At any given time, roughly 5% of the IMA’s permanent collection is on display in our galleries or at other institutions on loan. This means the remaining 95% of the collection is tucked away in our on-site storage. But that 95% doesn’t just idly sit there. A portion of it is moved and managed by the IMA’s Registration, Packing, and Storage Departments.

The IMA has roughly 20,000 square feet of space dedicated solely to the storage of its encyclopedic collection. About 4,000 square feet accommodates our prints and drawings collection. The remaining 16,000 is for paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, textiles and more. 16,000 square feet of space may sound like a lot of room, but for a collection of over 55,000 objects, every inch must be utilized.

The IMA has taken measures to maximize its storage areas. One of those ways is employing high-density storage technology like the kind we have for our textile and painting collections. The textile collection is housed in custom-made Delta Design cabinets, which store the collection according to the needs of each individual piece. Is it a carpet that needs to be rolled? Is it a dress that needs to be hung? These cabinets move along tracks that allow the user to have access to the collection one aisle at a time.

Here is a video showing how the storage system works:

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Filed under: Art, Conservation

Long-term loans of artwork from private collectors and other museums are an effective and efficient way for a museum to give visitors a new perspective on its permanent collection, and for lenders to get their artwork out to new audiences. In the Charles O. McGaughey Gallery on the second floor of the IMA, visitors will currently find a painting by Thomas Gainsborough, titled Wooded Rocky Landscape with Mounted Peasant, Drover, Cattle, and Distant Building, on loan from the Tacoma Art Museum.

Image Courtesy of the Tacoma Art Museum

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Filed under: Art

Have you missed John Sloan’s painting Red Kimono on the Roof?  If you have, you are not alone.  The painting has not been on display for almost a year. Works come and go from gallery walls for a variety of reasons, but often they are on loan to another museum for an exhibition.

The story of the departure of the John Sloan began in July 2006 when the IMA director received a letter from another institution requesting the loan of Red Kimono on the Roof for an exhibition on Sloan’s New York paintings.  The exhibit was scheduled to be shown at four museums from October 2007 through December 2008.  The letter was passed on to me,  the American art curator, and the museum’s registration department setting in motion a carefully documented chain of events that would lead to the departure of the painting. The IMA requires at least six months notice to process the loan of a work of art from its collection.
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Filed under: Art