Museums Confront Their Crowded Basements

Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields; Lyndon French for The New York Times

Paintings line the basement storage space at The Indianapolis Museum of Art, which has graded its entire collection to help determine what art it may want to sell or transfer to another institution. Paintings line the basement storage space at The Indianapolis Museum of Art, which has graded its entire collection to help determine what art it may want to sell or transfer to another institution. In 1985, when the philanthropist Wendy Reves donated more than 1,400 works from the collection of her late husband Emery Reves to the Dallas Museum of Art, she required that it re-create five rooms from their villa in the South of France — including furnishings from the décor of the home’s original owner Coco Chanel.

Source: www.nytimes.com