The art of not enriching one’s museum collections

Enriching the museum through the acquisition of works of art is one of the tasks of curators as defined in the French Heritage Law. This is no easy task: budgets are often insufficient; curators must have a thorough knowledge of their collections; numerous obstacles (sometimes due to absurd rules imposed by the supervisory authorities) can arise; it is necessary to weigh up all the opportunities that come up; you have to avoid overpaying for works while not missing out on anything that is essential to French heritage... Knowing how to buy is an art in itself, and it is a necessary skill for a head of an institution.

Sometimes obvious, essential objects come up for sale. This is when the work itself is significant in relation to the artist’s output and the art of its time, because of its provenance or simply because of its exceptional quality. It fits perfectly into the museum’s collections and there is nothing else like it. Even better if no other French museum can display works that are comparable to it.
Then comes the price. An object may have all the qualities mentioned above, but its price may be beyond the museum’s budget. The museum must then do everything possible to find the necessary funds: from the Ministry of Culture, through sponsorship, fundraising, etc.
In short, failure is unfortunately possible, but you have to give yourself the means to succeed.

And then there are those who don’t know how to acquire, who are sometimes afraid to buy for fear of making a mistake, who don’t follow the market, who don’t know it, and who sometimes don’t even care, believing that it’s not very important. One sometimes wonders what they are doing at the head of a museum.
The situation is certainly even more annoying when it concerns a national museum that is supposed to be exemplary in its field, when the work in question is sold at auction with the possibility, exorbitant under common law, of preempting – that is, not bidding but substituting oneself for the successful…