No, no, YES, no, maybe, let’s see… How Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen Decides on Collection Accessions

This thesis examines the decision-making process of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen on collection acquisitions. The financial and managerial structures of museums are changing. Museums implement alternative fundraising techniques and aim to increase their revenues. Because decreasing public subsidies, museums rely increasingly on these alternative revenues. Because of various catalysts, the management has developed a new strategy to accomplish the goals of the museum. The museum depends increasingly on funds and donors for collection acquisitions. In literature, this dependency is often suggested to affect the decision of the director and curator. This case study of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is an extensive description of the decision-making process based on ten interviews with employees, annual reports and the collection plan. The most influential factors on this decision-making process are the financiers, the criteria from the curators and the management style of the director. Recent developments relating to museum acquisitions are examined as well. The starting point of the decision-making process is the proposal of the curators for a collection accession. This can be a suggested donation of a donor or the curator proposes to buy an artwork on the market. Based on the expertise of the curators and director, the qualities and the added value of an artwork to the collection is evaluated. The artistic, technical or conceptual connection of the artwork to the museum collection is important to the director and curator. During the evaluation, the feasibility of the fundraising strategy for the acquisition is directly considered. There are four types of financiers identified in this study: funds, corporate donors, private donors and ‘huisstichtingen’. The museum relies heavily on these financiers because of their limited resources. Corporate donors, private donors and huisstichtingen act in line with the decision of the museum staff. The Mondriaan Fund and the Rembrandt Association play a decisive role in the realization of expensive acquisitions. The differences in decision-making between acquisitions and donations are analyzed. While donations are financially advantageous in comparison to acquisitions, the curators are nearly as strict on accepting donations as on acquisitions. The main reasons for the strict selection are the costs of conservation, depot space limitations and the laborious process of deaccessioning. The director manages the decision-making process by setting a biweekly curator meeting where proposals are discussed. The director decides which artworks are bought based on the argumentation of the curator and the feasibility of the fundraising strategy.