Most of us will not be selling our Mona Lisas, so just stop it with your nonsense already, you’re not helping.

Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash — Photo by Clem Onojeghuo on Unsplash

Normally, I patiently explain the concept of deaccession when people ask me; it is one of the topics I deal with the most in my professional life. However, the bleak outlook for many museums in the wake of COVID-19’s economic effects has caused renewed discussion. On April 15, 2020, in response to what it likely knew would be inevitable transgressions of its rules against the use of proceeds from the sale of deaccessioned collection objects (notice the specific words here, I’ll explain them below shorty), the Association of Art Museum Directors issued temporary guidance regarding two topics:

Use of income derived from restricted funds and
Use of proceeds from the sale of deaccessioned objects

In response, the press - popular and trade - have whipped up a frothy panic about museums selling collections to pay bills. This is such an overinflated response for so many reasons, I can’t even come up with a great analogy, so I’m just going to have to explain long-hand. This is part one of a three-part series. This part covers the basics of what deaccession is and why the practice is integral to our work. Part 2 is more about the AAMD statement. Part 3 explains how and why museums need to re-think the place their collections hold in the constellation of their mission-related universe.

What is deaccession?

Unlike what Christopher Bedford, Director at the Baltimore Museum of Art,said in an interview with CBS News last week, deaccession is not a secret code word for “selling art.” Deaccession is an administrative decision-making process that results in an object’s removal from the museum’s collection. Just as when new objects are added to the collection they’re researched, considered, discussed, compared, evaluated, and assessed, the exact same thing happens when an object is considered for removal of an object from the collection. Once an item is deaccessioned (its status is changed from “part of the collection” to “not part of the collection”) it then goes through a disposal process.

What is disposal?

This is the process of physically removing an object from the museum’s property AFTER it has been deaccessioned. Sale is only one disposal option available to museums, and that sale can be public or private, to another museum or into private hands. Other disposal options include: transfer to another museum, exchange with another museum or private collector, repatriation to a rightful owner, return to a donor if a restriction in the gift agreement can no longer be met, and destruction. Equating “deaccession” with “sell the collection” is as inaccurate as saying that surgery is the cure for all illness.

Why is deaccessioning even a thing? Why do museums remove objects from their collections?

Many museums have been building their collections for more than 100 years. Often, better examples come along, or communities change and museums find that they’re unable to continue telling the story of their communities without adjusting collections accordingly. We get new and better information. Some objects, acquired in good faith decades ago, turn out to be fake or stolen. We, as primarily white, colonial, elite, group of organizations, have realized that stealing cultural heritage from others and putting it in a special box, is in fact NOT a magnanimous act (more on this in part 3). Just like in other professional fields, we realize that our past practices were not the best. When was the last time you went to a doctor and were subject to blood-letting as the cure for your ailment? Unlike medicine, where when mistakes are made, they’re typically permanent, museum professionals have the opportunity to go back and correct past actions.

Deaccessioning is the exact opposite of accessioning. The relationships between why a museum would add something to its collection and why it would remove something from its collection, are typically direct opposites of each other. Criteria like those below are part of the museum’s collection management policy, which should be publicly accessible either on the website or by calling and requesting a copy.

Example Deaccession Criteria

1d. Does not support mission

2d. Does not fall within collection scope

3d. Donor did not have legal title (item turns out to have been stolen or otherwise illegally obtained, is human remains)

4d. Museum is unable to provide care for object due to operating constraints (human, physical plant, finances)

5d. Object is hazardous to staff or other collections (live ammunition, chemical hazard, etc)

6d. Museum accepted object with a donor restriction it can no longer carry out (permanent exhibit, will not exhibit, etc)

7d. Object is duplicative or redundant, is a poor example of many in collection

8d. Object is not able to be exhibited or used for research. Cost/benefit of conservation expense is negative.

Example Accession Criteria

1a. Supports mission

2a. Falls within museum’s scope of collection statement

3a. Donor or seller has legal title and right to transfer object

4a. Museum can provide proper care and access

5a. Object is not hazardous

6a. Object is free of donor-imposed restrictions

7a. Object does not duplicate existing collection or is a better example of current object

8a. Object is in exhibit-able condition, or museum has already designated funds to make it so

So, if we find something in our collections that turns out to have been made with arsenic, and we can’t afford to make that safe for staff and visitors, or the expense of making it safe doesn’t advance our mission in any way, then we’d want to deaccession that item. We may have inadvertently collected lots of examples by one artist. We might have a whole collection of material relating to the white politicians in our communities, but now that the ethnic and cultural heritage of the community is more diverse and we have a greater diversity of politicians, we need to evaluate all the political material to make sure that we can continue to collect the new objects, instead of saying “well, we already have all this political stuff and we’ve run out of space, so the more recent history can’t be collected.” This action is not to devalue the past contributions of those white politicians, it is to ensure than all can be represented equitably over a very long period of time.

Collections are not free to keep

Art and historic objects are educational assets and financial liabilities. Museums do not collect for financial investments, their collections are typically not capitalized. That means they can’t be encumbered - used as collateral for a loan, or made liquid - they’re not listed on balance sheets.

Museum collections are costly to store, maintain, and make accessible to the public. For this reason, almost the entire museum field, with the exception of the Association of Art Museum Directors, agree that using the proceeds from the sale of deaccessioned objects for the direct care of existing collections objects is an ethical use of those funds.

For more information on this topic, the Professional Standards and Ethics Committee of the American Association for State and Local History (of which I’m a member), issued a position paper last week on this topic. Valuing History Collections was written by a group of four professionals - myself, Sally Yerkovitch, Adam Scher, and Heather Kuruvilla, endorsed by the entire committee and finally by the AASLH Council (the organizations’ governing body elected by its membership).

Coming up

Why the AAMD statement doesn’t matter for most museums.

Why we need to re-think how collections fit into our program of mission-related activities.

Museums are essential. Deaccessioning is essential. Part 1