
Museums Confront Their Crowded Basements - pseudolus
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/10/arts/museum-art-quiz.html
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killjoywashere
This is where open, collaborative agreements would be nice to see. There are
square miles of government wall space where the public could enjoy publically
owned art, but instead of paying 300K annual for a small traveling "open
curation" group, the museums jealously horde all the art in basements that
cost $50M to build and required $1M annual upkeep.

I have a real concerns about the leadership of the art world. From my
perspective, they think they're in the business of catering to billioniares
and manicuring real estate, when their real job is supposed to be exposing the
society to art.

If you're interested in the art world, I highly recommend Don Thompson's _The
$12 Million Stuffed Shark_

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tdeck
Somewhat related, many of the world's art treasures are mothballed in duty-
free warehouses where they change hands without ever seeing the light of day.
There was a great Planet Money episode on this a while back:

[https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/02/09/584555705/epis...](https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2018/02/09/584555705/episode-823-planet-
monet)

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jacquesm
The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam is a nice example of one of these. I've visited
the basement on several occasions and it is absolutely astounding what sits
around there gathering dust. The collection on display is but a very tiny
fraction of what the museum actually has.

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ryan_j_naughton
how did you have the opportunity to explore the basement, if you don't mind me
asking?

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jacquesm
I worked with one of the conservators on analyzing the paint of a painting.
The restoration department is in the basement and the only way to get there is
through the catacombs.

