Museums vote to allow the sale of art to care for collections
The First Art Newspaper on the Net    Established in 1996 Monday, November 25, 2024


Museums vote to allow the sale of art to care for collections
The Brooklyn Museum in New York, July 28, 2019. Members of the Association of Art Museum Directors have voted in favor of allowing American institutions to sell their art to finance the cost of caring for works in their collections, the organization announced. Jeenah Moon/The New York Times.

by Julia Jacobs



NEW YORK, NY.- Members of the Association of Art Museum Directors have voted to allow U.S. institutions to sell their art to finance the cost of caring for works in their collections.

The vote, announced Sept. 30, rolls back a long-held policy that prohibited museums from using the funds from sold works to pay their bills. The rule had been relaxed during the pandemic, allowing institutions a two-year window in which they could put those funds toward maintaining their collections while they dealt with financial upheaval and plunging attendance.

Since then, museum leaders have been engaged in a sometimes heated debate over whether it is time to make permanent the loosening of that policy, and now a majority of voting members of the association decided in favor of doing so — with some limitations. Of 199 eligible members, 109 voted for the policy, while 21 voted against it. The remaining institutions did not submit votes.

Some arts leaders and critics have objected to selling items from a museum collection, known as deaccessioning, saying that art owned by institutions is held for the public benefit and should mostly be retained. The norm has been that while some items could be sold, they were supposed to be artworks that were duplicative or no longer in line with the museum’s mission. The funds gained from any sale were to be assigned to the acquisition of other art, not to underwriting staff salaries or other operating costs.

The directors’ association has the power to impose sanctions on members for selling off artworks to pay for general operating expenses.

But during the pandemic, museums faced extreme deficits, and some turned to deaccessioning to help pay the bills. The Brooklyn Museum in New York City put works up for sale and has raised $40 million. The Metropolitan Museum of Art began taking advantage of the loosening restrictions on how funds could be allocated. In 2020, the Baltimore Museum of Art said that it would sell works by Brice Marden, Clyfford Still and Andy Warhol — saying the sales would help fund acquisitions of art by people of color and staffwide salary increases — but after criticism, that museum reversed course.




The new policy approved by the museum directors association defines where the funds from deaccessioning can be funneled. In a new rule, it says, the money can be put only toward “direct care of works of art,” meaning, the costs associated with “the storage or preservation of works of art.” Examples of those costs include restoration treatments and storage materials, such as frames and acid-free paper.

According to the new rule, the funds cannot be put toward staff salaries or “costs incurred for the sole purpose of temporary exhibition display.” The association said the previous rule had been in place since at least 1981.

In line with the association’s move to temporarily relax the restriction, the Met, in its last fiscal year, took about $7 million from its deaccessioning fund and put it toward care of its collection, said Ken Weine, a museum spokesperson. Most of that money went toward salaries for collection care staff, which is no longer permitted under the association’s rules. (The size of the deaccessioning fund fluctuates based on how much the museum decides to spend from it in a given year, but over the decades, a $10 million balance has been typical, Weine said.)

Erik Neil, director of the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, has been outspoken in his opposition to giving museums broad latitude to pay their bills with funds from art sales, but he said he voted in favor of the policy change because of how narrowly it defined where the money could go.

“They put some guardrails up,” Neil said. “For me, this was a good, reasonable, prudent step forward.”

Thomas P. Campbell, director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, and a former Metropolitan Museum of Art director, has warned against loosening restrictions, writing in a 2021 essay that doing so could undermine the confidence of donors and lead to fiduciary irresponsibility by museum boards. But he embraced the limitations written into the new rule, saying in a statement that “the new guidelines send a clear signal that collections cannot be monetized for operating costs.”

Alex Nyerges, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, who voted against the rule change, said he saw the policy as it had stood as a basic cornerstone of the trust that the association had built with donors. “I think it is an abdication of the trust we have spent more than 100 years establishing,” he said.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.










Today's News

October 12, 2022

Leonard Stern's Cycladic art will be shown at the Met but owned by Greece

An empress ahead of her time is having a pop culture moment

Now live: Tara Donovan NFTs on Art Blocks

Museums vote to allow the sale of art to care for collections

Phillips to offer Marc Chagall's "Le Père" in the New York Evening Sale of 20th Century & Contemporary Art

Newly acquired drawing by Paul Gauguin conceals the story of a unique woman

Happy birthday to the man who stole the Mona Lisa and took it to Italy

25 years after 'Sensation,' has London's art scene kept its cool?

Art that rose through the cracks

Rare exclusive Tiffany Lap-Over-Edge flatware service leads Bonhams Silver Sale

Speed reinstalls permanent collection to reflect community-driven curatorial approach

Leonard Kriegel, 89, dies; Wrote unflinchingly about his disability

Shahzia Sikander creating site-specific installation at Mad Sq Park and adjacent courthouse

Dindga McCannon opens exhibition at Pippy Houldsworth Gallery

Douglas Kirkland, who took portraits of movie stars, dies at 88

Can flashy music festivals go green?

1882 $100 gold certificate brings $750,000, leads Heritage's Long Beach Currency Auction past $10.6 million

"Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera: Art and Life in Modern Mexico" opens at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki

Pierneef paintings directly from artist's family make market debut at African Art Sale

With fanfare, ribbon-cutting and jazz, the new Geffen Hall opens

Ladbroke Hall: New arts stage for London celebrating creative freedom announced

The Brant Foundation presents (Female Figure) by Jordan Wolfson in new immersive installation

Clarke Auction Gallery will offer two-day auction October 29-30

A Full Guide on How to Buy Real YouTube Views




Museums, Exhibits, Artists, Milestones, Digital Art, Architecture, Photography,
Photographers, Special Photos, Special Reports, Featured Stories, Auctions, Art Fairs,
Anecdotes, Art Quiz, Education, Mythology, 3D Images, Last Week, .

 



Founder:
Ignacio Villarreal
(1941 - 2019)
Editor & Publisher: Jose Villarreal
Art Director: Juan José Sepúlveda Ramírez
Writer: Ofelia Zurbia Betancourt

Royalville Communications, Inc
produces:

ignaciovillarreal.org juncodelavega.com facundocabral-elfinal.org
Founder's Site. Hommage
to a Mexican poet.
Hommage
       

The First Art Newspaper on the Net. The Best Versions Of Ave Maria Song Junco de la Vega Site Ignacio Villarreal Site
Tell a Friend
Dear User, please complete the form below in order to recommend the Artdaily newsletter to someone you know.
Please complete all fields marked *.
Sending Mail
Sending Successful