Deaccession Transparency: Museums’ Websites Should Post Proposed Disposals

George Grosz, "Eclipse of the Sun," 1926, Heckscher Museum

Time magazine's Richard Lacayo, on today's Looking Around blog, takes the deaccession discussion to the next level. Lacayo opines:

Why is it that museums routinely do these sales---meaning sales entirely within the rules as the AAMD has devised them---without making any kind of public announcement?...Quiet selling gives the whole undertaking a slightly clandestine quality, which just muddies the whole debate about deaccessioning generally. Better to just issue a press release, explain your reasoning and be done with it.

It's the AAMD's position that it's "important that a museum's deaccessioning process be publicly transparent." But I'm not aware that the group details for its members just what steps they need to take to ensure that transparency. Maybe they need to think about that.

I fully agree with the principle of systematic public disclosure, as I've often stated (although, as I will explain, below, I think there's a better way to go about it). I believe that a vigilant, informed public is the best deterrent to sales of museum-quality works that should remain in the public domain. Public outcry helped to scotch recent plans by Fort Ticonderoga in upstate New York to sell an important Thomas Cole painting to fund its building plans after a donor reneged. And several years ago, something similar happened when the Heckscher Museum in Huntington, NY, decided to sell one of its signature works, George Grosz's Eclipse of the Sun (above), also to fund building plans.

Interestingly, one of those who led the successful charge against the Heckscher disposal was Chris Crosman, a former director of that museum, who wrote a strong NY Times Op-Ed piece against the sale in 2005, when he was director of the Farnsworth Museum, Maine. Crosman is now chief curator at Alice Walton's Crystal Bridges Museum, which is involved in a deaccession-related controversy of its own, as it seeks to acquire a half-share of Fisk University's Stieglitz collection which many (including me) believe should remain where the donor, Georgia O'Keeffe, had intended it to be.

I don't think issuing press releases every time a museum sells something is the best solution. Here's what I said on the subject, back in the early days of CultureGrrl (July 2006). Given the latest round of deaccession controversies, it's worth repeating:

Museums should identify on their websites any works that they have targeted for disposal, several months in advance of their sale. This gives notice to the public and to the state attorney general's office that part of the public patrimony may go private. The posting should include a description of the work and the reasons why it is deemed expendable.

This is not to say that museums should never dispose of objects. It's just that the process should be completely transparent. If that makes it harder for museums to deaccession, so be it.