The Boston Globe's Geoff Edgers has a brief round-up of views on the latest at the Rose.
On this silly notion that it's somehow wrong to refer to what they propose to do as "loans," let me just point out that that's always how people have referred to these sorts of arrangements. In 1992, the New York Times reported on an agreement between the Whitney and the San Jose Museum of Art -- "for lending the art, the Whitney is to receive $3 million." In 1999, the Times reported that "in return for $50 million in payments spread over the life of a 20-year-plus pact," Boston's Museum of Fine Arts "will send two five-month loan exhibitions" per year to a museum in Japan. In 2006, the Times reported that the Louvre had "decided to lend a sampling of its collection" to the High Museum in Atlanta . . . in exchange for $6.4 million. Marie Malaro's Legal Primer on Managing Museum Collections even has a whole section on these arrangements -- she calls it "lending for profit."
So Edgers needn't feel guilty about his use of the term "loans." He's in good company.
