The libraries in Berlin have a similar thing going, for free and open to everybody.
https://www.zlb.de/fachinformation/spezialbereiche/artothek....
Cambridge gallery lends art to students 'with none damaged' in 60 years
41–50 of 57 posts
Re: Cambridge gallery lends art to students 'with none damaged' in 60 years
#42Would be really funny for an art student to paint many copies of the lent art, then return a half dozen copies with the original.
Copying works of art is a longstanding tradition when learning to draw/paint. This would likely get kudos from the art department, not laughs.
Re: Cambridge gallery lends art to students 'with none damaged' in 60 years
#43Trust with accountability and respect seems to go a long way some times but not others. Anyone have a theory why this system worked so effectively but other systems involving trust don't?
I think the major factors are:
* the scheme is not widely known/advertised among the student body, so it's closer to word-of-mouth recommendations than mass anonymous access. (Note that there are over 12,000 undergrads but they only lend out 100 or so pieces -- it's a self-selected 1% or so of students)
* there is a deposit plus the hassle factor of actually going to collect the piece, so you're not going to do it unless you actually wanted to display the art; this is a minor barrier to entry but it makes a difference I think
* students are easy to find and easy to impose penalties on in the event of actual malice, because you can just ask their college to intervene
* they take some obvious precautions to avoid major risk -- no lending of very valuable pieces, no lending of sculptures (which I guess to be at higher risk of being knocked over and accidentally damaged compared to pictures hung on a wall)
Re: Cambridge gallery lends art to students 'with none damaged' in 60 years
#44Trust with accountability and respect seems to go a long way some times but not others. Anyone have a theory why this system worked so effectively but other systems involving trust don't?
Trust works well if you have decent people. Exactly what makes people decent is hard to say, but it is not unthinkable that students who got into Cambridge are a bit more decent than average.
Or, are at least more likely to go for the long con than the smash & grab.
Re: Cambridge gallery lends art to students 'with none damaged' in 60 years
#45Would be really funny for an art student to paint many copies of the lent art, then return a half dozen copies with the original.
Copying works of art is a longstanding tradition when learning to draw/paint. This would likely get kudos from the art department, not laughs.
100%. They would be impressed you were able to recreate a great work on your own, and it might end with an assistantship in a studio somewhere on campus.
Re: Cambridge gallery lends art to students 'with none damaged' in 60 years
#46I didn’t know about this when I was a student but my college had a similar programme. I don’t think the artists were so well known. As I recall, the bigger issue was that if you had picture rails then you needed to acquire picture hooks and if you didn’t have picture rails then there wasn’t really a good way to hang paintings
I don’t think there were deposits but we maybe had to write down what we had borrowed.
Re: Cambridge gallery lends art to students 'with none damaged' in 60 years
#47When it comes to long-term storage of art, damage can be calculated in more ways than whether a piece of art is noticeably defaced. The biggest threat to these pieces lies in being stored outside of a climate, light, and humidity-controlled environment. When the lifespan of a thing is hundreds or thousands of years, this matters just as much. However, if the museum doesn't normally keep its stored pieces in a control…
Storage has other problems; A painting stored away in a climate controlled vault where no one can look at it is just a dusty canvas rectangle.
A painting requires a viewer for it to become art.
Re: Cambridge gallery lends art to students 'with none damaged' in 60 years
#48When it comes to long-term storage of art, damage can be calculated in more ways than whether a piece of art is noticeably defaced. The biggest threat to these pieces lies in being stored outside of a climate, light, and humidity-controlled environment. When the lifespan of a thing is hundreds or thousands of years, this matters just as much. However, if the museum doesn't normally keep its stored pieces in a control…
Storage has other problems; A painting stored away in a climate controlled vault where no one can look at it is just a dusty canvas rectangle. A painting requires a viewer for it to become art.
> A painting stored away in a climate controlled vault where no one can look at it is just a dusty canvas rectangle.
It may just as well not exist at all.
Re: Cambridge gallery lends art to students 'with none damaged' in 60 years
#49Earlier quoted context omitted.
Say I printed this comment. Put it in a frame and auctioned it as art. Would you be the artist for creating the comment? Or would I be the artist for using the comment and framing it in a creative way?
When Andy Warhol printed soup cans and put the prints in galleries, were the Campbell's logo designers the artists, or was Warhol?
I'm having art school flashbacks please stop hurting me.
Re: Cambridge gallery lends art to students 'with none damaged' in 60 years
#50When it comes to long-term storage of art, damage can be calculated in more ways than whether a piece of art is noticeably defaced. The biggest threat to these pieces lies in being stored outside of a climate, light, and humidity-controlled environment. When the lifespan of a thing is hundreds or thousands of years, this matters just as much. However, if the museum doesn't normally keep its stored pieces in a control…
Storage has other problems; A painting stored away in a climate controlled vault where no one can look at it is just a dusty canvas rectangle. A painting requires a viewer for it to become art.
A copy of the painting can serve for viewing nearly as well as the original. But a copy can’t answer some questions so preserving the original for future study (and new questions, ideas, and technology) is valuable.