And in the rematch...

Yesterday Christopher Knight examined Donn Zaretsky's recent Art in America pro-deaccessioning essay. Last night Zaretsky took to his blog to attempt a response. Let's see how he did. Zaretsky complains:

Knight says he was "stopped cold" by my assertion that the anti-deaccessionist position is "usually justified on the ground that works in museum collections are held 'in trust' for the public and therefore cannot be sold." He claims never to have "heard that 'usual justification' before."

Zaretsky should read the paragraph of Knight's to which he's responding one more time -- it does not equate "public trust" with "cannot be sold":

Art museum professionals restrict the income's use because they believe that the art in their care cannot be sold? Not having heard that "usual justification" before, I quickly realized I was in the presence of a giant straw man about to be knocked down and pummeled. "Supporters of the AAMD position say that works can never be sold," Zaretsky later reiterates -- except that, no, by and large they don't.

The first sentence of the AAMD handbook guiding deaccessioning policy --  adopted in 1987 and amended in 1991 and 2001 -- says: "The board of an art museum should adopt a written policy pertaining to the deaccessioning and disposal of works of art from its collection." That doesn't sound to me like the profession (or its "supporters") thinks works in museum collections cannot be sold. It sounds like they think that, when such sales inevitably happen, they need to be done with forethought and care.

Oops.

Another problem with art-and-entertainment lawyer Zaretsky's screeds is that (as above) they read like marketing brochures, where all that matters is selling the ShamWow. There's nothing wrong with someone arguing for changes to AAM and AAMD deaccessioning guidelines. I can think of a few changes I'd like to see made to the rules, including the creation of an independent, outside review panel that would examine potential infractions and an enforcement provision. (Unfortunately, AAMD has repeatedly demonstrated that ethically-challenged museum directors can get away with almost anything so long as they're members of The Club.)

But Zaretsky either pretends history doesn't exist or he just doesn't know about it. This paragraph is a perfect example of the under-informed dilletantism (in Art in America!) that Knight decries:

[Knight] also makes the bizarre claim that "one prime reason" for LA MOCA's financial problems is that the chairman of their board "is a Zaretskian who figured that if MOCA was spending money it didn't have, it really didn't matter: When crisis hit and the time came to pay the piper, the museum could just peel off a masterpiece from its collection and save the day." Is there any evidence at all for that accusation?

Well yes, there is -- and it's from the most prominent art museum crisis of the last decade. For Zaretsky to be apparently unaware of it as he's arguing in favor of expanded deaccessioning is stupefying. From the Dec. 17, 2008 Los Angeles Times: 

[MOCA board co-chairman Tom] Unterman was asked whether selling art from MOCA's collection was being considered as a way to raise operating funds. His answer:

"It's certainly one of the things that logically appears on an agenda.... Is it a logical option? Yes. Is it a probable option? No, probably not. I don't want to get way ahead of the board on this because they all may wake up one morning and say that's the best thing to do, but I'd be surprised."

... the board's current leadership regards the museum's art not as a cultural legacy to protect but a fungible asset available for cash conversion.

Indeed, conversion to pay bills in a fiasco created by the leadership.

Unterman's gross misunderstanding of his fiduciary duty at a nonprofit art museum helps to explain how MOCA came to the brink. The corporate mind-set he exposed is precisely what creates a boardroom climate that allows for the otherwise inexplicable decision - repeated year after year - to spend down the endowment on which a museum's stability depends. After all, why not take the spending gamble if you believe, however foolishly, that a bad MOCA bet can be covered by peeling off a couple of the collection's 10 magnificent  Mark Rothko paintings or its 11 incomparable Robert Rauschenberg combines and sending them off to market?"

Double oops.

If Zaretsky wants to advocate reforms that would open the door to the dismantling of art museum collections, that's fine. But in so doing he's revealing how woefully unaware of the issue he is.

Nota bene: Yesterday I asked Art in America if it had checked to see if Zaretsky -- best known in the art world as Christoph Buchel's legal enabler in Buchel's MASSMoCA charade -- has any clients that are considering a deaccessioning. If so, that should have been disclosed. The magazine has not responded.