I Left My Art in San Francisco

Arts journalist Lee Rosenbaum, on her consistently interesting CultureGrrl weblog, points to a fresh story in the San Francisco Business Times on the high cost of insuring high art.  The primary thrust of the story is the problems of the  San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) in a post-Katrina world in which the highly cyclical business of insurance underwriting has had its mind focused on the fact that the public and private art world of San Francisco, sitting atop a well-documented seismic powder keg, is a classic case of concentration of risk.  As the Business Times article sums it up nicely:

The problem is that there is so much wealth, so many art collectors and so many museums in a fairly small city, giving San Francisco a great concentration of art value in an area prone to devastation from a single natural event.

SFMOMA finds itself hoist on the twin horns of a tightening insurance market and the scheduling of two simultaneous high-profile exhibitions, with their attendant high potential for loss if (heaven forfend) some regional loss event should come calling.

'Brice Marden' comes to SFMOMA from MoMA [New York's Museum of Modern Art], and 'Picasso and American Art' from the Whitney Museum in New York.  With two major shows at once, SFMOMA had to buy additional layers of insurance, and from carriers who do not want to write new coverage in San Francisco.

'It was never the case when we put a traveling exhibition together that insurance would be the single-largest budget item,' said Ruth Berson, deputy director for exhibitions and collections at SFMOMA.  'Now we're looking at a situation where the insurance sold could be as much as half the cost of the exhibit or more. It's completely out of whack.'

Berson said that most curating museums have been willing to assume some of SFMOMA's greater insurance costs.  Others, like MoMA, say it is a local problem. MoMA has refused to share the $1 million cost.

There are suggestions in the article that the insurance industry is turning a blind eye to the fact that many San Francisco museums are of recent construction with the latest in seismic protections -- the completely rebuilt de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park is referred to in the article as "the 'Fort Knox' of museum" -- and is making underwriting decisions based on location without consideration of the particulars of each facility.  And, inevitably, there is the suggestion that the answer lies in a broad-based public subsidy:

Recognizing the threat of surging insurance costs, Benezra, Buchanan and Sano have joined colleagues from the Getty, L.A. County Museum and Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles to plead their case at the annual meeting of the Association of Art Museum Directors at the end of this month. They say this is an industry-wide problem that demands an industry answer.

They want AAMD to lobby Congress to extend federal indemnification to domestic loans, among other things.  There is also talk about approaching Gov. Schwarzenegger regarding a California state indemnity coverage for domestic loans of art.

Given the perception of art as an elitist luxury -- a proposition the author of this weblog would reject, but the majority view nonetheless -- it seems unlikely that public underwriting of the risk of art loss would be embraced by state or federal legislators even if it were an objectively wise policy.   Absent the nation's art museums receiving a sudden bequest of pixie dust, it would seem they are left with few options but to find the private donor funding to cover the premiums or forego some exhibitions.  Not a happy choice, but a realistic one.

[Query: Shouldn't the insurance costs be highest in Atlanta at the High Museum?  Just asking.]