Peeking into the unwritten future of contemporary art galleries’ depots

As reported by Cfa, the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen was recently granted permission from the Rotterdam City Council to construct a Public Art Depot, the first of its kind in the world. This new building will not only display rarely seen works from the museum’s collection to the public on a permanent basis, but also store and showcase works from a select group of private collectors, who will have their choices legitimised – and its value aggrandised – by having their estate connected to the Boijmans’ label – a small price to pay for storage, if one thinks on the long run. The museum, by its turn, will gain two new sources of income – with the ticket admission in addition to the rent revenue – while also satisfying the public’s curiosity of experiencing the structure of an art institution. More importantly, the measure proposes an alternative solution for an issue faced by several art institutions around the world: generally speaking, museums collect more works than they can ever show, and the largest part of their estate end up indefinitely placed on a storage limbo, accessed only by curators and researchers. Following this news, Cfa went on to investigate if contemporary art dealers are also rethinking models of storage, to cope with the innovations Boijmans will arguably bring on to the matter.

 

Our first realisation is that the subject remains largely a taboo among many dealers, who rather keep their inventory, as well as information about it, privately stored between four walls. Half of the galleries we’ve contacted didn’t bothered to give us a response; a major international dealer, who asked not to be named, said that they leave the subject of storage to third part specialists, keeping only a small amount of works in the back room of their gallery spaces. They never bring collectors to this storage facility, nor disclose where it is or how much art lies in there; moreover, they have no plans of developing their own storage at the moment. Although we couldn’t obtain much information from private dealers on the subject, this externalisation seems to be a trend among galleries, as companies dedicated to professional art storage are prospering around the world. One of the oldest on the market, Christie’s Fine Art Storage Services (CFASS) is a specialised art deposit which runs independently from the main auction business. Established in London in 1984, in 2010 it expanded its operations to New York and Singapore. UOVO, in New York, was opened in January 2015 by collector and real estate developer Steven Guttman, with the ambitious goal of revolutionising the sector (notoriously, a great number of art stored at CFASS NY was damaged by hurricane Sandy in 2012). UOVO claims to be the first company to build a facility – as opposed to adapting an existing building – further differentiating itself by aiming to establish an archive, with comprehensive information about the goods they store (whether this will be accessible by the public or not remains unclear). Shortly after opening its flagship in Long Island, the company opened yet another facility in Rockland County, 29 kilometres north from New York.

 

Madrid based Galería Helga de Alvear, a major player within the Spanish art scene, adopts an intermediary posture when it comes to storage. The majority of their inventory is stored in an external facility, managed by specialists. However, they have a generous back room, where they keep several works by their artists, as well as books and other working materials – a rather handy thing, as artistic director Violeta Janeiro points out. Curiously, they recently had on show a site-specific piece by Scandinavian duo Elmgreen and Dragset called Storaged (2015), which borrowed the aesthetics of an art deposit. The installation consisted of a bunch of wooden and cardboard crates, wrapped canvases and various rolls pristinely displayed among metallic shelves, thus displacing the background of a gallery into spotlight. This original artwork, which carries the duo’s signature process of commenting on the art world’s very symbols and rules, echoes the permanent architecture of Galeria Fortes Vilaça’s second exhibition space, called Galpão (literally warehouse, in Portuguese). Opened in São Paulo in 2008, the Galpão was founded to cope with two issues the gallery faced at the time, that is the necessity of a second exhibition space, and the will to be closer to their own inventory. Associate director Alexandre Gabriel explains that the Galpão occupies a total area of 1,500 square metres, roughly 300 of which form the exhibition space (walls may be moved, so this number varies), then another 200 each for the garden and the demonstration area (that is, the area dedicated to showcase artworks outside an exhibition context) and the rest is designated for storage. In a somehow inverse process than that of Elmgreen and Dragset, some of Fortes Vilaça’s artists have been inspired by the Galpão’s deposit-like aesthetics, incorporating it in the narrative of their shows. This was the case with Rodrigo Matheus’ Handle with care exhibition (2010), and Franz Ackermann’s New Ads for São Paulo (2011) who, in the words of Gabriel, ‘made a space that opened up to the pallets side, creating an interesting dialogue between abstract architecture and the overcrowded architecture of the pallets’. Yet, neither Fortes Vilaça, nor Helga de Alvear have plans to offer storage space for individuals or institutions in the future.

 

Indeed, galleries already have a busy time managing their programme, promoting their artists through fairs and other medias, and dealing with the delicate logistics of transport and, of course, storage. To take on the issue entirely to themselves and, moreover, to offer the service to individuals doesn’t seem to be a priority among dealers, particularly if one considers the growing offer of specialised companies. Noteworthy, whereas Galpão Fortes Vilaça proved itself a successful experiment, they still utilise an external facility for additional storage. Besides, it would probably be hard to replicate its model in cities like London or New York, where real estate prices seem to increase by the minute. When it comes to institutions, inasmuch as Boijmans is making a brave proposition, it is also making a rather ambitious move, and we are yet to see whether the Public Art Depot will work in exhibition terms, or will result in a visual Babel-like cacophony. Both in commercial or non-commercial realms, the fact is that the art exhibited around the world is the tip of the iceberg in relation to the amount of art produced, and it would be interesting if private and public art spaces were to be inspired by Boijmans, and experiment alternatives to make their inventory increasingly more accessible.

November 25, 2020