'The current museum loan system leads to decisions based on prejudice rather than fact.'

Museums often manage more art objects than they can display. What they cannot display in the museum galleries they keep safely in the depot. Collections with motley collections of objects from different periods are a growing problem for museums. Marketers stress the need for focus, a clear story and strong branding. Objects that no longer fit the museum's new vision risk being banished to the depot forever.

Fortunately, there is an alternative for these artefacts to rise from the caverns of the depot: loans. Not only depot children are eligible for this, highlights of the collection can be loaned to another museum for special exhibitions.

Museums serve people

The core task of museums has shifted in recent decades from 'management, conservation and education' to 'leisure and entertainment'. Exhibitions are no longer primarily educational, but marketing tools to bring in more visitors. So getting the right loans from other museums is crucial for an exhibition to succeed and contribute to the museum's financial survival. But even if an exhibition is successful, because of the overhead costs for the management and conservation function of heritage, a museum is hardly able to compete with commercial companies in the leisure industry.

Most museums therefore still rely on government support to keep their doors open. Taxpayers from all over the country invest in museums, but the distribution of art is not proportional. This is especially true when it comes to masterpieces, referred to as 'the canon of art'.

As long as the people pay, museums owe it to them to provide access to art treasures, even if they do not live in the catchment area of an art museum with a top collection. Visitors living outside the spreading area question the funding of things they have little or no access to. Loans are therefore crucial to motivate taxpayers to keep investing in museums. But how does a museum get to own a loan? That is by no means easy.

The maze

Interviews with colleagues in the field reveal that the (international) loan procedure is anything but transparent. Each institute has its own loan procedure. It takes a lot of time to jump through the hoops of the art lending system. Moreover, the outcome in some cases seems highly arbitrary. You would expect museums to make their decision whether or not to lend a work to a fellow museum depend on facts, such as the extent to which the work can be transported safely or the climate conditions of the fellow museum. This rarely seems to be the case.

Another problem is the visibility of collections. At many museums, it is not really clear what is on offer. When museums present their collections online, the overview is often incomplete. Important details - such as condition of the painting or already promised loan periods - are not visible to fellow museums. This information is often included in proprietary collection management systems such as Adlib or TMS, but not openly shared online.

Although there are initiatives for a global arts network, such as Vastari, there seems to be little enthusiasm among museums to exchange data on these kinds of platforms. Earlier, I thought this was due to the fact that museums generally suffer from fear of new technology. Many museums still doubt the need to share collection information online and make it freely available to the public. So it could be that curators are just not 'internet savvy' enough to take the plunge.

Discussing this issue with museum colleagues, I discovered that there may be a more serious underlying problem. I would describe it as 'the biased curator syndrome'.

The social barrier

Why do trustees worldwide choose to maintain this 'old world' system? Surely modern technology allows things to be done much more transparently and quickly? You could argue that money plays a big role. Digitising a collection, making it searchable online and linking your content management system is not cheap. Above all, it is also a time-consuming task, as many museums are behind in terms of archive digitisation. But there is more going on here. There seems to be a social barrier preventing modernisation in museums. The following case study makes it clear what I mean.

The story of Peter and Sara

Peter comes from a modal family. His parents do not understand why he wants to study art history, when he has the brains to become a doctor. But Peter perseveres and his parents accept his choice because they want their son to be happy. They cannot support Peter financially, so when Peter goes to study art history in Groningen, he is forced to take out a student loan.

Peter is doing well at university. He is able to get a PhD and ends up as one of the best PhD students of his year. But after five years of study, Peter has accumulated a hefty student debt. Due to the low salary of a PhD student, he could not build up equity.

Loans

Peter receives an offer to work for a medium-sized museum in the north of the Netherlands. He grabs the opportunity with both hands. First, because he wants to prove to his friends and family that art history is not a single ticket to the gutter. Secondly, because he needs to start paying off his loans.

Peter gets appreciation from his colleagues. He works long and hard, takes responsibility for his work and shows that he can get a lot done with few resources. At 37, Peter is offered the position of Head of Collections, which he gladly accepts.

Amsterdam

Sara feels a lot of pressure to be admitted to a good university. Both her parents studied in Amsterdam. She has been prepared all her life to follow in their footsteps. Sara wants to become an art historian, and like her aunt Deborah, work at the national museum in the capital. Sara is admitted to her preferred study in Amsterdam, with a well-known professor as head professor.

