Received wisdom has it that by the time a work of art reaches the halls of a museum it is priceless (hopefully), worthless (perhaps), but certainly not something that will ever again have a dollar sign next to it.

Having endured the travails of the market—from its studio inception, to a gallerist corralling it into the fold of a collector, then to a second gallerist and collector, then even to an auction block—once it arrives in a museum’s collection, it is for the ages, for the public, or (often the case) for lying in the underground vaults/exurban warehouses containing said institutions’ unseen permanent collections.

But received wisdom does not know about deaccessioning, an arcane term of the museum industrial complex defined thusly: to officially remove (an item) from a library, museum, or art gallery in order to sell it (OED).

A practice more common than laypeople might expect, deaccessioning is strictly regulated by governing bodies, such as the Museums Association (MA) in Great Britain or the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) in Canada, Mexico and the United States. These bodies ensure that, when deaccessioning does occur, the money raised from selling works goes only towards the acquisition of other pieces; usually so that the collection can be more inclusive to other artistic viewpoints than that of the white, male, Western artists that too often make up the vast majority of these museums’ holdings. Another rule in Britain holds that any works deaccessioned by a museum must be either a ‘duplicate’ or so damaged as to not be recognisable.

An inviolate principle of deaccessioning, though, is that the money raised cannot go towards the operating costs of a museum. That money is ensured by the institution’s sound governance and the munificent largesse of patrons. Now that 2020 has seen a pandemic put incredible strain on museums’ finances, this inviolate principle of deaccessioning is being reevaluated. Last spring, as the implications of Covid-19 were descending across the world, the AAMD in North America relaxed its guidelines, stating that member institutions can use restricted funds—including money earned through deaccession—to cover operating costs for two years, until April 2022.

It wasn’t long before the Americans began selling. The Brooklyn Museum raised $6.6 million in an auction in October. The Baltimore Museum of Art was about to do the same until mounting criticism forced them to change course. Either way, observers in the US are expecting a fairly active couple of years for auction houses as pieces from museum collections cup up on the block.

But what will their counterparts in Great Britain do?

Obviously British museums and galleries are under the same strain. It was recently reported that the Royal Academy in London was mulling whether to sell its prize piece (Michelangelo’s Taddei Tondo) or axe 150 of its workforce.

The Michelangelo hasn’t been sold, and the workforce hasn’t been fired.

While the going is still precarious, a massive injection of cash by the government (£257 million for museums, theatres and other cultural entities—still less money than given in Germany or France) has helped keep museums alive, with their collections intact, for at least the foreseeable future.

According to Alistair Brown, a spokesperson for the Museums Association, there has been no mention, from either the MA or any member museums, of changing the Code of Ethics that protects works from deaccessioning. That said, the crisis continues. He went on, “I think it’s far too early to say that government aid has saved the day for museums in the UK. The economic crisis faced by museums will continue well into next year.”

Words: Cameron Saunders

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