London
Microsoft founder Bill Gates refused to lend his Leonardo da Vinci manuscript to the Victoria and Albert Museum after there was a disagreement over “display arrangements”. He had agreed in principle to the loan, but when his tough terms proved unacceptable, the V&A’s request was dropped. The “Leonardo da Vinci: Experience, Experiment and Design” exhibition opened at the museum on 14 September with major loans from British collections.
Mr Gates purchased what was called the Codex Hammer in 1994, buying it for $31m at Christie’s, New York, from the heirs of Armand Hammer. This important notebook of Leonardo’s scientific observations dates from 1508-09. Mr Gates renamed the manuscript with its earlier name, the Codex Leicester, after the Earl of Leicester, who had acquired it in 1717. It is now owned jointly by Seattle-based Bill and Melinda Gates.
The Art Newspaper can reveal that Mr Gates was concerned about the lighting and security of the Codex Leicester. He may well have heard about a series of three thefts at the V&A in late 2004, although these were in antiquated cases in galleries which were about to be refurbished.
It is understood that Mr Gates wanted airport-style screening of all visitors for the Leonardo show, which would have been expensive for the V&A and time-consuming for the public. The museum felt this measure was unnecessary, since the Leonardos are displayed in highly-secure cases with toughened glass and in a gallery with appropriate security.
Mr Gates was also worried that light levels would be damaging from a conservation point of view, and might have resulted in minor fading. Other lenders, including the Royal Library, the British Museum and the British Library, were content for their manuscripts to be displayed at a 50 lux level of lighting, which is regarded as safe. With low ambient lighting, this provides reasonable viewing conditions for the public.
The representative of Mr Gates is believed to have suggested that if the lux level was 50, then his manuscript should only be shown for one hour a day, and then covered up. Another idea mooted was that if the Codex was on view all the time, then the lux level should be only 10. These strict conditions may be partly because the sheets of the Codex Leicester are lent more frequently to exhibitions than the Leonardos in the British collections, and they therefore get more exposure to potentially damaging light.
It was also suggested that the Codex Leicester sheets on display could be changed halfway through the four-month exhibition, with nine on show at any one time. For the last two months, the reverses of some sheets would be shown with some additional sheets.
The sticking condition was the daily light exposure. Showing the Gates pages for only one hour a day or at extremely low light levels for the whole day would have made it impossible to integrate the Codex Leicester sheets with other relevant manuscripts. This is the major point which the exhibition makes, by dividing up Leonardo’s drawings into various themes.
The V&A’s guest curator, Professor Martin Kemp, was very disappointed not to be able to display the Codex Leicester, and described Mr Gates’ terms as “inoperable for the show as a whole and excessively expensive to implement”. The sheets are, however, published in the catalogue.
Mr Gates’ representative, the New York-based art consultant Fred Schroeder, who advises on the Leonardo manuscript, insists on their willingness to lend the codex, and says it was the V&A which turned down the opportunity. He told The Art Newspaper: “The V&A’s decision not to borrow the Codex Leicester was a curatorial decision. We were favourably disposed to the loan and had looked forward to the opportunity to view the Codex Leicester alongside other Leonardo codices.”
Mr Gates owns no other Leonardo material, although he does have one of the finest collections of American paintings. His acquisitions are reported to include: Andrew Wyeth’s Distant Thunder ($7m in 1996), Winslow Homer’s Lost on the Grand Banks ($36m in 1998), George Bellows’ Polo Crowd ($28m in 1999), William Merritt Chase’s The Nursery ($10m) and Childe Hassam’s The Room of Flowers ($20m).
He is a donor and lender to the Seattle Art Museum, and his stepmother, Mimi Gates, is the director of the museum. Mr Gates, an extremely wealthy and generous philanthropist, also provided financial assistance for the research and development of the V&A exhibition (which runs until 7 January 2007).