Deaccession Disclosures (or Not)

Apparently Jen Graves still can't get anything she wants at Mimi Gates' Restaurant. Graves, a writer for The Stranger, Seattle's alternative weekly, triumphantly reported last week that the director of the Seattle Art Museum had acceded to her CultureGrrl-inspired request to "make public the artworks it plans to sell before they go to auction."

But now, Graves reports, that is not to be:

SAM director Gates will not, in fact, allow the works waiting to be shipped to auction houses to become public knowledge. Only works that have already been sold can be reported publicly.

Jen, you don't have to take this, nor must you necessarily peruse the catalogues of every upcoming auction to get presale information: Last week, I did a search for works recently sold or about to be sold by the Metropolitan Museum in auction databases available free to the public at the Frick Art Reference Library. A cheerful librarian directed me to the databases that had the most user-friendly search results for identities of sellers.

The Met, unlike most museums, does annually publish a list of works (but not their individual prices) sold for more than $50,000, but its press office would not provide me an update on works sold since the most recent annual report, covering fiscal 2005 .

Here are three of the higher-priced recently sold items that I found through my database search. The last was sold by the Met just a week ago. Prices include the buyer's commission:

Benjamin West, "Portrait of Peter Beckford," Sotheby's London, Nov. 24, 2005: $76,364

Benjamin West and John Trumbull, "The Battle of La Hogue," Sotheby's New York, Jan. 26, 2006: $632,000

A pair of 18th or 19th-century Chinese square-corner cabinets and hat chests, Christie's New York, Sept. 19, 2006: $36,000