Suppose I have inherited a previously unknown Rembrandt or Van Gogh work of art. It has been verified as being genuine. A gallery/museum wants to add my work to a temporary display for the public. Is the gallery/museum expected to pay “rent” on the painting, or is it assumed that if someone owns such a work - they are rich enough to waive any possible fees?
How is a value put on an unknown work of art by a noted artist? How would you get what you consider “fair value” for it if you put it up for auction (or even a private sale)? Set a minimum price, and adjust it if necessary?
Art experts would use information about other paintings by that artist to get a value estimate, although this is easier if the work of art isn’t effectively priceless, like an unknown Rembrandt or Van Gogh would be. They would go by recent auctions and public sales, combined with an evaluation of the objective quality of the art work in terms of conception and execution. If it was a very early work, for example, and not up to the mature quality of the artist, it might be valued for less (or it might not, for other reasons). These are the same folks who would be evaluating it as genuine, so they know pretty well what they’re doing. By the way, I hope you inherited a documented provenance for the painting as well, it will make your life a lot easier.
As for getting paid by a museum for them displaying your priceless painting, I don’t have anything on that. I suspect it would be a matter of negotiation, and if it’s a newly-found, high-quality work by a famous artist, it seems to me a museum that can afford it would be willing to pay a fair amount for the prestige of showing it. You could probably start a bidding war.
what about capital gains tax (if it sells). Someone, somewhere, owned the artwork for a while, and now it is being sold. That generates tax liability issues.
what is the arrangement if someone who sees the art in the exhibition wants to buy it - how much does each party, including the exhibiting party, receive of the sale price, and how are taxes handled?
What about the assets/balance sheet of the person inheriting the work? Are there inheritance taxes to be paid, and if so how much?
As the painting was inherited, it’s cost basis is the value at the time it was inherited (or 6 months (I think) later). Assuming it is sold relatively soon after it is inherited, there should be no capital gains to pay tax on. On the other hand, the estate should have paid an estate tax on the value of its assets. Currently the first $13.6 million are exempt so if there wasn’t too much more in the estate and this painting isn’t worth more than that, there would be very little estate tax either. Some states also have estate taxes (payable by the estate) and some have an inheritance tax payable by the heir.
I never worked for an art museum but I did work at a history museum specializing in military history. We had some artifacts that were on loan, including a few that were effectively on permanent loan, and we didn’t pay anyone for the privilege. Not that we had any items worth the millions that a famous work of art might be. Generally speaking what you get for loaning a work of art to a museum is a free place for storage and if you ever decide to sell it then it’s good to have it in the public’s mind.
Now there are special exhibits that travel from museum to museum and generally someone has to pay for those. In the 80s, some of you might remember the Ramses II exhibit that traveled from state-to-state, I saw it in Denver and again when I moved to Dallas a year later. We got a Civil War exhibit on Grant and Lee that had traveled between museums, but I cannot remember how much we paid for it.
We had one artifact, a Civil War musuem, that was worth quite a bit of money. It had been donated to a museum in the 1960s before it ended up in ours. We raised a hefty chunk of change to have it restored and the family of the donator (and descendants of the soldier) came to us demanding the uniform back. They argued it wasn’t donated but was on permanent loan but we still had all the original documentation from when the original musuem got it and quite clearly it was donated.
If you are, even only vaguely, interested in questions about previously unknown “great works of art” let me recommend The Lost Leonardo. I watched it only days ago, on Netflix, and it was thoroughly fascinating in more ways than I had expected.
If your painting was so good that it was the centrepiece of the show, then you could perhaps negotiate a percentage of the door takings for a blockbuster exhibition on the grounds they get 90% of something vs 100% of nothing, but otherwise you might get some of the merch free.
Museums and galleries at different times are needing to both borrow and loan exhibits - its much better for them to be doing that without money attached. The transport, set-up and operational costs of a mega-exhibition are prohibitive and like Hollywood blockbusters they have to do a massive investment to guarantee significant returns.
Perhaps - as a private non-gallery owner of a genuwine Van Gogh - you could ask for consideration in kind, something like getting the Louvre’s / Getty’s/ MoMA’s conservation labs to do a first-rate conservation and restoration treatment before they whack it on display.
Maybe you won’t get anything much from lending it out, but its probably not a bad problem to have.
No, it’s generally considered a big no-no for museums to pay collectors directly, it’s presumed that just the act of being in a museum show will increase the value of the artwork enough that this is the compensation to the collector. Where collectors and museums have room to negotiate is over all of the other costs around mounting a show, ie: the insurance, transport fees, any restoration required etc.
If a museum really wants a piece, they might be willing to restore it for free, cover all the costs etc. vs most items in a temporary exhibition where the collectors are footing a big part of the bill to get their piece into the show.
If the piece is worth more than the home you live in it might make sense to have it in a museums exhibition so that they could take on the insurance liabilty. That and the piece of mind of knowing if your home burns down its not lost. Seen a few people on the Antiques Roadshow followup shows mention this.
That’s a good point; if it’s a valuable painting, the museum is taking on the cost of insurance, and may also have a good security system, along with the appropriate environmental conditions to display it.
I wouldn’t put it past someone to have the chutzpah to try to claim that they made a charitable gift by lending out their Picasso to a museum for six months, but the IRS and the courts would not look favorably on such a claim.
It’s important to note: One benefit that’s never available to a collector who lends works to museums is a current charitable income tax deduction. The IRS doesn’t allow taxpayers to claim an income tax deduction for merely loaning works of art to tax-exempt organizations, even for long-term loans. A charitable income tax deduction is available only for irrevocable lifetime donations that have been delivered to the museum in perpetuity.
Being the OP, I appreciate that link - it answers many questions.
I’m a regular visitor to our local museum, which has surcharged special events three or four times a year - each lasting a month or two. My annual membership easily covers as few as two of the surcharged events (as well as the general admission fee - fixed charge - no “suggested donation”).
I know that most/all(?) of the paintings have labels stating such sources as “The Museum’s permanent collection” or “Donation from the estate of ______”. I don’t recall any that specifically mention “on loan” but I’ll look for them next time. (although I have seen empty spaces on a wall with a label mentioning that the work is on loan and to whom).
Another thing I learned (probably similar with most large art museums) is that only a small percentage of their total holdings are on display at any one time. Some (not on display) are stored on-site - but most are stored off-site (I don’t know where - but maybe that’s supposed to be a secret). A portion of the permanent collection is rotated periodically - with bright red stickers reading “New” to indicate that this painting has recently been rotated in…
Baumgartner Restoration, which usually sticks to videos about restoring artwork, did one a while back that covered the storage and transportation of some of these high priced (and often very large) pieces. I’d already been watching this channel for a while, but this specific video caught my attention because it happens to be local to me. The storage place they go to and the Pabst Mansion they tour are a few miles from me.
