Will Bay Area museums sell art to manage crisis?
If an art museum with a reasonably good collection faces a serious financial challenge, why would it not sell a few of its more valuable objects to raise the money it needs?
The question used to come up, from time to time, in museum boardrooms, as trustees faced a daunting “give or get” fundraising imperative in hard times.
But in the face of the COVID19 crisis, which has shuttered museums across the world and wreaked devastation on their budgets and endowments, the topic has left the woodpaneled conference room and hit the street. It has become a rallying cry for thousands of laidoff museum employees and their supporters, and the question might seem reasonable to any observer: How can museum leaders cut staff when the simple solution is to sell a painting?
There was once a clear answer: It was simply not allowed. Now, a recent policy shift by the Association of Art Museum Directors, once the de facto enforcer of the rule, could lead to change.
A long tradition of museum ethics requires that acceptance of a work of art into the official collection, a process called accession, includes a solemn responsibility to care for it. The theory is that the museum does not merely own stuff, but preserves objects of cultural significance for future generations.
Deaccession — removing a work from the collection — is a grave decision, then, because it expressly revokes that prom
ise of care and preservation. Such an action affects not only the specific object, but it diminishes the collection, the museum and, by extension, the entire community’s cultural heritage.
The primary way to mitigate any potential harm has been to require that the proceeds from any sale of deaccessioned works be used only to purchase other works of art. (Careful weeding can sometimes be a tool to improve the collection, as when a damaged object is discarded or a duplicate is exchanged. The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art recently sold one of the six Mark Rothko paintings it held to enable purchases of significant works by women and artists of color.)
The Association of Art Museum Directors has long held its members to a strict deacces-sions code. The organization comprises the heads of virtually every major institution in the U.S., Canada and Mexico — 227 in all, currently.
The AAMD on April 15 announced “a moratorium on punitive actions” against any museum that hedges the old rules. In an email to The Chronicle, San Jose Museum of Art director Sayre Batton pointed out that, under the relaxed rule, deaccession funds must be used to support the direct care of collections. However, that leaves a lot of leeway, with each museum interpreting the restriction as it chooses. “The museum must have in place a boardapproved policy outlining what expenses it considers as direct care,” according to the AAMD, “and the policy must be publicly accessible (e.g., posted to its website).”
The new guideline was greeted by a wide range of responses, some positive and some not. All, however, can be summed up by a Washington Post headline: “This is how bad things are for museums: They now have a green light to sell off their art.”
Thomas Campbell, director of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, argues that is not likely to happen at most museums.
“The institutions that this really favors, and that have been pushing for this change long before the current crisis, are the modern art museums that stand to make large sums from deaccessioning ‘duplicate,’ but valuable, modern works,” he said. “For most of us, we don’t have duplicates in those areas, and the sort of objects that we can legitimately deaccession result in small returns.
“The notion that there are mountains of valuable art just wasting away in the basement of most museums is a popular notion in the press, but rarely true,” he continued. “For most of us, we have what’s worth showing on our walls, and it is only the lightsensitive material — photographs, works on paper, textiles — that are the volume of material in storage.”
The Chronicle surveyed Bay Area directors of AAMDqualified museums via email, to ask whether major collecting institutions are considering a relaxation of their own policies. It may be understandable, though far from reassuring, that most of them answered with one form or another of “Not yet.”
Oakland Museum of California: “No, OMCA is not revising or changing our collection policies related to deaccessions for use of funds at this time,” said Executive Director and CEO Lori Fogarty.
Crocker Art Museum: “We have no plans to change our policies at this time,” reported Lial A. Jones, director of the Sacramento museum.
San Jose Museum of Art: “SJMA has no present plans to deaccession works of art to raise money for other uses than acquisition,” said Batton, director of the South Bay museum.
SFMOMA: “We have begun to explore the implications,” director Neal Benezra said. “We have no current plans to deaccession any works of art.”
Asian Art Museum: “Deaccessioning is always a difficult decision, even in fair weather, as we hold the collection in the public trust and for future generations,” said director Jay Xu. “Deaccessioning during this crisis is, fortunately, not something we have to consider at this point.”
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco: “I don’t envision us taking much advantage of this relaxation of the rules or indeed standing to gain much in doing so,” said director Campbell.