Somewhere on this blog, I put out the idea of “venture capitalist” projects in museums. I said something like gathering together a whole bunch of museum collections that are just gathering dust and putting them on medium-term loans to a bunch of “start-up” groups. The thinking being that these small groups of up-and-coming museum workers or fresh out of graduate programs could get a load of experience running short-term mini-museums, and people would throw money at them to make it happen. Admittedly, the details were a little hazy.

Claire Sexton, Communications Coordinator at Art in General (twitter), got in touch and we had a discussion about what they do. I’m glad to say that the system they have in place for artists project could be adapted.

Art in General (so called because it occupies the General Hardware/General Tools building in New York) do all kinds of things too numerous to list them all, but do check out the Fine Art Adoption Network. The project I’m interested in the New Commissions Program. I drop quotes from the site here to explain.

New Commissions Program centers on developing and exhibiting new and challenging projects by artists who are interested in creating new work.

Since the program’s launch, Art in General has invited and commissioned new works from six to eight artists every year. Three to four of these artists each year are chosen through an annual open call competition reviewed by Art in General and an Advisory Panel; the other three to four artists are selected by Art in General’s curator after extensive research, studio visits, and meetings with local artists.

The open call has no thematic or spatial parameters, and artists can choose to present a project proposal based on long-standing or emerging interests.

Now look at the process for the Open Call and the three phases that begin with a 600 word proposal, and you can submit any idea. If there are any artists in NY reading this, you should give it a go.

This is the model on how to do this, just tweak it for museums. A group leader, instead of a single artist, submits a proposal. They get space (probably both office and exhibition), access to the whole group of experts on staff and a sizable production budget. What Claire tells me is that Art in General will also work with you to say where you went wrong with your proposal, which is so important in evaluations. I applaud them for that.

What the museum project would do is  either (a) take the group around the storerooms to find objects that are not part of any other plan and able to leave the store of (b) give the group a bunch of museum objects based upon the original proposal, just to make things more interesting.

Now, what makes Art in General work are the supporters and the serious amount of funding. Art in General handles all that so that the project leaders don’t have too and I think that’s important.

Checklist

• Submissions from project leaders.
• A team of staff to work with each group.
• A panel of experts.
• A load of money from sponsors
• (The only real difference from Art in General) A whole load of museum objects from a collection.

The Art in General organisation has all the methodologies in place and they’re being pretty successful. Their aim is the production of new work for artists. I say this could easily be done the same for museum workers.

I’m thinking this would make an excellent TV programme.