She is doing well and is among the best students of her year. Her parents pay for her flat in Amsterdam and all incidental expenses. Feeling no financial burden on her shoulders, Sara decides to do a graduate programme at an American university. After returning home to the Netherlands, she gets the opportunity - through her aunt - to do two unpaid internships at well-known Dutch museums. This allows Sara to gain some work experience. Money poses no problem, her parents lovingly support her.

Sara works hard and stands out. She is offered her first real job at the museum of her dreams, one of the top-five institutions in the country. At thirty-five, she gets the chance to become head of the 'twentieth century' department, which she grabs with both hands.

Loan request

Ten years later, Peter wants to organise an exhibition on a local artist from the North of the country. This artist was strongly influenced by another well-known Dutch artist, whose work Peter does not have in his own collection. So he approaches the institute where Sara works and makes a formal loan request.

Peter's museum has excellent climate control and security installations. Therefore, Peter is confident he can meet all official requirements.

But there is a problem. Peter and Sara have never met before. Peter knows there is much more chance of getting the loans when he knows the curator personally, but his institution cannot afford to send Peter to all the conferences where he can meet the right people. Moreover, he estimates that Sara will have no interest in talking to him at all. She works at one of the biggest and best-known institutions in the Netherlands, so she must be a better curator than him, right?

Who is the better one?

In this example, Peter has come to believe that Sara is a better curator than him because she works at a well-known art institution, with a collection that belongs to the 'canon of art'. But working at a bigger and better-known institution does not necessarily make you better qualified. Sara had more opportunities, but they had similar study results and a similar number of years of work experience. You could even argue that Peter has had more opportunities to unleash his creativity and become resilient, due to the financial challenges he faces privately and professionally. Still, chances are that it is not just Peter who thinks Sara is the better of the two.

Sara gets loan requests from all over the world. Why spend her precious time at a small museum like Peter's? The Louvre calls, and they want a work on loan in exchange for a work from their own collection. She would rather spend her time on this.

Similar

The above case study is a fictional one, not based on facts. But I have heard many similar real-life stories from my surroundings, and have witnessed similar situations myself. I am convinced that there is a strict hierarchy among museums, from the top 10 to the little ones at the bottom of the ladder.

We believe that some art is better than others - which is why we have something we call the 'canon of art' - and we have come to believe that working at an art institution that manages part of this canon makes us a better curator. The aura of the institution illuminates the people who work there. We believe that our value is equal to the value we assign to the institution we work for.

This belief has a serious effect on the way our loan system is dysfunctional today. It is a belief that does not reflect reality and must be shed. Personal interests should no longer prevail.

Curators of museums funded by public money should stop seeing the art objects under their management as their property. Conservators do not look enough at the general interest here: they work in their own interests. In other words, there is systematic lending with a hidden agenda: a barter agenda. You lend me this, then I'll lend you that, is the credo. As a result, smaller museums with less prominent collections get fewer opportunities to borrow works from large collections. Taxpayers lose out in the process.

What do we need?

To democratise our loan system, we must stop relying on connections to get loans. Studies show time and again that people have a natural tendency to make connections with people similar to themselves: same gender, social class, orientation, race, etc. The current loan system unquestionably leads to decisions based on prejudice rather than fact.

A loan request should no longer be judged on the 'alleged quality of the exhibition concept' or the quality of the receiving institution's collection. Quality is a criterion that in itself encourages favouritism. Obtaining loans on the basis of connections means that people outside the social circle of the lenders are unable to make the best possible exhibition for their audience.

Audiences not only have a right to good exhibitions - regardless of where they live, gender, race, etc - they also own the survival of the museum as a phenomenon. If museums are not supported by a larger group of people, a large group of museums will find it very difficult. Then our heritage - including that of the top ten museums - will come under pressure.

Open data

An internet platform for all - tax-funded - art museums worldwide may be the answer to a new approach to loan traffic. Open data allow museums to link connection management systems relatively easily. This will make it clear what each museum has in its collection and whether the works are suitable for lending.

Moreover, this way museums can easily see each other's factual data - such as climate control and security level - and use it as a basis for whether or not to approve a loan request. But besides a practical solution, I am mainly advocating a new attitude of decision-makers - conservators, curators, conservators and directors - towards loan traffic.

An open attitude towards loan requests, granting each other loans without hidden agendas.