Museum Partnership For Exhibition

I would think you'd have to formally propose the idea to the numismatic departments at the museums you are considering. Never hurts to inquire.

The size of your collection of ancient coins at around 300, is about the size of mine, although my overall collection numbers into the thousands.

A good museum collection needs a good professional numistmatist museum curator, and I would think that to support this investment in public money, that such a museum collection would need to be much larger than ours.

What would make good sense to my way of thinking, would be to loan or give your very best coins only to a museum, where the professional curator can pick and choose out of your private collection, such that it supports the public museum collection.

What many collectors of ancient coins do, upon their death, is to will the whole of their collection to a public museum, for all to enjoy and study. This is probably the main way in which museum collections grow.

Thanks Bob. I did send an email a while ago to one of the museums I was considering to do partnership with but they did not responded back so I guess they took it as a joke?

Here are some of my Parthians. There are many more which I try to upload them later on

I believe you will just have to contact the right people in the right places. Include examples of what you have to loan that is relevant to the museum and gauge interest. Just because one museum has no interest doesn't mean another won't.

Short term loan for a specific museum exhibition is just fine.
Check that they have the responsibility for whatever coin you may loan, for the term of the exhibition period.

A bit like museums loaning art objects to each other, for specific exhibition purposes.

Yazul,

There are many considerations for a museum when it comes to exhibitions, let alone collections that are owned by a private collector such as yourself. Loan agreements can be very sticky meaning that most museums will not take on a loan if there are too many impositions from the loaner like when to display the collection, how to display the collections, etc. Of course there are insurance and security considerations as well. Here in the US and I'm sure in Canada as well, many museums are working with the communities they serve to actually co-create exhibitions, actually polling the community to see if they would be interested in such an exhibit and in some cases having members of the community provide some input into exhibit development. It's more and more about community rather than the top down approach where museums tell the community what they think they want to see! Finally, an exhibit of coinage such as your collection, although a easy draw for most of us on this forum, for the general audience, putting the coins in some kind of historical/artistic context as part of a much larger themed exhibit would probably be more appealing to the curators. Remember, most museums have their exhibit schedules planned out several years in advance! Keep trying though and good luck.

Steve S.