In the last few days, I’ve learned about two pending deaccessions in different ways — neither ideally, but one preferable to the other.
Later this month, the Carnegie Museum of Art will sell five paintings by George Romney that, it says, have not been on view since the 1930s, according to yesterday’s Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. The paintings were a gift, but the curator of fine arts, Louise Lippincott, says she doesn’t understand why they were popular even then. And, the story continues,
The sale was prompted by limited storage space and the fact that the museum’s curators continue to collect. The contemporary department “is growing like crazy. We really are going back down to storage and, for the first time in years, saying, ‘Do these things belong in our collection? Are we ever going to have a public use for these objects?’ ” Ms. Lippincott said.
The works are on the block at Christie’s Old Master & 19th Century Paintings, Drawings & Watercolors sale, Part II, on January 26. You can see them here, and if all five simply equal their high estimate, the Carnegie will receive $100,000. With that, Lippincott said she would like to buy a drawing by Romney. (I’m happy these proceeds will stay within the period, and not go to contemporary art.)
How did this article come about? That’s not totally clear. There is no press release about it on the museum’s release page. Christie’s didn’t put out a release for that sale (or, at least, it’s not posted on the web and I didn’t receive one either). So either the reporter was remarkably enterprising or she was tipped off by someone — possibly even the museum itself, which decided the best way to handle a deaccession in this charged climate was to get ahead of the story. That’s my guess.
One of the five leaving the collection, Romney’s Portrait of Colin Dunlop of Carmyle, is above.
Meantime, I learned of the other deaccession — much bigger — from a press release, but one from Christie’s, not the museum in question, which is the Art Institute of Chicago. AIC is selling a Braque, two Picassos and a Matisse at the Impressionist and Modern sale in London on Feb. 11. Oddly, the release put a value on only three of them, and if those three fetch their high estimates, the total will be £10 million, or about $15.5 million. The details:
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Nature morte à la guitare, 1938, (at left) by Georges Braque, with an estimate: £3.5 million to £5.5 million), which was “formerly in the possession of the celebrated collectors Mr. and Mrs. Albert D. Lasker, the parents of Mrs. Brody who owned Pablo Picasso’s Nude, Green Leaves and Bust which sold at Christie’s New York in May 2010 for $106.5 million.”
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Sur l’impériale traversant la Seine, by Picasso, executied in 1901, with a £2 million to £3 million estimate
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Femme au fauteuil, 1919, a portrait by Henri Matisse, with an estimate: £1 million to £1.5 million)
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Verre et pipe, 1919, “a cubist jewel” by Picasso, with an as yet undisclosed estimate.
(Sorry to say their pictures are not yet posted on Christie’s website.)
When I asked the Art Institute about the deaccessions, spokeswoman Erin Hogan replied that the museum did not put out releases about deaccessions and added:
The works at Christie’s have been considered for deaccession for some time based on ongoing collection review. We felt that we have more illustrative examples of the works of these artists from these same periods. For example, we had two works by Braque from 1938 and several works from Matisse’s early Nice period (the period of The Green Sash). Braque, Picasso, and Matisse are already well represented in the collection.
That’s a pretty nice situation to be in! The proceeds will go into the acquisitions fund for that department, which is also appropriate.
Still, as I’ve hinted above, it would be far better if museums announced their plans to deaccession something themselves, in advance of the sale. It would show they have nothing to hide and it would explain why. Museums routinely announce their acquisitions — often after the fact, and in a group, to be sure — why not the other part of this equation?
A year ago, the DePaul University Museum even turned the subject into an exhibition — and what a smart move that was.
Transparency will, imho, go along way toward defusing the deaccessioning hooha. Nearly two years ago, the Indianapolis Museum of Art took that route, which I blogged about here. As far as I know, that remains the gold standard.
Photo Credits: Courtesy Christie’s