What is budget and how it works?

How big is MoMA's budget for purchasing works of art each year?

• Are there separate funds for different types of media? Does the museum set a goal of aquiring a certain amount of pieces each year?

• Answer:

  I can't speak specifically for MoMA, but museums generally have so many different ways of acquiring artworks that it would be difficult to pin down a single budget number for the purchase of works.  Many works are acquired as gifts (or as long-term, semi-permanent loans), and those acquisitions may be planned based on a relationship with a given collector, or they may be serendipitous acquisitions (if a collector dies and unexpectedly donates works as part of his/her will, for instance).  Some museums have outside affinity/support groups that support the acquisition of works as well, which is why some museums will have large collections of particular types and not others (lots of Native American art, for instance, but very little contemporary sculpture).  Often these groups will oversee separate endowments that may be outside of a museum's annual budget. It would be unusual for a museum to set a goal of acquiring a specific number of pieces in a given year; it's more likely that a museum might set a more vague goal of acquiring works of a particular type or something like that.  The valuation differences between media types also means that specific number goals are usually counterproductive--for instance, it would not be unusual for a museum's prints, drawings, or photographs departments to acquire hundreds of works in a single year, but only one Renaissance masterwork over a 10-year period.