Generally, it is far easier for visitors to see drawings, textiles and photographs than paintings in storage. But many museums are not accommodating. The Museum of Modern Art, for example, approves requests to view undisplayed work only from curators, scholars and auction house professionals, a policy common among museums.
At the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, Forrest McGill, the chief curator, acknowledges that it is difficult to see objects that are not on display. “It’s a matter of having to go into storage cabinets where the bronzes and ceramics are kept,” he said. “There are security issues. We can’t have everybody knowing how the locks work and where the security cameras are.”
So some museums are exploring other ways to get more work before the public. One is “open storage,” allowing visitors to see work without the niceties of an arranged exhibition.
At the Metropolitan Museum in New York, administrative offices overlooking the Leon Levy and Shelby White Court were converted to exhibition space. “The bulk of the collection was last seen in its entirety in 1949,” said Carlos Picon, curator of the Greek and Roman collections. Much of it is now available in what is effectively open storage.
The Henry Luce Foundation has underwritten open storage galleries at four museums: the New-York Historical Society, the Metropolitan, the Brooklyn Museum and the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. They show thousands of pieces each from their American collections that had once been in storage.