Deaccessioning is the process by which a work of art or other object is permanently removed from a museum's collection to sell it or otherwise dispose of it. [1] [2] [3]
Deaccessioning is the process by which a work of art or other object is permanently removed from a museum's collection to sell it or otherwise dispose of it. [1] [2] [3]
The process undertaken by a museum to deaccession a work involves several steps that are usually laid out in a museum's collection management policy. The terms under which an object may be considered for removal, as well as the individuals with the authority to approve the process are outlined in the deaccession section of this article. [4] Additionally, this section lays out the legal restrictions and ethical considerations associated with removal of the object and the types of disposal that are appropriate based on the reason for the deaccession.
Each museum establishes its own method and workflow for the deaccession process according to its organizational structure. However all object deaccessioning involves the two processing steps of deaccession and disposal. [5] [6]
The process begins with the curator creating a document called a "statement of justification," which outlines their decision criteria and reasoning for presenting the work as a possible deaccession. To determine if a work should be deaccessioned from a museum's collection, a curator or registrar completes and documents a series of justification steps and then present their findings to the museum director and governing board for final approval. [5]
There are a number of reasons why deaccessioning might be considered. The following is a typical list of criteria for deaccession and disposal: [1]
The typical steps that need to be taken to justify the deaccession and disposal of the work include: [5] [6]
Disposal is defined as the transfer of ownership by the museum after a work has been deaccessioned. Following approval of deaccession from the governing board and/or the CEO/museum director, the work is disposed of and the title of ownership is completely transferred away from the museum or terminated. The method chosen is determined by the physical condition of the work, the intrinsic value or cultural value of the work and extrinsic value or monetary value of the work. With all methods of disposal, museums are charged to maintain and retain all records of the object, its deaccession and disposal.
The process of disposal is completed through the following methods: [4] [5]
Several professional museum associations have drafted codes of ethics governing the practice of deaccession. Two majors areas of ethical concern that are common in these codes of ethics are the prohibition of sale or transfer of collection items to museum trustees, staff, board members, or their relatives and the need to restrict the use of proceeds from any works disposed of via sale or auction. [7]
The first of these ethical concerns is rather straightforward. The second has become a point of contention in recent years since museums and cities, like Detroit, have been struggling with financial shortfalls.
According to the Association of Art Museum Directors: "Funds received from the disposal of a deaccessioned work shall not be used for operations or capital expenses. Such funds, including any earnings and appreciation thereon, may be used only for the acquisition of works in a manner consistent with the museum's policy on the use of restricted acquisition funds." [1] This stipulation was relaxed in April 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its negative impact on museum revenues, permitting some degree of deaccession through 2022 to "support the direct care of the museum's collection". [8] [9]
According to the American Association of Museums: "Proceeds from the sale of nonliving collections are to be used consistent with the established standards of the museum's discipline, but in no event shall they be used for anything other than acquisition or direct care of collections." [10]
According to the AASLH (the American Association for State and Local History): "Collections shall not be deaccessioned or disposed of in order to provide financial support for institutional operations, facilities maintenance, or any reason other than the preservation or acquisition of collections." [11]
According to the International Council of Museums: Proceeds should be applied solely to the purchase of additions to museum collections. [12]
These associations have each determined to their own degree that all proceeds from sale or auction should be restricted to the future acquisition of collection objects and/ or to the ongoing maintenance of current collection holdings. Their decision and perspective on the practice of deaccession reflects a long-term view of museum collections as items held in public trust and preserved for access, appreciation, education, and enjoyment of not only today's public but the future public. See public trust doctrine .
An example of a recent controversy over deaccessioning was Northampton Museum and Art Gallery's sale of its ancient Egyptian statue of Sekhemka to an unnamed buyer despite protests from local residents and the Egyptian government. In 2014, Arts Council England deleted the museum from its accredited list. [13]
Deaccessioning is a controversial topic and activity, with diverging opinions from artists, arts professionals and the general public. [14] Some commentators, such as Donn Zaretsky of The Art Law Blog critique the notion of "the public trust" and argue that deaccessioning rules should probably be thrown out altogether. [15] Others, such as Susan Taylor, director of the New Orleans Museum of Art and the AAMD's current president, believes that proceeds from the sale or funds from the deaccession can only be used to buy other works of art. [16]
The Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), Pub. L. 101-601, 25 U.S.C. 3001 et seq., 104 Stat. 3048, is a United States federal law enacted on November 16, 1990.
