By DAVID BARSTOW
Published: August 3, 2000
Responding to criticism over the financing of last year's ''Sensation'' exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and shows like it, the American Association of Museums announced yesterday that it had adopted new ethical guidelines on how museums should oversee displays of art borrowed from private collections.
The new guidelines advise against some of the practices used by the Brooklyn Museum in its staging of ''Sensation,'' an exhibition of British contemporary art drawn from the collection of Charles Saatchi, the London advertising magnate.
But more broadly, the guidelines provide strong counsel on how museums across the country should finance and supervise such exhibitions at a time when museums rely increasingly on donations from art dealers, corporations, auction houses and wealthy collectors who all stand to gain from public displays of art in which they have a private commercial interest.
The guidelines were adopted during a July 13 board meeting of the association. The board voted unanimously but withheld an announcement about the vote until the association had informed its membership, which includes 3,000 museums and 11,400 museum professionals and trustees.
The guidelines, voluntary for now, are likely to be adopted by the association's accreditation commission. If so, museums could be denied accreditation -- and risk losing financial support from governments and foundations -- if they failed to follow the guidelines.
''There was a lot of confusion in the field about what was best practice,'' said Edward H. Able Jr., president and chief executive officer of the association.
By adopting the new guidelines, he said, the association hopes to bolster public confidence in museums and also demonstrate to lawmakers that museum professionals are eager to devise their own rules to deal with the potential conflicts of interest often inherent in exhibitions of private collections.
Although such issues have long been debated quietly within the art world, the ''Sensation'' exhibition was the catalyst for a major reexamination of museum ethics, and the new guidelines mark the first attempt to reach an industry-wide consensus on how such conflicts should be addressed, museum executives said yesterday.
''It would be a mistake,'' Mr. Able said, ''to say that the Brooklyn Museum of Art exhibition did not prompt us to decide to take a close look at this.''
Arnold Lehman, director of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, is on vacation and did not respond yesterday to telephone messages seeking his comment, nor did other senior executives at the museum. Other museum officials, though, welcomed the new guidelines. ''There are occasionally lines that have to be drawn, not only in the sand but also in the bedrock on issues of curatorial integrity,'' said Harold Holzer, vice president for communications at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. ''This can't be anything less than healthy for the field.''
The ''Sensation'' exhibition first drew criticism from Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and Roman Catholic leaders for including an artwork depicting the Virgin Mary decorated with elephant dung. Later Mr. Giuliani accused the museum of colluding with Mr. Saatchi to inflate the value of Mr. Saatchi's vast art collection, and the museum faced scrutiny for financing the exhibition in large measure through donations from those who stood to profit from the art.
Mr. Lehman did not make public Mr. Saatchi's role as the single largest financial backer of ''Sensation.'' When that relationship was disclosed in news accounts, Mr. Lehman explained that he had concealed Mr. Saatchi's $160,000 pledge because Mr. Saatchi had asked that his donation remain anonymous.
The new guidelines, however, state that museums should adopt policies that uphold ''the ideal of transparency.'' Specifically, the guidelines state, museums ''should make public the source of funding where the lender is also a funder of the exhibition.''
''If a museum receives a request for anonymity,'' the guidelines continue, ''the museum should avoid such anonymity where it would conceal a conflict of interest (real or perceived) or raise other ethical issues.''
Mr. Able put it this way: ''You need to be honest and open -- full disclosure.''
The guidelines also say that museums ''should retain full decision-making authority over the content and presentation of the exhibition.''
In the ''Sensation'' exhibition, Mr. Lehman gave Mr. Saatchi a central role in determining the artistic content of ''Sensation,'' to such an extent that senior museum officials repeatedly expressed concerns that Mr. Saatchi had taken control of the exhibition.
According to the guidelines, the role of lenders like Mr. Saatchi should be limited to consultations over the ''objects to be selected from the lender's collection and the significance to be given to those objects in the exhibition.''
In May the Metropolitan canceled a retrospective of the work of Coco Chanel, the French fashion designer, partly because of a dispute over artistic control and commercial sponsorship. Museum curators bristled at the demands from the House of Chanel, a major sponsor of the exhibition.
Mr. Able predicted that the new guidelines would help smaller, less powerful museums fend off similar requests from corporate sponsors and wealthy collectors. ''In many cases it will protect museums -- particularly small and medium museums -- from unreasonable demands,'' he said.
Mr. Able said the guidelines were reflections of a new reality in the world of museums and other nonprofit institutions. The public, he said, is demanding more accountability, more openness.
''In the old days,'' he said, ''no one cared how we did our work.''
The Guidelines
Before considering exhibiting borrowed objects, a museum should have in place a written policy, approved by its governing authority and publicly accessible on request, that addresses these issues:
1. BORROWING OBJECTS -- The policy will contain provisions:
A. Ensuring that the museum determines that there is a clear connection between the exhibition of the object(s) and the museum's mission, and that the inclusion of the object(s) is consistent with the intellectual integrity of the exhibition.
B. Requiring the museum to examine the lender's relationship to the institution to determine if there are potential conflicts of interest, or an appearance of a conflict, such as in cases where the lender has a formal or informal connection to museum decision-making (for example, as a board member, staff member or donor).
C. Including guidelines and procedures to address such conflicts or the appearance of conflicts or influence. Such guidelines and procedures may require withdrawal from the decision-making process of those with a real or perceived conflict, extra vigilance by decision-makers, disclosure of the conflict or declining the loan.
D. Prohibiting the museum from accepting any commission or fee from the sale of objects borrowed for exhibition. This prohibition does not apply to displays of objects explicitly organized for the sale of those objects, for example, craft shows.
2. LENDER INVOLVEMENT The policy should assure that the museum will maintain intellectual integrity and institutional control over the exhibition. In following its policy, the museum:
A. Should retain full decision-making authority over the content and presentation of the exhibition.
B. May, while retaining the full decision-making authority, consult with a potential lender on objects to be selected from the lender's collection and the significance to be given to those objects in the exhibition.
C. Should make public the source of funding where the lender is also a funder of the exhibition. If a museum receives a request for anonymity, the museum should avoid such anonymity where it would conceal a conflict of interest (real or perceived) or raise other ethical issues.
