**1. Introduction**

From the 1960s, gallery exhibitions of holography featured both artists who were dominant forces in the world of artistic holography and established artists whose occasional holographic work for site-specific installations or projects was outsourced to studio production facilities. Concurrently, there were recognized distinctions between galleries and museums that were dedicated to exhibitions of holography such as the MOH and galleries whose artists included holograms in their exhibitions. By the 1980s, a few artists whose primary medium was holography had made the transition into the wider art world and were exhibited in art museums. Recently, there have been donations to fine art museums of holograms by internationally acclaimed artists who experimented with holography as a tool for dimensional image making but whose formal disciplines were in other forms of expression.

In a 2012 Canadian newspaper review in the Globe and Mail, culture journalist, Sarah Nicole Prickett, wrote, "[a]nd so do holograms, which already give the appearance of having time-travelled from the past's idea of today, have less than a century to go? Or will they flicker in and out, trendily, never surpassing kitsch?" (Prickett 2012).

Fifty-five years ago, artists glimpsed the first hologram titled, "Train and Bird," by American scientist Emmett Leith. Ever since, the imaging possibilities of holography have intrigued artists from various disciplines and practices. The MoH was opened in 1976 to provide a focus to both the science and emerging art of what was then a new visual technology. While holograms were collected by museums outside the dedicated centers for holographic art, holography has not received widespread recognition as an art form. Reading several articles by writer Sean F. Johnston, Professor of Science, Technology and Society, at the University of Glasgow, it appears that a confluence of factors, including the perception that art holography had come late to the "art and technology movement in the 1960s"

formed the accepted rationale about the lack of a formal collections policy for Holographic Art in most museums (Johnston 2009).

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York sets out its acquisition policy, in part, in these terms, "[c]urators should propose exceptional works of art for acquisition to the collection that significantly further the Museum's stated mission. All works should be in, or capable of being returned to, an acceptable state of preservation, unless the deteriorated physical condition is integral to the meaning of the work. The Museum must be able to display, store, and care for the proposed acquisition according to generally accepted museum practices." From this mission statement, it is possible to conclude that the collection by museums of holographic art mirrors the collection policy criteria for any other artwork.

The Getty Research Institute, as part of the Photography collection of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, announced in March 2019 the acquisition of 105 glass plate holograms by 20 artists produced in the 1990s. The donation of 89 laser viewable masters and 16 white light reflection holograms was conceived in collaboration with C-project, a holography studio then operating in New York. In describing the acquisition, Senior Curator of Photography at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Jim Ganz said, "[w]e are pleased to add these visually compelling and artistically significant holograms of the late 20th century to our photograph collection, which has such grea<sup>t</sup> depth in 19th-century stereography, including examples by Carleton Watkins, Eadweard Muybridge, Mathew Brady, Roger Fenton, Francis Frith, and Adolphe Braun ... " (Ganz 2019). thereby viewing holograms as an extension of 19th century stereograms within the larger domain of photography.

While the properties of holograms are radically di fferent from photographic stereograms, these hologram acquisitions must fit within the context of a museum's existing collection and provide meaning to the donated artworks within a medium that often slips through the cracks of art and science. Donations and bequests often provide a crucial boost to a collection. Most fine art museums are non-profit organisations with tight operating budgets that depend on governmen<sup>t</sup> grants, admissions revenue, investment and donations. Few museums have budgets that would allow for the outright purchase of art. Reviewing the Getty donation, all of the artists' works included fit the demanding criteria of a museum donation; importantly it's provenance including the artwork or artist's exhibition history, any critical writing and previous ownership.