The Albright–Knox Art Gallery is an art museum located at 1285 Elmwood Avenue, Buffalo, New York, in Delaware Park. The Albright-Knox's Elmwood Avenue campus is temporarily closed for construction. It is currently hosting exhibitions and events at Albright-Knox Northland, a project space located at 612 Northland Avenue in Buffalo’s Northland Corridor. The new Buffalo Albright Knox Gundlach Art Museum (AKG) is expected to open in 2022.
A museum is distinguished by a collection of often unique objects that forms the core of its activities for exhibitions, education, research, etc. This differentiates it from an archive or library, where the contents may be more paper-based, replaceable and less exhibition oriented, or a private collection of art formed by an individual, family or institution that may grant no public access. A museum normally has a collecting policy for new acquisitions, so only objects in certain categories and of a certain quality are accepted into the collection. The process by which an object is formally included in the collection is called accessioning and each object is given a unique accession number.
Repatriation is the return of art or cultural heritage, often referring to ancient or looted art, to their country of origin or former owners. The disputed cultural property items are physical artifacts of a group or society that were taken by another group, usually in an act of looting, whether in the context of imperialism, colonialism or war. The contested objects vary widely and include sculptures, paintings, monuments, objects such as tools or weapons for purposes of anthropological study, and human remains.
The Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA) is an encyclopedic art museum located at Newfields, a 152-acre (0.62 km2) campus that also houses Lilly House, The Virginia B. Fairbanks Art & Nature Park: 100 Acres, The Gardens at Newfields, the Beer Garden, and more. It is located at the corner of North Michigan Road and West 38th Street, about three miles north of downtown Indianapolis, northwest of Crown Hill Cemetery. There are exhibitions, classes, tours, and events, many of which change seasonally. The entire campus was previously referred to as the Indianapolis Museum of Art, but in 2017 the campus and organization were renamed "Newfields" to better reflect the breadth of offerings and venues. The "Indianapolis Museum of Art" now specifically refers to the main art museum building that acts as the cornerstone of the campus, as well as the legal name of the organization doing business as Newfields.
The Canadian Museums Association (CMA) is a national non-profit organization for the promotion of museums in Canada. It represents Canadian museum professionals both within Canada and internationally. As with most trade associations, it aims to improve the recognition, growth and stability of its constituency. Its staff supports their nearly 2,000 members with conferences, publications, and networking opportunities.
The Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) is an organization of art museum directors from the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
An inventory is an itemized list of objects that the museum has accessioned or received via loan(s) and must be physically located by an examiner. A complete, one-hundred percent inventory, or a random inventory of the collection must be carried out periodically to ensure the museum is operating under best practices and for security purposes. The museum is legally responsible and ethically obligated for the maintenance of up-to-date information detailing the location of all objects within the collection, including loaned items and objects that have yet to be accessioned; this is stipulated by many museum associations, including the American Association of Museums.
Art museums in the United States and the United Kingdom have been hit especially hard by the 2008–2012 global recession. Dwindling endowments from wealthy patrons forced some museums to make difficult and controversial decisions to deaccession artwork from their collections to gain funds, or in the case of the Rose Art Museum, to close the institution and sell the entire collection.
A Collection Management Policy lays the foundation for how a museum handles situations pertaining to their collection. It can be defined as “a detailed written statement that explains why a museum is in operation and how it goes about its business. The policy articulates the museum’s professional standards regarding the objects left in its care and serves as a guide for the staff”. Since museums are often faced with questions that deal with what objects they should acquire, how to handle removing or loaning objects in the collection, or standards of care for objects; it is imperative to have a well-written policy that can help prevent possible issues on the museum's end. Prevention is the best approach when dealing with operations and objects in the collection, therefore the policy is an important document that can be looked at almost like boundaries set in place to help insure that the museum stays true to its mission while also providing the best care for the collection.
