I suppose I don’t think a lot on museums and their operation.

Sibling comment gets at the detail better, but it seems museums have dual roles: display some works for the public and preserve a much greater archive of work for progeny (?).

The public interest in viewing stuff doesn’t sound like it gets nearly the cachet as being ones who get to actually be close to the works.

FWIW, this sounds somewhat similar to ROM or many other digital “rarity” communities online.

I remember this happening in the Dave Matthews Band online community in the aughts (oddly specific but yes people with recordings that led to say the full leak of what became Busted Stuff) or to be one of the few who had heard a copy of “Build you a house.”

More recently I saw evidence of hoarding / gatekeeping in leaks of clean (master?) individual tracks from studio recordings of major artists.

I seem to remember celerity photo leak scandals that began as some kind of insiders only type thing.

I mention these examples because the human condition to hoard or derive power over the control of content is not unique to museum administrators.

That said, physical copies of rare human art are undoubtedly worth protecting.

However, I find the protection of digital descriptions of the works, especially given comment that they are likely not even unique, galling and not dissimilar to all the gate keeping examples I provided above.