BlogBacks: Readers Speak Out on National Academy Deaccessions

You have broken an incredibly important story. And this is an issue that is likely to emerge again and again as trustees fail to understand the real meaning of their fiduciary responsibilities in this very difficult economic time, and turn to the easy pickings of the collection as "sleeping asset."

I was very interested to learn about the sale of the two paintings by the National Academy. I was asked to interview for the job of director there last year (still haven’t heard!), so I had time to learn about its inner situations.

Finances were indeed troublesome and I was asked about my abilities in that regard. I happen to love fundraising on behalf of the arts and would have had no problem celebrating the unique character of the Academy. One artist on the search committee said that artists usually are not wealthy and thus could not be expected to be of much help. I noted that while artists may not be wealthy (though some Academicians are) they usually know people of means, or their dealers know people of means.

The reported $15 million gained from the sale of the paintings is a nice sum of money for the Academy and will certainly tide it over for several years, depending on how they spend it. When a pot of money suddenly appears at a museum, everyone wants to dip into it and in no time it’s gone. Look at what happened at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, which once upon a time had a $40 million endowment!

Selling art for big bucks gets the current Academy board off the fundraising hook. They are excused from their fiduciary responsibilities. Selling stuff from the collection to pay for operations and capital improvements is not the kind of responsible fundraising museums should pursue.

The predicament that the Academy finds it self in is not new. It is an institution that has long been plagued by poor management and a board of trustees that seemed to ignore the pressing need for they themselves to raise money needed to operate the institution. Allowing the Academy to sell two of its best works to correct their incompetence is a terrible loss for the city and people of New York.

It is an added tragedy that the works in question were part of the Museum's most important bequest---the gift of James A. Suydam (1819-1865), an artist and one of the academy's most important supporters. It is hard to believe, just two years after publishing a massive book about Suydam and his legacy to the museum (which coincided with a major exhibition), that the board felt these were the two works that should be sold.

We have to remember that in New York State all museums hold their collections in trust for the benefit of the public. Too many museum trustees ignore this important fact. The way to save a museum as poorly operated as the National Academy is to remove its Board, appoint a board of museum experts and wealthy donors, sell its real estate holdings in NYC, and move it to a new location. Then it can be organized and endowed so that its collection can remain intact and the issues that got it to this position are not repeated.

The National Academy's sale (and the AAMD's condemnation of it) is, as you suggested, something we're going to see more of. It's too bad, but I would suggest that in light of the options (which, for many institutions, will be closing or merging), deaccessioning is not the heinous crime that AAMD would have us believe. There are surely times when deaccessioning is called for.

Whether as the result of unprecedented economic times, or as the result of the much more typical inadequate board supervision, museums of all kinds find themselves in terrible straits today. Although art museums have for many replaced religion (thereby explaining the over-the-top and rightous condemnation of the AAMD), the reality is that these are organizations that should serve their communities--not some abstract and sacred principle.

While a sale of works should be considered as a last resort, it is both foolish and condescending to maintain that deaccessioning should NEVER be done except to invest in more art. Works of art--as wonderous as they are--are still objects and assets, and museums, if they are to function as anything more than storage lockers, are responsible to their communities to function as a living and changing entities.