When museums sell

In the United States, it is a rare museum that never lets anything go. But deaccessioning (as it is known) has usually been done quietly, contributing to the impression among the general public that there must be something inherently wrong about it.

In fact, museums often end up with stuff that they cannot exhibit or that is of little or no relevance to what they are all about (it's not only relatives who end up receiving gifts that are better intentioned than chosen!). Storage space is another issue, as is the cost of insurance.

Museums also evolve over time. Nearly all older American museums, for example, started out with collections of European paintings of decidedly mediocre quality. Skip forward a few generations, and those museums' galleries are at an entirely different level -- the legacy of wealthy patrons, vastly improved connoisseurship, and the dispersal of so many old European collections. And so what was once exemplary is now the stuff sold in bulk by third-rank auction houses. Is it so bad that such works be sold off, especially if the proceeds can be used to acquire better items not well represented in the collection?

Of course, one can find cases where deaccessioning was improper or unwise -- but the same applies to certain acquisitions, too. Neither is a compelling argument that buying or selling is wrong per se, only that it should be done in a careful and responsible manner.

For various reasons (many having to do with the ongoing coup attempt against the Providence Athenaeum -- which, incidentally, is a library, not a museum), I recently took another look at the much-cited passage on deaccessioning in the American Association of Museums' Code of Ethics:

"disposal of collections through sale, trade, or research activities is solely for the advancement of the museum's mission. Proceeds from the sale of nonliving collections are to be used consistent with the established standards of the museum's discipline, but in no event shall they be used for anything other than acquisition or direct care of collections."

Nice ideals, but in practice these strictures are problematically inflexible (note that the passage cited above has not been accepted without controversy; and one wonders how binding it really is when it is prefaced: "Each nonprofit museum member of the American Association of Museums should subscribe to the AAM Code of Ethics for Museums" -- "should", and not "must"). If a company is overextended and faces financial ruin, one expects management to sell off whatever necessary to keep the firm afloat. What is so unethical about a museum acting similarly? The first duty of a museum may be to collect and preserve, but if the choice is between selling off parts of the collection and selling off all the collection, the proper course seems clear enough.

For museums can indeed go bust; most are smaller institutions (like the Graves Museum in Florida, in the news this week) whose troubles don't hit the headlines, but even big museums have had their problems over the years, such as the New York Historical Society (and here's another museum in trouble in Japan).

For the most part, one still sees a great deal of polarization on what might be termed survival deaccessioning, with many if not most pundits eager to accuse beleaguered museums without offering any plausible alternatives. The NY Times has been a particular offender in this respect over the years, reflexively attacking any deaccessioning, however reasonable (recent examples include the Providence Athenaeum, of course, and also the Aldrich Museum). A far more intelligent and nuanced discussion of these issues, however, has recently appeared in the Art Newspaper, in which Adrian Ellis notes:

. . . the current absolutist line on de-accessioning for purposes other than incremental shaping of collections is likely to be a growing source of tension between museum professionals and the wider community, not least as represented on their boards. At its simplest the question will be: why are you going down the tubes/deskilling your organisation/cutting public programmes/allowing backlogs to conservation work/closing galleries when a radical approach to a tiny proportion of your collection could remedy this problem? Neither legalistic defences nor arguments about “slippery slopes” are likely to hold sway in the long term.

And offers a reasonable suggestion:

One approach that respects the intentions underpinning the current position on de-accessioning while allowing for a more balanced allocation of resources might be for the museum community to see itself more as just that, a community, and allow for a more rational distribution of resources between cash-poor asset-rich institutions and cash-rich asset-poor ones, allowing them to trade to mutual advantage, irrespective of the application of funds generated by sales.

Sales could be restricted to museums that conform to appropriate standards of conservation and scholarly or public access and could be caveated to prevent re-sale to third parties that did not meet similar conditions.

Posted by David on March 31, 2004 5:14 PM