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Museums Send Art to Auction

Published: September 11, 2009
NEW YORK—With the fall auction season approaching, museums are preparing to do something that most prefer to keep quiet: selling off work.

Arts blogger Tyler Green has searched through the newly released auction-house catalogs and assembled a list of which works institutions have decided to ditch.

The Palm Springs Art Museum may be selling work from the most notable names, releasing pieces by Robert Irwin, Kenneth Noland, and Alexander Liberman to the market. In addition, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore is offering an Andy Warhol drawing from 1957 that Sotheby’s has valued at $80,000 to $120,000.

The Association of Art Museum Directors, which sets best practices for the field, has stated in its guidelines that funds generated from sales should only be used to purchase new work for a collection. The group censured the National Academy Museum last year for using income derived from the sale of works by Frederic Edwin Church and Sanford Robinson Gifford to cover operating costs.

Deaccessioning also made headlines when Brandeis University suggested earlier this year that selling works from its Rose Art Museum could be used to support other university initiatives, provoking the fury of many in the art community. It has since backed off from that proposal.

The National Gallery in Washington, D.C., is one museum that will not be selling any works this season. Its charter expressly forbids it from ever removing a work from its collection.

View Green's complete list at his blog, Modern Art Notes.

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