Collecting art is easy. Running a museum, not so much.

Sometime this fall, a new art exhibition space dedicated to contemporary Native American art will open in Katonah, New York, with the name of the site still to be determined. “We’re in brainstorming mode,” Laura Phippsthe yet-to-be-named space’s recently appointed director told the Observer. Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this art space – beyond the fact that there will be no entrance, cafe, gift shop or other typical revenue generators – is that the entire 750-piece collection of paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, installations, films, textiles and wearable art comes from a single collection: Gochman family collection. The Gochmans unite Albert Barnes, Henry Clay Frick, Eli Broad, Peter Brant, Norton Simon, Christian Levett, Henry Walters, Raymond NasherDavid and Carmen KreegerSterling and Francine Clark, Emily and Mitch Rales and quite a few others who chose to set up their own museums to display their collections rather than donate the works to an existing institution.

The Gochman family could have followed the example of the chairman of the Historic New York board Agnes Hsu-Tang and her husband Oscar Tangwho donated 150 works of contemporary Native American art to that museum. Donations solve a problem for older collectors whose children may not want what their parents collected and don’t want to pay a significant inheritance tax; selling everything generates a capital gains tax that can reach 40 percent. (Donating works to eligible nonprofits also allows collectors to deduct a significant portion of their value from their taxable income and estates, keeping many accountants and museum officials busy during this time of year.) But the family decided to keep their collection together, refusing to let museum curators pick and choose what they wanted or thought important to display, leaving most other objects – probably in stagnation. Their vision and support for contemporary Native American artists proved more important than dollars and cents. That said, Gochman The Family Collection space won’t be a museum, though, according to Phipps, it will have “exhibits, as well as programming like readings, performances, concerts, workshops, kind of a wide range of different kinds of programming.” And as a museum, it has a mission, which is to create “visibility for the artists in the collection.” The galleries will also serve as a kind of showroom. “We work hard to make the collection accessible enough for lending and easy for institutions and other spaces to borrow.”

Many other art collectors have taken this route, not all of them successful. Chicago businessman and President Reagan’s ambassador-at-large for cultural affairs, Daniel Terra (1911-96) created a museum—actually two museums, one in Chicago and one outside Paris—to exhibit his collection of 750 works of Hudson River Valley and American Impressionist painting. Both closedresult of failure to achieve financial sustainability. The Terra Foundation for American Art then donated most of its collection to the Art Institute of Chicago and shifted its focus to grantmaking. Donald and Shelly Rubycollectors of Himalayan art, opened a museum to display over 1,000 of their objects in the Manhattan building that had been the Barneys department store, but 20 years later, they closed the venture due to lack of budget. of The Rubin Art Museum now functions as a “museum without walls”, giving objects to institutions seeking to display and research Himalayan art.

Another cautionary tale is the Hammer Museum, opened in 1990 by the chairman of Occidental Petroleum Corporation Armand Hammer (1898-1990) three weeks before he died. Its large collection of Old Master and 19th-century European paintings and drawings was prized, but by 1992, museum trustees negotiated with the University of California, Los Angeles, to take over the whole thing. Running a museum can’t just be a vanity project for someone with money and ego.

Having your name on the door of a museum is one thing; keeping the country open and financially stable is quite another. The Barnes Foundation was established by Dr. Albert Barnes (1872-1951), who housed his collection of 2,500 works of impressionist, post-impressionist and modern art in a museum in the town of Merion, Pennsylvania, and demanded strict adherence to his often unwelcome rules. The museum was available to visitors by invitation only, open only two days a week. Prospective visitors had to apply for permission to come, swearing to certain theories of art held by Barnes. In the 1960s, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s office pushed Barnes, as a tax-exempt educational institution, to be more accessible to the public, but admission was still quite limited—100 visitors a day. As a business model, it hardly looked promising.

In 2002, the Barnes board, facing a rapidly declining endowment, asked the courts to amend the institution’s charter to allow a move to Philadelphia, where several foundations and philanthropists had pledged $150 million to erect a new building and equip the transplanted institution. This new building was opened to the public in May 2012without those limitations and could not have been further from Dr.’s wishes. Barnes, who wanted nothing to do with Philadelphia society—but continuing the course Barnes had originally set was no longer possible. Today, there are many attractive programming at the Barnes, including a monthly First Friday evening program featuring music and access to the collection, a film series, a lecture series, and classes and workshops. Highlighting Barnes’ commitment to racial equality and social justice, the exhibits and films celebrate artists who are Black, Indigenous, people of color and women, many of whom “were overlooked during Dr. Barnes’ time,” a spokeswoman said.

The experience of these museums with a collector has taught other wealthy collectors to plan ahead and perhaps be a little more humble. In 1955, a 68-year-old socialist and philanthropist Marjorie Merriweather Post (1887-1973) purchased a 36-room Georgian mansion on a 25-acre estate in the northwest section of Washington, DC to display her collections of Imperial Russian art, Sevres porcelain, vases and bowls, as well as English and French paintings, sculptures, and tapestries. Her original plan was to donate her entire collection to the Smithsonian Institution, and the Smithsonian held the collection for four years, but in 1977, the estate repossessed everything and erected the house and its grounds as a museum. “Making Hillwood into a museum was Plan B,” he said Kate Markertexecutive director of Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, and this required a complete rethinking of what should happen there and how it should be supported.

Post left a $10 million endowment that covered Hillwood’s operating budget in the 1990s, but at some point, interest in the gift could no longer keep pace with the costs of maintaining the building and grounds. The museum began fundraising, seeking membership, holding special events, charging admission, and producing exhibits that featured not only objects collected by the Post, but also others on loan from institutions elsewhere. Most importantly, Hillwood dropped its admissions policy that had limited the number of visitors—110 in the morning, 110 in the afternoon—who were required to make advance reservations, Barnes Foundation-style. This new business model helped him earn more money and more repeat visitors.

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