The Dilemma for Museums - and Perhaps a Solution

Judith Dobrzynski  writes a good Op Ed piece in the NY Times on the current state of museums and how they will need to operate in the future.  In the current economic climate, the discussion of course turns to deaccessioning items from collections in order to raise operating funds.  This is of course unacceptable to museum organizations, where deaccessioning can only take place under very strict rules, and then only to expand the collection.  Deaccessioning proceeds are not to be used to cover operating expenses.  Although this is allowed for different charters, such as libraries and certain historic societies.

Dobrzynsk is recommending a review process for deaccessioning works,with qualified and impartial arbitrator, plus transparency for financial statements and for the full collection. It is an interesting approach to the difficult period museums are going through.

Dobrzynski states

Many people don’t understand the problem. If the choice is between allowing a museum to fail (or make crippling cutbacks) and selling some art, what’s the big deal? Sell art! Most museums, after all, hold many works they have no room to display and stuff them into back rooms and off-site storage facilities. If museums are allowed to cull their collections to raise money to buy more art, why can’t they sell those very same pieces to solve their financial problems?

The big deal is this: The strict constructionists believe that once selling art to cover operating costs is allowed, it will become the first resort in bad times, not the last.

On that score, they may be right. It’s human nature to test the line and, having gotten away with something, to do it again. Some museum trustees and other large donors are themselves stretched, relatively speaking, by this recession and can’t or won’t increase their gifts. Yet no one knows when the economy will restore investment portfolios and bank accounts to their previous health. The money has to come from somewhere.

Maybe it’s best to amend the unwritten sales ban, but not end it. What if a museum had to argue its case for de-accessioning art before an impartial arbitrator?

This neutral party would need to be schooled in art, art law and nonprofit regulations.

Moreover, the museum would need to open its financial books completely, so that the arbitrator could see that all other reasonable avenues of fund-raising, as well as cutbacks, had already been exhausted. And it would need to open its cataloguing records and storerooms, to show that the departure of the works in question would not irreparably damage the collection and that no donor agreements would be violated.

To read the full Op-Ed piece, click HERE.