Books: The Exemplary Museum: Art and Academia

Samuel Kress was one of those great American art collectors whose money dominated the European art market at the beginning of the 20th century.

Making his fortune from a chain of five- and 10-cent stores, Kress appears to have been as canny a collector of art as he was shopkeeper. He concentrated his collecting on the Italian Renaissance, a style that at that time was generally felt to look out of date and old fashioned.

As a result there were bargains to be had and by the end of the 1920s Kress had acquired a collection of almost 3,000 objects, including nearly 1,400 old master paintings.

Kress was not, however, just a busy collector. He and the foundation that he established in 1929 were, and continue to be, generous and enlightened donors.
He made his first gift, a painting by Melchior d’Hondecoeter to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1927, and in 1941 gave more than 400 paintings and sculptures to the fledgling National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.

This was the beginning of the so-called Great Kress Giveaway which, over a period of 20 years, saw the dispersal of a large portion of his collection, including the gift of some 700 old masterpaintings to more than 40 galleries throughout America.

These included over 20 college and university art museums where the programme was given a slightly more academic title, the Kress Study Collection Program.

Transatlantic difference

A notable feature of the Samuel H Kress Foundation’s policy has been its continuing interest in its donations and the galleries that care for them.

In his foreword to The Exemplary Museum, the president of the foundation, Max Marmor, traces the book’s origin to the foundation’s concern that colleges and universities, faced with financial challenges, might see galleries and museums as “prime candidates for monetisation”.

It’s a familiar topic on this side of the Atlantic and one ripe for a new approach.
But transatlantic comparisons are often treacherous, not least because the position and purpose of university museums in the UK are unlike that of the museums that form part of this study. The curriculum and teaching styles are considerably different.

Because of this, art collections are far more integrated right across college curricula than is the case in the UK. Academic museums in the US appear to have recognised the value of embedding themselves in the college teaching programmes – and not just as a means of survival. Today “campus art museums reach out to faculty in support of teaching and research” across a wide range of disciplines.

Loans for students

The record is an impressive one. The Oberlin Gallery had 142 class visits from 19 different departments during the 2010-11 academic year. How many university museums could dare to match the same gallery’s Art Rental Program where students can, for $5, borrow from a special collection of over 400 works including paintings by Monet, Toulouse Lautrec and Picasso to hang in their rooms?

In some cases Kress donations have inspired a new gallery; in others they enabled fresh developments in existing facilities.

No surprises

Indeed everything seems fairly perfect in the seven museums that form the basis of this study. Quite what is going on in the other 700 American academic institutions that have an art museum or gallery is less clear. To be fair this was not the author Corrine Glesne’s brief but it would have helped to get some feeling for the wider context in which these museums were working.

It would be a dangerously complacent museum that had nothing to learn from Glesne’s meticulous study but her findings will provide few surprises on this side of the water. The importance of an inspirational museum director, and the analysis of the impact of reductions in funding levels on staff and organisations are only too familiar.

The identification of “factors that have influenced participants’ interest in art and art museums” are equally unlikely to rock many back on their heels – exposure to art as a child; a course in art history; a job in an art gallery; visits to art museums. You could have knocked me over with a feather.

Timothy Mason is a museum consultant