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The Robert S. Peabody Institute of Archaeology, formerly known as the Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology, is a learning center and archaeological collection in Andover, Massachusetts. Founded in 1901 through a bequest from Robert Singleton Peabody, an 1857 Phillips Academy alumnus, the institute initially held the archaeological materials collected by Peabody from Native American cultures. Peabody's passionate interest in archaeology led him to create the institute at Phillips Academy to encourage young people's interest in the sciences, and to foster respect and appreciation for the Native American peoples who have inhabited that hemisphere for thousands of years.
Maier Museum of Art at Randolph College features works by American artists from the 19th through 21st centuries. Randolph College has been collecting American art since 1907 and the Maier Museum of Art now houses its collection of several thousand American paintings, prints, drawings, and photographs from the 19th and 21st centuries.
Collections management involves the development, storage, and preservation of collections and cultural heritage. The primary goal of collections management is to meet the needs of the individual collector or collecting institution's mission statement, while also ensuring the long-term safety and sustainability of the cultural objects within the collector's care. Collections management, which consists primarily of the administrative responsibilities associated with collection development, is closely related to collections care, which is the physical preservation of cultural heritage. The professions most influenced by collections management include collection managers, registrars, and archivists.
A museum registrar is responsible for implementing policies and procedures that relate to caring for collections of cultural institutions like archives, libraries, and museums. These policies are found in the museum's collections policy, the guiding tenet of the museum explaining why the institution is in operation, dictating the museum's professional standards regarding the objects left in its care. Registrars focus on sections that include acquisitions, loans, exhibitions, deaccessions, storage, packing and shipping, security of objects in transit, insurance policies, and risk management.
The Northampton Sekhemka statue is an ancient Egyptian artefact, given by the Marquess of Northampton to Northampton Museum, in or about 1870. The statue dates from the 5th dynasty and depicts Sekhemka the scribe with his wife, Sitmerit. It was the subject of a controversial sale in July 2014, that raised questions of the museum's ownership and the ethics of selling artefacts. The statue was sold to an unidentified buyer for £15.76m, which broke the world record for Ancient Egyptian art at auction. On 1 August 2014, Northampton Museums had their accreditation removed by Arts Council England, which ruled that the sale did not meet the accredited standards for museums in managing their collections.
"Found in collection" (FIC) is a term used by a museum to refer to "undocumented objects that remain without status after all attempts to reconcile them to existing records of permanent collection and loan objects are completed". Despite the best efforts of museum staff, museums often have FIC items. This term was developed so that collections with incomplete provenance would be handled ethically and with transparency. Depending on the paperwork and information accompanying the material, the museum has several choices in how to proceed.
The documentation of cultural property is a critical aspect of collections care. As stewards of cultural property, museums collect and preserve not only objects but the research and documentation connected to those objects, in order to more effectively care for them. Documenting cultural heritage is a collaborative effort. Essentially, registrars, collection managers, conservators, and curators all contribute to the task of recording and preserving information regarding collections. There are two main types of documentation museums are responsible for: records generated in the registration process—accessions, loans, inventories, etc. and information regarding research on objects and their historical significance. Properly maintaining both types of documentation is vital to preserving cultural heritage.
A Collections Management System (CMS), sometimes called a Collections Information System, is software used by the collections staff of a collecting institution or by individual private collectors and collecting hobbyists or enthusiasts. Collecting institutions are primarily museums and archives and cover a very broad range from huge, international institutions, to very small or niche-specialty institutions such as local historical museums and preservation societies. Secondarily, libraries and galleries are also collecting institutions. Collections Management Systems (CMSs) allow individuals or collecting institutions to organize, control, and manage their collections' objects by “tracking all information related to and about” those objects. In larger institutions, the CMS may be used by collections staff such as registrars, collections managers, and curators to record information such as object locations, provenance, curatorial information, conservation reports, professional appraisals, and exhibition histories. All of this recorded information is then also accessed and used by other institutional departments such as “education, membership, accounting, and administration."
The exhibition of cultural heritage objects is a practice used by organizations where collected objects are put on display to the public. The objects are carefully chosen and placed together to offer educational value, and often to tell a story.
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