Last year, the Association of Art Museum Directors relaxed its code of practice for "deaccessioning" - the sale of permanent collection pieces to fund museum expenses, maintenance and salaries. Shortly after that, the Brooklyn Museum began selling off European pieces like Lucas Cranach the Elder’s 16th-century painting "Lucretia" which had been in the museum for a century. Also sold were Gustave Courbet’s "Bords de la loue avec rochersà gauche", bequeathed in 1929 by Horace Havemeyer, and Henrik Willem Mesdag’s "Marine", bequeathed by William H. Herriman after his death in 1918.
Bringing art of this kind into public trust was one of modern society’s great achievements. It was an aspirational model of the public good entirely different to the one that has emerged since, in which identity politics and the market are advanced. These trends suggest that processes which brought fine art to the masses is going into reverse. In the polarized climate of our time, I can imagine this becoming a new frontier in the so-called culture wars. Perhaps in the worst of all possible worlds, it could lead to critics of public spending and cultural ideologues both getting their way simultaneously, leading to an accepted economic and political rationale for selling off their best fine art works and anything deemed too straight, or white, or male - which also happen to be worth millions of dollars. Given so many of these pieces were in the public trust, doesn't the public have a right to know what will happen to them and who purchased them? I wonder if a few museum directors who value these pieces could make it the ethos of their institutions to defy the national trend and ensure that art works bequeathed to them will remain in the public trust. They would have a monopoly on older art and fine art collections from donors, while museums who run with the deaccessioning trend will lose that trust and become less popular and less respected for having chased fashions and short term economic gain. If some workaround like that is not possible then it may be for the best that these works end up on the private walls of Russian oligarchs or the Chinese new rich, where they will at least be safe in countries that appreciate them. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#8928): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/8928 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/83259479/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. #4 Do not exceed five posts a day. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/21656/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
