Will the Philadelphia Museum Sell an Eakins?

The buzz here in the City of Brotherly Love is that the Philadelphia Museum is likely to sell art from its collection in order to help fund the $68-million purchase of "The Gross Clinic."

This was touched upon in today's WHYY radio report, which used a one-sentence anti-deaccessioning soundbite from me as well as comments from representatives of the Philadelphia Museum and its Eakins co-purchaser, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. (Listen here for today's Philly Public Radio segment; click on the Mar. 13 link) .

The most public pronouncement from the Philadelphia Museum on possible deaccessioning came today at the all-day seminar I attended here on Best and Worst Practices in Deaccessioning, organized by the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collection Libraries.

When she agreed to participate in this symposium a year ago, little did Alice Beamesderfer know that her institution would be on the deaccession hotseat. The Philadelphia Museum's associate director of collections gave an overview of her institution's deaccessioning policies and practices, and then gamely addressed the Eakins situation head-on:

Deaccessioning should take place only to strengthen the collection by allowing museums to acquire much finer works of art than those that it removed from the collection. If we fall short [in fundraising for the Eakins], isn't it justifiable to sell lesser works, or would it have been better just to let "The Gross Clinic" go?

This was obviously meant as a rhetorical question.

Most interestingly, she quoted from the deed of gift signed Dec. 5, 1929 by Susan MacDowell Eakins and Mary Adeline Williams, the executors of Eakins' estate, who gave the museum a large collection of works by the Philadelphia artist.

The deed reads:

If occasion should arise in which the Museum could in its judgment effect an exchange, favorable to the memory and reputation of Thomas Eakins, of paintings now in the Collection for other paintings, such exchange may be made, provided due care shall be taken by the Museum to preserve always a representative group of the works of Thomas Eakins.

Afterwards, I asked Beamesderfer if I was correct in surmising that the museum is actively considering such an Eakins "exchange." She said that the curators had indeed identified several works by several artists, including Eakins, for possible disposal. But she added that no decision about whether or what to sell had yet been taken, because fundraising continues.

Then I strolled over to PAFA and got a private look at "The Gross Clinic" in its new setting, where it will open to the public tomorrow and remain on view until June 2008 (after which it shuttles back to the Philadelphia Museum).

COMING SOON: MORE ON EAKINS' "GROSS" AT PAFA