There’s news on the deaccessioning front. The New York State Board of Regents has decided who will help it decide what it should do.
Let’s recap: The Regents voted in September to let temporary regulations on deaccessioning expire. Despite all the outcry, I figured that the Regents were not abdicating their responsibility on the subject, but rather were taking a measured approach — and I made no comments at the time, And, happily, they were refusing to be bullied into action by scare stories of museums and libraries who would rush to put their collections up for sale (for an overview, see a New York Times story here.)
I haven’t seen a selloff, have you?
In any case, my views on deaccessioning are more nuanced than those who are anti-deaccessioning except in cases where the proceeds are used to purchase more art. I won’t repeat them, but you can get a good idea them here, here, here and here (among others). One thing I will say: The decision to deaccession should always be a deliberate one, and transparency about the decision, before the act, is a necessity.
In recent days, I have learned, the Regents have named a 16-member ad hoc advisory committee on deaccessioning. The list includes some usual suspects, such outspokenly anti-deaccessioner Michael Botwinick of the Hudson River Museum, and some not-so-usual suspects, including out-of-stater Martin Sullivan, director of the National Portrait Gallery and recently in trouble for…well, you know what.
The others:
- Roger Tilles, a Regent who is also chair of the cultural education committee of NYS Education Dept.
- Carole Huxley, chair of the Regents ad hoc advisory committee on deaccessioning
- Thelma Golden, director of the Studio Museum of Harlem
- Anne Ackerson, director of the Museum Association of New York
- Steven Kern, director of the Everson Museum
- Stephen Elliot, president of the Fennimore Museum/Farmers Museum and the New York Historical Association
- Beth Levinthal, executive director, Hofstra University Museum
- Henry Lanman, associate general counsel, MoMA
- Scott Schaefer, associate dean of science for collections, American Museum of Natural History
- Caroline Welsh, senior art historian and director emerita, Adirondack Museum
- James Corsaro, consultant, retired special collections librarian, NYS Library
- Jeffery Cannell, deputy commissioner for the Office of Cultural Education, NYS Dept. of Education
- Clifford Siegfried, assistant commissioner, director of NYS Museum
- Richard Trautwein, office of counsel, NYS Dept. of Education
So there you have it: these people will help shape what I hope is a reasonable policy on deaccessioning in NYS, which has often been cited as a nationwide standard. We will see what they come up with.