To launch a multifaceted project or business venture, we often need to conduct a series of linked negotiations with numerous counterparts. Harvard Business School professor James Sebenius refers to this process as a negotiation campaign, in which “a number of individual deals must be put together, often on multiple ‘fronts,’ to realize a larger result, typically an ultimate target agreement with sufficient support to make it sustainable.”
The negotiation campaign that curators at France’s Louvre Museum conducted to secure loans of Leonardo da Vinci paintings and drawings for a major exhibit that opened in October 2019 serves as a case study. Kelly Crow reported on the negotiation campaign for the Wall Street Journal.
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At the Louvre, paintings curator Vincent Delieuvin and prints and drawings curator Louis Frank developed the provocative theory that ultimate Renaissance man Leonardo da Vinci explored so many fields—from science to math to music—primarily to serve his work as a painter, though no more than about 20 paintings have been attributed to him.
To test their theory, the curators had several of the museum’s five Leonardo paintings fully restored and had all of them analyzed scientifically. They began planning a landmark exhibit for 2019, the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death. Gathering as many of the artist’s paintings and related drawings as possible would allow Delieuvin and Frank to test and share their theory. It would also require dozens of complex negotiations with other museums and private collectors to borrow their Leonardos.
Ultimately, 160 works were assembled for the show, only 32 of them owned by the Louvre. “The loans were our biggest nightmare,” Delieuvin told the Journal. The negotiation campaign lasted several years and went down to the wire, concluding just a few days before the four-month exhibit opened.
Painting a Dazzling Picture
Securing loans of prestigious works of art is a complicated process. “People think [the museum] world is so genteel, but it takes a ton of horse-trading and convincing and last-minute panicking to pull off these shows,” University of Oxford art-history professor Martin Kemp told the Journal. Although borrowers typically don’t have to pay a fee for the loaned artwork, they must buy substantial insurance to protect the lender.
Delieuvin and Frank visited at least 20 museums in more than a dozen countries during their negotiation campaign. Competition was fierce, as other museums were planning their own Leonardo retrospectives. The fact that the Louvre already housed about one-third of Leonardo’s paintings helped, as its show would be the largest and most prominent, Delieuvin explained to CNN.
Seeking a religious Leonardo painting from Russia’s State Hermitage Museum, Delieuvin and Frank learned it had already been promised to two Italian museums for earlier in 2019. After repeated requests, Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky agreed to allow the painting, Benois Madonna, to make a final stop in France before returning home.
A Faltering Negotiation Campaign
To set up loans of Leonardo paintings from Italy’s Uffizi Gallery, the Louvre generously lent three of its Leonardo paintings to the 2015 Milan Expo. In line with the norm of reciprocity, France’s and Italy’s culture ministers agreed to a swap in 2017: The Louvre could borrow Leonardo works from Italy in exchange for contributing rare Raphael works to shows in Italy planned for 2020.
That deal collapsed when Italy’s centrist government was briefly replaced by populist leadership. After another power shift in Italy, the agreement was reinstated—but then jeopardized once again when an Italian heritage group asked a Venice court to determine whether famous Leonardo drawings were too fragile to travel. A week before the Louvre show, the court ruled the artwork could go to France.
Finishing Touches
Days before the exhibit, Delieuvin held out hope that the owner of Salvator Mundi, a recently discovered Leonardo painting bought anonymously at auction for a record-breaking $450 million in 2017, would loan it at the last minute. The Louvre received no response to its requests to borrow the painting, whose owner was later identified as Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
Ultimately, understanding the great artist himself was a more difficult undertaking than the multiparty negotiations, Delieuvin told CNN. But the painstaking efforts have paid off. Scientific analysis of Leonardo’s painting Virgin of the Rocks, for example, revealed hidden sketches that support the theory that, as a painter, Leonardo was a perfectionist, “striving to find the best composition and the most beautiful pictorial execution,” according to Delieuvin.
5 Elements of a Successful Negotiation Campaign
The Louvre curators’ moves suggest the following lessons for managing a negotiation campaign:
- Plan ahead. By networking and making generous loan offers, the curators encouraged their future counterparts to enter negotiations with a spirit of reciprocity.
- Stir up excitement. Inspire counterparts by painting a compelling portrait of your ultimate goal.
- Go the distance. Show your commitment by traveling to meet face-to-face.
- Get the sequence right. Seek early agreements with influential parties in your field whose buy-in could compel others to get on board.
- Ride out the winds of change. If you start negotiating early enough, you may be able to survive political and organizational turmoil.
What experience have you had running a negotiation campaign, and how did it go?
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