Photo by Olga Riebeling

The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles

Peter Saul Charles Sheeler Giovan Battista Cima da Conegliano James Ensor Hans Haacke Harriet Hosmer Franz Xavier Messerschmidt Carleton E Watkins

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The Museum of Contemporary Art, which was suffering a self-imposed financial crisis even before the economy imploded, still managed to grow its collection by 141 works in the past year. The new pieces include 50 works donated by New York collectors Dorothy and Herbert Vogel, and important pieces by such artists as Lynda Benglis, Hans Haacke, Mike Kelley, Peter Saul, and Lawrence Weiner.

LACMA gained nearly 4,750 works, of which 3,500 were photographs from the collection of Marjorie and Leonard Vernon. There were also 46 pieces of rare Oceanic art from a Detroit foundation, Japanese and Native American works, a Renaissance painting by Cima da Conegliano, a suite of drawings by James Ensor and a 1962 installation by Edward Kienholz.

The J. Paul Getty Museum reported 894 new pieces, including a Roman sarcophagus, an Ethiopian manuscript, and works by Paul Gauguin, Claude Lorrain, Franz Xaver Messerschmidt, Irving Penn, and Carleton Watkins.

The Fowler added 666 textiles from Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. The Hammer Museum brought in 169 pieces of contemporary art. The Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts gained nearly 200 pieces, including 50 contemporary photographs from the David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Foundation and about 40 works from artist James Welling. And the Huntingon Library added 146 objects, including by such artists as Reginald Marsh, John George Brown, Charles Sheeler, Harriet Hosmer, and0 William Wetmore Story.

In general, institutions that rely on gifts rather than acquisitions to build their collection are less likely to be affected by the current economy. But even at the hard-hit MOCA, where acquisitions are currently on hold, the depressed economy isn’t entirely bad news.

“When works of art double or triple in value in a year or two, they tend to end up at auction,” said chief curator Paul Schimmel. “When the market declines, people don't do as much buying and selling. Some of them say, ‘Well, OK, it’s worth more as a gift.’ That affects the area of the market that moves most rapidly and where there has been the greatest speculation, and that's contemporary."

“It isn’t for the faint of heart, but if you look at the art market in cycles of 10 or 20 years, there are opportunities special to the climate we are in right now,” he added.