many opportunities will be missed.
“Do think outside the box, but make sure your mission statement will allow you to,” he adds. “You only need a line to say we will encourage loans where appropriate.”
His advice to first-timers is just to run through collections to see if they have “other lives” and then approach a suitable borrower: “Learn what their standards are – it can be pretty scary letting something out on loan. Know why you are doing it, be clear what the benefits are and maintain control – you need to be reasonably careful about what they are going to say about it and if the exhibition is ‘on message’ to what you do.”
Thinking big
Once partnerships are established, they can lead to big things.
When the Yorkshire Museum in York closed for redevelopment in 2009-10, it provided about 50 medieval items to the British Museum – one of the largest and highest profile loans from an English regional museum to a national. This started a relationship that saw joint ownership of the Vale of York Hoard and production of the current touring exhibition Viking: Rediscover the Legend.
Aside from the prestige and increased exposure that a partnership with a national brings, the learning experience is also invaluable, says Andrew Woods, Yorkshire Museum’s senior curator. “It has been ambitious for us and stretched us. It’s exposed us to different ways and scales of working.”
This is particularly true with touring exhibitions. “While we curated most of the exhibition, there is no way we had the skills or time to plan the move of thousands of objects around the UK,” Woods says. “The British Museum is used to doing that. They really want to emphasise skill and knowledge sharing.”
Woods advises any museum to have similar ambitions. “The nationals are looking to have partnerships in a way perhaps they weren’t a generation ago. You will probably find them much more friendly and encouraging than you perhaps anticipate. It has had a transformational effect for us. Do it.”
