Results tagged “deaccessioning” from Real Clear Arts

If anyone doubts the ripple effect of museum deaccessions, take a look at Fort Dodge, Iowa. There, the city-owned Blanden Memorial Art Museum is under fire for moving to sell more than 370 works of art in a sale set for today. Though museum leaders said the sale has been planned for a long time, and was triggered by an Association of American Museums report that criticized "overcrowding" at the museum, it wasn't until pressed that the museum disclosed the works it planned to deaccession.

Worse, until yesterday, there were no prohibitions on purchases by museum staff or trustees and the sale included a "buy it now" option, causing worries that the Blanden would not achieve decent prices for the works on offer. The museum was also planning to sell works given to the museum by the federal government. According to the Fort Dodge Messenger:

[Yesterday, the museum] removed eight items from the sale list. Seven of those items were given to the museum in 1935, two years after it opened, by the Federal Emergency Relief Administration. That agency commissioned unemployed artists to create works during the Great Depression.

The withdrawal of those pieces came after the U.S. General Services Administration contacted City Manager David Fierke on Thursday and asked the museum to refrain from selling any Depression-era artwork commissioned by the government. That agency requested that any such unwanted works be sent to the federal government.

Museum director Margaret Skove said the money raised will go toward conservation -- not, as rules for larger museums would dictate, for acquisitions.

Meanwhile, a major benefactor, William Doan, had said "Cancel the auction or walk into the darkness of an uncertain future that may damage the reputation of the museum and the city for decades to come."

Once the auction was allowed to proceed, according to the Messenger, Doan said that:

the Doan Family Foundation, of which he is the president and chairman, will no longer support the museum with money or gifts of art. Over the years, that foundation has given more than 50 artworks to the museum.

''We are never coming back, ever,'' he said. ''We could not trust the museum ever again.''

Here's the Messenger's account, with lists of the works to be sold and those removed.

True, the art involved isn't by the likes of Eakins or Kandinsky, but that doesn't mean this example isn't worthy of attention. It's the trend that matters, and even small museums have to be held to standards.

UPDATE, 10/11 A.M.: According to the Messenger, the auction raised about $10,000 for the museum.

UPDATE 2: And it gets worse -- see comment by Doan below.

Photo: Courtesy Blanden Memorial Art Museum  

Yesterday Maxwell Anderson, director of the Indianapolis Art Museum, sent me a link to an interview he did with Richard Armstrong, the new(-ish) director of the Guggenheim Museum. It's quite a revelation -- on the nature of Biennials, an overcultured New York, his audience and collecting plans and, most of all, about deaccessioning.

In the beginning -- the video, which was posted on ArtBabble yesterday, runs for 49 minutes and 28 seconds -- Max (left) simply lets Armstrong (right) talk, telling how the Guggenheim got to where it is today. But around the 40th minute, Max asks about deaccessioning. Armstrong replies:

"The collection needs to be shaped. It's slightly misshapen....One wonders, does one need to own 114 Kandinskys, for example."

Max, surprised, offers "we're interested in Kandinskys," and Armstrong plows ahead: "I just think there's a way of deploying assets slightly differently." 

The National Gallery of Art rarely deaccessions works (other than duplicate prints), but -- in settlement of a lawsuit -- it has just agreed to transfer the ownership of a painting on view there, Chaim Soutine's Piece of Beef, to the family of a prior owner. In return, the NGA will receive payment, which spokeswoman Deborah Ziska described in an email to me as "more ...than it paid for it." 

The suit was brought by the estate of Lorette Jolles Shefner of Montreal against the National Gallery and Maurice Tuchman and Esti Dunow, the authors of the Soutine catalogue raisonné, about a year ago. It accused the men of "tricking her into selling the 1923 painting for $1 million -- below market value -- and then reselling it for twice the amount to the museum in 2004," according to the Associated Press. The suit also said the museum should have investigated how the two men came to own the artwork.

Ownership of the painting will now be returned to the Shefner Family, which has agreed, however, to leave the painting on view at the NGA "for the near future." U.S. District Court Judge Laura Taylor Swain, of the Southern District of New York, approved the settlement last week.

Piece of Beef  is part of an important series of carcasses painted by Soutine. The family contended that the experts should have told Ms. Shefner that comparable works by Soutine had sold for much more than she accepted for the work.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Edelman Financial

It seems that writing about deaccessioning can be as troubling as doing it. This time, it was James Panero's essay in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal that set tongues wagging and bloggers blogging. Panero, managing editor of The New Criterion, accused the Montclair Art Museum (right) of cleaning house with art sales to shore up its endowment and satisfy the banks. He quotes museum director Lora Urbanelli:

"We took out tax exempt bonds at a certain time in our history. And when you do that -- we are diligently paying them off -- but whenever you do that, as part of the agreement, you agree to have a certain amount on hand in an endowment fund. At times when our endowment is flagging, we go below that line. So this is a creative way to keep the endowment full and to stay above the water line to grow our endowment for acquisitions -- just so we are in the good graces with the bond covenants. All the bank wants to know is that the endowment is a healthy one for the size of the institution. There's nothing untoward."

But even anti-deaccessioning writers took offense at the essay. And Christopher Knight of the Los Angeles Times, who acknowledges that deaccessioning is sometimes necessary, labeled it a "hit job" -- full of innuendo and no proof.

The museum has announced its plans in a press release, but I'm not sure we know all the facts yet.

I am not, as others are, against all deaccessioning, though I deplore many of the recent museum sales. I'm more in tune with the letter that David Ross wrote to the WSJ, published today. The former director of the Whitney and SF MoMA, ever quick with a quote, wrote in his key passage:

The sale of works from a permanent collection should be surgical, not wholesale, and should be done only to enhance the collection -- not to satisfy bondholders or bank lenders.

Regardless of how one generation (or administration) feels about the relevance of a particular aspect of the museum's collection, it should not assume the right to alter the character of the museum, or simply erase the work of previous curators and donors.

Amen. 

His whole letter can be read here.

Photo Credit: Montclair Art Museum

Maybe the wave of censure directed at several museums for selling art from their collections has had a positive impact: yesterday, the Indianapolis Museum of Art announced that it has created and put online a searchable database of the art it has decided to deaccession, following a review of its collections begun in 2007. 

You can see what has been sold for what amount and what will be sold. In the future, IMA promises to link proceeds received from deaccessioned works to the new art they purchased. (That, of course, is the only way money from deaccessions is to be used, in accordance with Association of Art Museum Directors' policies.) IMA also posted its deaccessioning policy.

If other museums do this, I haven't seen it. I looked at some of the usual suspects (the Guggenheim, MoMA, etc.) just in case someone snuck it in while no one was watching, but -- zip on deaccessions. Therefore, kudos to Max Anderson, head of IMA, for knowing the value of transparency.

I hope others follow his lead. If museums are going to clean house from time to time -- and they are -- let them at least do it in public, giving advance word.

You can see the IMA database here. 

For the last couple of years, IMA has also published a (sort of) real-time dashboard with statistics on museum energy use, the number of new works on view, the endowment's value, the number of hours spent conserving art works, membership, and attendance, etc. One savvy person whose opinion I respect dismisses the dashboard as a gimmick -- and maybe it is. I still like it.

Photo: American Art Gallery, IMA, Courtesy IMA