Symposium unpacks art world’s 2021 buzzword: Deaccessioning

Entitled “The Impermanence of Objects and Museums,” the third session examined how the deaccessioning discussions impact the idea of a permanent collection. Author and curator Stefanie S. Jandl moderated the conversation between Michael Conforti, director emeritus of the Clark Art Institute, Steven Lubar, a professor of American Studies at Brown University, and Amy Whitaker, a current assistant professor at NYU who has worked in the art world for many years.

The conversation between these three explicitly built onto points made in earlier sessions, helping to give the virtual symposium more of a thread of continuity.

Lubar opened the conversation with his thoughts on what art museums could learn from history and anthropology museums – usefulness, community and collections growth. He also discussed what can be learned from art museums that have failed, citing The Jenks Museum at Brown. 

Conforti raised the point that unlike many other countries, the U.S. has no cultural ministry, meaning there is no overarching governing body for art museums to lean on. His view is that the necessity of a permanent collection varies from museum to museum. Encyclopedic museums, such as the Smithsonian Institution or the Victoria and Albert Museum, should not be allowed to deaccession items, but places like the Walker Art Center, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, and The Guggenheim should be able to.

Building on this, Whitaker explained her theory about “the good death of an object,” an idea further explored in a paper she wrote for the book “Collections and Deaccessioning in a Post Pandemic World.”

Guiding the second half of the session was a more overt conversation about finances. Whitaker described the change in the AAMD rule as changing the transaction of deaccessioning from art in exchange for new art, to art in exchange for tangible money. During this conversation, Conforti also brought up the idea of a cultural dissatisfaction with the storage of art versus its display.

Questions surrounding whether these actions would lead to the death of the museum were also addressed. Conforti made a macabre joke about how if these actions will lead to that, at least he will not be alive to see it. 

Later on, Lubar brought up the idea of a more robust loan network as a deaccessioning method that is less permanent. He referenced the Houston Museum’s plan to bring parts of their collections into schools and hospitals, which extends the idea of loaning outside the world of art museums and into a more extensive cultural network. 

Both Whitaker and Conforti expressed their desire to see this happen, but cited the economic difficulties of collaborations and the lack of leadership from larger institutions as potential pitfalls.

This segued into a couple of audience questions, the first of which explored the idea of co-ownership between museums. Whitaker described this as the “it takes a village method” and described a current contract between an artist and a gallery that she helped broker. 

The final ideas explored in the session were how blockchain might provide verification and historicism while removing colonial institutions in the deaccessioning or loaning process. Additionally, the panel discussed that the concept of collections as capital is coming into play because it is not strictly against AAMD guidelines, although many frown upon it.

The role of museum institutions championing diversity came into question yet again this afternoon as the Deaccessioning After 2020 symposium continued. A panel of artists including Meleko Mokgosi, Amalia Mesa-Bains, Deborah Kass and Wendy Red Star discussed the work in context with museum practices, which have often excluded anyone who is not a white male.

Syracuse University artist in residence Carrie Mae Weems moderated the discussion and topics such as white male dominated collections and hope for diversity in curatorial staff came up. Amalia Mesa-Bains, whose work focuses primarily on Chicano alters, said she has seen the same practices in institutional settings for decades, and that although there are greater pushes for diversity, not much change has actually been made.

“I came to the realization that the entire structure of the museum is a flawed one, and I’m not sure we can rectify it,” Mesa-Bains said. “…I think it’s [museums] rotten from the inside out.”

Mesa-Bains went on to say that financial investments in large white collections are almost impossible to “deconstruct.” However, she believes that her work is vital to her community which she wants to represent, and other panelists such as Wendy Red Star agreed that they want their work to be understood in the context of empathy and connection on a human level. 

Meleko Mokgosi, artist and associate professor at the Yale School of Art, said the field of art is dominated by Anglo-European forms of thinking, and discourse is at the center of how we view these institutions. He said discourse is bound by rules, proving that it is exclusionary and not everyone is invited to the conversation, hence the need for an “unconditionally shared space.”

There is no discussion about deaccessioning without talking about the Baltimore Museum of Art and its director Christopher Bedford. Bedford and the BMA have put forth two deaccessioning plans in the past four years. Rather than shying away from discussing the controversy that surrounded these decisions, Bedford embraced it, citing his experiences as a case study during his keynote address.

“There is little doubt that deaccessioning has become the most hotly contested subject in the art world,” opened Bedford. “Why shouldn’t we sell art to achieve these most pressing and indeed laudable goals?”

In 2018, the BMA sold seven works for $7 million, intending to add pieces by women and artists of color to their collection. Since then, they have been able to use that money to purchase 95 works by 82 different artists, including Amy Sherald and Carrie Mae Weems.

In 2020, the BMA tried to do this again with three paintings for $65 million. Plans for this money included pay equity and breaking down community barriers as well as purchasing new acquisitions. But art critics, former AAMD members and the public attacked their plan. The sale was stopped hours before the pieces went to auction.

Bedford stated he was not trying to re-litigate this sale in the keynote but to use it as an example that the art world may be entering a phase where it should challenge the AAMD guidelines and institutional norms. Arguing that fighting against the way museums have continuously operated is the only way to achieve equity and diversity, he explained.

“Equality is achieved in the future by reckoning with one’s past in the present and moving with speed and determination to address the biases of that part,” said Bedford. “I do not believe this process can be achieved through a methodology of pure addition.”

During the last portion of his speech, he touched on one of the central questions dividing the deaccessioning discussion: who, or what, does a museum serve? Bedford and the BMA believe a museum does not serve the objects and instead must utilize these objects to serve the individuals in their community.

Building on this, Bedford clarifies that the shutdown of their attempted 2020 deaccessioning would not impede the BMA work in diversity and equality. They were able to launch some of the intended programs with a generation donation.

He also called for changes in art history education beginning with the textbooks. Art Since 1960 is a commonly used contemporary art history book, and yet, as Bedford highlights, only 24 of the 800 (about 3%) artists mentioned are artists of color. The book was published in 2004.

“The real threat to museums is not deaccessioning, but continuing to lose relevance because we are not responding to this moment, our moment, in history and embracing our communities properly,” Bedford said in closing.

As the Syracuse Symposium has demonstrated over the past two days, the debate around deaccessioning is nuanced and complex. This complexity carried on in the final session: a conversation between five unique perspectives in the art world around the topic of change.

While all panelists supported the act of deaccessioning, there was much debate around what these funds should be used for. Thomas Campbell, director and CEO of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, believes museums should only use money from deaccessioning for acquisitions. On the other side was Christopher Bedford, director of The Baltimore Museum of Art and keynote speaker at the symposium. He had a failed deaccessioning plan last year where the funds were meant to go to a wide variety of things, including raises, education and acquisitions.

“Once you have a mission that is larger than the objects, then you have to look at how you’re going to be able to do that,” said Tracy Riese, Trustee and Chair of Collections Committee at the Brooklyn Museum and supporter of a mission-based spending approach. “If someone were to tell me that by selling a Warhol, I might be able to endow an educational program or put it to a community engagement program, I would consider that an extremely valuable investment.”