The Financial Times is full of tidbits this weekend, including this paragraph in their story about Sheena Wagstaff’s role at the Met where the writer happens to mention the size of MoMA’s acquisitions last year. What’s interesting to ponder is how MoMA’s $51m stacks up against Francois Pinault or Laurence Graff’s annual acquisitions budget:
Wagstaff has stressed that she would not seek to rival or duplicate the collections of MoMA, the Whitney and the Guggenheim. According to its financial statements, MoMA spent $51m on acquisitions in 2011. Veteran curator Robert Storr, dean of the Yale School of Art, says:“There is no way that any museum in the world can ever catch up with MoMA in terms of its encyclopedic holdings of classic modern and contemporary art, although some rival it in particular areas, like the Pop Art collections in the Museum Ludwig in Cologne.
New Kid on the Block (Financial Times)
