There's always a bigger fish

CultureGrrl provides an interesting counterexample to the widely accepted notion of museums being at the end of the art acquisition food chain. The Corcoran Gallery in Washington is deaccessioning 10 of it's holdings for an estimated $4-6 million dollars. This got me interested in how museums deal with the issue of deaccessioning, and after some research, I came up with Code of Ethics for Museums that establishes some pretty tough guidelines for deaccessioning. The comments made by culturegrrl and the Art Law Blog lead me to believe that in general, deaccessioning is a policy that is treated with utmost respect in the States as well as abroad.

To that end, I am left wondering, whether this may not be exxagerated a bit beyond proportion. Keeping in mind some past discussions regarding the future of the museum and mr. Skramstrad's fabulous article, I do not see, in principle, the horrors that deaccessioning works causes to a museum. If indeed, works are being sold to principally other museums whose capacity to care for the works are at least on par with those of the selling museum, the profits are used to better direct the focus of the selling museum and the work itself is exposed to a wider variety of people, then it should by all means be done. In the end, it does not matter in which museum's collection a certain work exists, as long as it exists in a collection.

Of course a looser policy towards deaccessioning opens up a new can of worms. There is the question of non-profits using works acquired through donations or by public money (be it tax deduction or straight-out government funding) to essentially make profits, not to mention the erosion of public trust that the Art Law Blog so concisely points out. On the other, it seems, at least as evidenced by the Code of Ethics and the little information available on the Corcoran case that museums are quite aware of these pitfalls and are taking that well into account when choosing to go down that route.

And finally, I am intrigued by the fact that the most recent exhibition of one of the works being deaccessioned by Corcoran was in 1990, that is 29 years ago. The works being sold may end up in less prominent museums, but they may also end up on display. Everything else being equal, I would much rather see the Cole being sold by Corcoran on display in a small museum somewhere in middle America than in storage in Washington as the gallery stands faithful to its collection.

But what if the works are bought by private individuals? What if the works end up being completely removed from the public sphere and end up collecting dust in the basement of a rockefeller-wannabe for decades? A devil's advocate's answer would be: how is this different from collecting dust in the basement of a museum for decades?

This of course relates back to many of the topics we've discussed in class. First, public money has been used by the museum in purchasing the object, so the public should have a say in whether or not that object can be deaccessioned to a private owner. This is probably why the museum is seen usually as the last item in the cultural heritage food chain. Even if the museum strictly adheres to the policy of using the revenue only for augmenting the collection, there are many strings attached. What if the deaccessioned works were a gift? How does that portray the museum in the eyes of would-be donors? How does decreasing the collection of a museum, even if temporarily, to an auction house, no less, jibe with the professed goals of most museums - that is education and preservation? If the museum does not know where the works are going to, how can they be sure that they are well preserved.

In short, if it's tightly regulated, then it's rightly so. In the case of the Corcoran though, more information is needed before passing judgement.