Museums’ financial difficulties aren’t going away in the near future, and neither are deaccessioning controversies, and that’s why I wrote an op-ed for The New York Times, which published it in Saturday’s paper as “The Art of the Deal.” (It was published on the web late on Jan. 1.)
Some people — directors, trustees, maybe even curators who fear they’ll lose their jobs in the next round of cutbacks — will want to solve their cash problems by selling art. As everyone interested in art must know by now, that practice is forbidden by museum rules.
So in the piece, I propose that museums establish an orderly process for considering it — before the next crisis hits.
My solution is this: museums that propose to sell art from their storerooms for purposes other than buying art should submit their cases to an independent arbitrator. And if they make a convincing case, they must also give other public collections two chances to buy the art — once, in a right of first refusal; a second time, after a public auction, when they all have an opportunity to match the winning public bid.
Yes, this is cumbersome — but it beats the messes we’ve had at museums ranging from Brandeis’s Rose Art Museum to the St. Augustine Historical Society to the Blanden Memorial Art Museum in Fort Dodge, Ia.
But maybe we are maturing: I expected to be flooded with complaints about violating sacred principles. Instead, all of the feedback I’ve received has been positive. One friend made a great addition to my solution, which proposed using neutral parties familiar with art, art law and nonprofit regulation. To her, that spelled lawyers, and she suggested that retired, disinterested museum professionals could also arbitrate.
Lest you think I’ve gone over to the dark side, however, let me post the final line of my piece:
…de-accessioning shouldn’t be impossible — just nearly so.
I hope that the Association of Art Museum Directors, the Association of College and University Museums and Galleries and the American Association of Museums take up this subject in the very near future. If they don’t, I fear others will try to do it for them, as we have already seen in a few instances (the Brodsky bill in NYS, to name one).