Museum or Art Dealer?

[marmar]

from OnTheCommons.org:




Museum or Art Dealer?
The debate over museums selling artworks needs to consider the public interest

By Jay Walljasper


The New York Times recently reported on a controversy rippling through the art world: deaccessioning, which means a museum selling off works from its permanent collection.

It’s a growing trend. The Chicago Art Institute is hawking two Picassos, a Matisse and a Braque at Christie’s in London, while the Cleveland Art Museum has 32 old masters up on the auction block. The J. Paul Getty museum hopes to unload 15 paintings, and the Pennsylvania Museum of Fine Arts and the Carnegie Museum of Art, five each.

Some explain this new trade in masterworks as a natural response to cutbacks in museum funding and revenues due to the recession. The Rose Art Museum at Brandeis University, for instance, is selling parts of its collection to pay bills, while larger museums use the proceeds from art sales to boost their shrunken acquisitions budgets. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://onthecommons.org/museum-or-art-dealer

[FormerDittoHead]

1. Relevant and suggested viewing: "Art of the Steal"

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1326733/

An artice + podcast from NPR about it:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124082706

[HereSince1628]

2. Is this something that happens in all severe recessions?

I suppose my view of the great depression is a romanticized view through newsreels and movies of the time. It just seems to me that people held on to their respect for educational and cultural assets.

This "dump all the assets held as commonwealth" approach is very discouraging.