AAM Lambasts Desperation Deaccessions: Text of Its Letter to NYS Board of Regents

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Ford Bell, president of the American Association of Museums

A forcefully worded letter sent Friday by Ford Bell, president of the American Association of Museums, to the NY State Board of Regents may well have been crucial in turning the tide against the Regents' now aborted proposal to allow museums and historical societies to sell collection objects to defray debts. (Christine Anagnos, deputy director of the Association of Art Museum Directors, whom I contacted for a copy of any letter that group may have sent, informed me: "AAMD has not released a statement.")

Below are excerpts from Bell's ringing manifesto:

It is precisely because we are in difficult times that we must keep our professional ethics about us, for it is by sticking to our ethics when times are bad as well as good that we earn the public trust. This is particularly true when the subject is museum collections....With a private collection, you may be able to see it today, but you have no assurance that you will see it tomorrow. With a museum, you have the assurance that its collection will be available to the community for generations to come....

An analogy we use is that allowing a museum to trade its collection to cover operating debts would be like allowing a financial fiduciary, such as a bank, to raid assets it holds in a trust to cover a hole in its own balance sheet. This would be inconceivable. It should be equally inconceivable for a museum to raid the assets placed in trust with it....

Any New York museum accredited by AAM which avails itself of this emergency provision [allowing deaccessions to pay debts], should it be adopted, would face immediate review of its Accredited status and probable loss of Accreditation.
December 15, 2008 3:02 PM | |

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LEE ROSENBAUM
I'm a veteran cultural journalist who writes frequently for the Wall Street Journal's "Leisure & Arts" page. I've been a regular cultural contributor on New York Public Radio (WNYC). I've appeared as an art-market commentator on BBC-TV and have published numerous Op-Ed pieces in the New York Times and Los Angeles Times. I am author of The Complete Guide to Collecting Art (Knopf) and have lectured on cultural property issues at the New Acropolis Museum and the University of Pennsylvania, on deaccessioning at Columbia Law School, the University of Iowa and the annual conference of the Museum Association of New York, and on museum governance and cultural property issues at Seton Hall University. more

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This page contains a single entry by CultureGrrl published on December 15, 2008 3:02 PM.

NYS Regents Reverse Course on Desperation Deaccessions was the previous entry in this blog.

NY State Regents Cultural Education Committee Votes for Stringent Deaccession Guidelines, UPDATED is the next entry in this blog.

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