Frederic Edwin Church, Valley of the Santa Ysabel, 1875.
In a previous post, I wrote about the ongoing "deaccessioning" controversy surrounding the Berkshire Museum's decision to sell about 40 artworks from its collection, in order to finance a renovation and fund its endowment, as the museum refocuses its mission on science and natural history. In the meantime, the story has continued to develop.
Predictably on cue, the "deaccessioning police" have raised their usual hue and cry. One of loudest voices in the claque is Christopher Knight of the LA Times, who has now gone "full nihilist" on deaccessioning. As Donn Zaretsky of the Art Law Blog observed, Knight's most recent column takes the anti-deaccessioning position to its inevitable reductio ad absurdum endpoint:
Here’s an idea: Don’t sell the art. Do close the museum. Start behaving like the charitable institution you are supposed to be. Spend the next several years responsibly overseeing the dispersal of the collection.
To paraphrase: "We had to destroy the museum in order to save it." With friends like Knight, the AAM and AAMD hardly need enemies. Hopefully, the dogmatism of the deaccessioning police will finally encourage more sensible minds to consider the actual consequences of the dogma.
Presumably in response to the uproar over the proposed sale, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey has announced that her office is “reviewing the transaction for how it comports with applicable charities law.” Given that the appropriate standard of review is quite deferential to the judgment of the board of directors, I hope the Attorney General's intervention is brief. Unfortunately, in other cases, Attorneys General have taken an aggressive position against proposed deaccessioning based on the AAM and AAMD guidelines, which I think is unwarranted.
For my own part, I recorded a podcast with Artsy.net, discussing the Berkshire Museum and deaccessioning in general with Artsy Associate Editor Isaac Kaplan and Editorial Associate Abigail Cain. You can listen to Artsy Podcast, No. 46: When Museums Sell Their Art, Where Should the Money Go? here.
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