Museums are buying art together, and not only to save money

An Artnet News report published on 4 August 2026 tracks how often museums now buy works jointly. The National Portrait Gallery and Tate in London shared a William Dobson self-portrait of about 1635-40 for $3.2 million. The Metropolitan Museum and the Cleveland Museum of Art split a cache of 18th-century prints last year. The Frans Hals Museum and the Mauritshuis co-own two Hals paintings.

The most ambitious case is MAC3 in Los Angeles, announced in 2024 and built jointly by the Hammer, LACMA and MOCA with funding from Jarl and Pamela Mohn; it already holds more than 300 works. Elsewhere the motive is representation rather than cost: Tate and the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia acquired 35 works by 24 artists between 2015 and 2022, including John Mawurndjul and Emily Kam Kngwarray. Shared ownership divides storage, insurance and admin. It also divides authorship of the narrative around a work, which is the part institutions rarely discuss.