Art: Rent to Own

One way to avoid buyer's remorse is to rent something before you buy it.

Few know that you can do this with art.

Laura Randall wrote an informative article for the March 30 New York Times in which she called attention to a number of museums in the U.S. that have such programs, not widely publicized.

They rent paintings valued from $250 to $30,000 from outside their collections to individuals and corporations, with a two-month rental generally priced at 10% of the painting's value.

If you decide to buy it, a portion of the rental fee is applied to the sales price.

The artist gets 50%-75% of each rental or purchase and the museum gets the rest.

Between a third and a half of individuals end up buying the paintings they rented.

Museums with such programs includes the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the Portland Museum of Art; the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo; the Seattle Art Museum; the Delaware Art Museum; and the Racine Art Museum in Racine, Wisconsin.

Some college art museums have similar programs, even renting works from their permanent collections.

For example, the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College has been renting its Renoirs and other notable pieces from a designated 400-piece collection to its students since 1940.

The rental rate is $5 per semester, with a limit of two per student.

I suggest that if you live in a city with an art museum, or near a college with one, that you give it a call and see if such a program might not be in existence there, albeit quietly.

That goes for countries other than the U.S. as well — for all I know maybe even more so.