Museum Tension – Collect Or Promote?

Outgoing Getty Museum director Deborah Gribbon’s statement that “museums best serve the public by collecting, exhibiting and interpreting works of art of the highest quality” has “pricked up ears in the art world. It was widely viewed as an indictment that the Getty is not serious enough about acquiring masterpieces, despite its fabulous wealth left by its namesake patron after his death in 1976. Gribbon’s resignation cuts to an ongoing struggle for museums: How should precious money be spent in an expensive enterprise: on art or on programs promoting the arts?”