Fisk's sale of American moderns

It's really easy to criticize LACMA and MoMA for their recent deaccessioning. (Especially MoMA, whose collection increasingly seems to be a conveyer belt for auction houses to pick through. At least LACMA hasn't reached that level.)

I'm a near-absolutist on the evils of deaccessioning at art museums. I have a harder time condemning tiny (850 students) and financially-challenged Fisk University for deciding to sell the two greatest works in its collection, an O'Keeffe and a Hartley. Yes, I disapprove of what Fisk is doing, absolutely, but I can't quite muster condemnation. 

Fisk's gallery is almost an afterthought -- it is not accredited by the American Association of Museums, for example -- and the school's $12 million endowment is startlingly small. When Georgia O'Keeffe gave Fisk over 100 works of art she attached stringent conditions on what the school could do with them. Sending them on a money-raising tour of museums is not an option.

The Tennessean says that "leading American art dealers" think the two works could fetch $16-20 million, but when you combine the two artists auction records the total is under $9 million. Of course, that would be 3/4 of Fisk's current endowment.

And comments by Fisk officials indicate a certain cluelessness: "It was a very difficult decision to come to," Fisk prez Hazel O'Leary told The Tennessean. "But I've been here 18 months now and in that time I've come to understand the challenges of the 21st century as a business person."

Uh, Hazel, you're a university president, not a business person.

To address the obvious recent comparsion: This is not a case of Harvard, with a $23 billion endowment and plenty of major fundraising avenues, selling a Cassatt. Harvard has significant, internationally recognized museums and collections which are central to its mission. Fisk has none of those things and in recent years it has been drawing down its endowment to meet operating costs.

There's a difference in how the two universities are talking about their actions too. Fisk is answering questions about the sale and explaining itself. When I uncovered the Cassatt sale, Harvard's museum press office didn't return my calls and neither did its American art curator. (Gotta hate it when people uncover your secrets, eh? When MoMA sells at auction the works are listed as ex-MoMA works. Harvard listed the Cassatt as property of "a university art museum.")

It seems to me that this sale is closer to the recent New York Public Library sales than an art museum deaccessioning. Not only is the collection, display and preservation of art not central to Fisk's mission, but the school doesn't have the money to safely hang and conserve the art it has (the school's gallery is apparently in such bad shape that it has sent its art collections to the Frist Center for safe storage). A compromise that would ensure the work is taken care of would be a long-term loan to the Frist, but Fisk is obviously more interested in the dollars than in the work. It's too bad, really, really too bad. But it's hard not to understand Fisk's commodification strategy a little bit.

Related: From the WP, black-oriented museums lack black donors.