Sotheby’s is spreading its wings beyond the trade by launching an annual grant of up to $250,000 to help museums organise exhibitions that open up fresh pockets of art history.
The award is the brainchild of Robin Woodhead, the international chairman of Sotheby’s, and Allan Schwartzman, the co-founder of Art Agency, Partners, who says that blockbuster shows devoted to single artists have become too prevalent due to a lack of funding. “Museum funding is linked to audience size, which has resulted in a huge reduction in more thought-provoking exhibitions,” he says.
Wack!: Art and the Feminist Revolution, which opened at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Moca) in Los Angeles in 2007, is an example of the kind of show Schwartzman hopes to foster. “This is one of the most important exhibitions of the past 20 years. But Moca nearly went bankrupt because the cost of mounting shows such as this exceeded the income they could bring in.”
The panel of judges, chaired by Schwartzman, includes Nicholas Serota (Arts Council England), Connie Butler (Hammer Museum, Los Angeles), Okwui Enwezor (Haus der Kunst, Munich) and Donna de Salvo (Whitney Museum, New York). Serota says: “You want museums to break new ground, to show us artists who have been disregarded or haven’t been thought about for 20 or 30 years, but it’s difficult to get private patrons or collectors to support them.”
