When it comes to loaning objects, many museums and galleries seem to take the adage “neither a borrower nor a lender be” to heart.
But things are changing, thanks in part to initiatives such as the Art Fund’s Weston Loan Programme and Arts Council England’s (ACE) Ready to Borrow, as well as a more proactive stance from some museums.
The British Museum in London is planning to release a series of films on how to borrow, featuring advice from curators, and in January it ran a four-day residential course called Getting Loan Ready, which received almost 50 applications for 10 places.
Charlotte Dew, the Touring Exhibitions Group’s (TEG) Preparing to Borrow programme manager, says: “There’s been a shift towards engagement and partnerships over the past five years and loans are part of that. There’s a top-down understanding from organisations such as ACE that larger organisations should be sharing more.
“Major museums want to demonstrate their value outside London, and the British Museum has really pioneered that way of thinking.”
In 2016-17, the British Museum lent more than 2,200 objects to 113 museums internationally and nearly 3,000 objects to 156 venues in the UK. But the museum’s head of national programmes, Maria Bojanowska, says it gets many loan applications that could be fulfilled equally well by non-national museums.
“We are pretty much at capacity with loans,” she adds. “The British Museum and national collections might not always be the best collection for the story that borrowing institutions want to tell.”
Last summer the Garfield Weston Foundation and the Art Fund launched the £750,000 Weston Loan Programme for the sharing of national collections with museums throughout the UK. This is the first to directly fund and empower smaller museums to borrow. It will distribute £200,000 to 13 museums this year, and fund a training programme.
Rachel Browning, the Art Fund’s acting head of programmes, says that demand for the first of three annual loan tranches was “a lot higher than anticipated” and showed “a huge appetite” for national collections.
The initiative hopes to alleviate one of the main barriers for borrowing. The cost of borrowing was cited as a major concern among 27% of those polled by TEG for its Lending and Borrowing Experiences Report, published last November.
A further 18% cited variable or unexpected fees and costs as a common challenge.
But it’s not all about money. “I think the value of partnerships and collaboration is being addressed and highlighted,” Browning says. “There’s a lot of focus on the number of objects museums have in storage and the fact that many are not acquiring as they used to, so they are asking what they can do to highlight the depth of their collections.”
The Weston Loan Programme funding is only available for three years, but Browning is optimistic about what will emerge afterwards. “I think we will work with current and future cohorts and hopefully will offer something longer-term around the UK,” she says.
But things are changing, thanks in part to initiatives such as the Art Fund’s Weston Loan Programme and Arts Council England’s (ACE) Ready to Borrow, as well as a more proactive stance from some museums.
The British Museum in London is planning to release a series of films on how to borrow, featuring advice from curators, and in January it ran a four-day residential course called Getting Loan Ready, which received almost 50 applications for 10 places.
Charlotte Dew, the Touring Exhibitions Group’s (TEG) Preparing to Borrow programme manager, says: “There’s been a shift towards engagement and partnerships over the past five years and loans are part of that. There’s a top-down understanding from organisations such as ACE that larger organisations should be sharing more.
“Major museums want to demonstrate their value outside London, and the British Museum has really pioneered that way of thinking.”
In 2016-17, the British Museum lent more than 2,200 objects to 113 museums internationally and nearly 3,000 objects to 156 venues in the UK. But the museum’s head of national programmes, Maria Bojanowska, says it gets many loan applications that could be fulfilled equally well by non-national museums.
“We are pretty much at capacity with loans,” she adds. “The British Museum and national collections might not always be the best collection for the story that borrowing institutions want to tell.”
Last summer the Garfield Weston Foundation and the Art Fund launched the £750,000 Weston Loan Programme for the sharing of national collections with museums throughout the UK. This is the first to directly fund and empower smaller museums to borrow. It will distribute £200,000 to 13 museums this year, and fund a training programme.
Rachel Browning, the Art Fund’s acting head of programmes, says that demand for the first of three annual loan tranches was “a lot higher than anticipated” and showed “a huge appetite” for national collections.
The initiative hopes to alleviate one of the main barriers for borrowing. The cost of borrowing was cited as a major concern among 27% of those polled by TEG for its Lending and Borrowing Experiences Report, published last November.
A further 18% cited variable or unexpected fees and costs as a common challenge.
But it’s not all about money. “I think the value of partnerships and collaboration is being addressed and highlighted,” Browning says. “There’s a lot of focus on the number of objects museums have in storage and the fact that many are not acquiring as they used to, so they are asking what they can do to highlight the depth of their collections.”
The Weston Loan Programme funding is only available for three years, but Browning is optimistic about what will emerge afterwards. “I think we will work with current and future cohorts and hopefully will offer something longer-term around the UK,” she says.
