Deaccessioning, the formal term for disposing of an art object, is a careful, cumbersome process, requiring several levels of curatorial, administrative and board approval. Part of the problem is that acquiring new things is far easier, and more glamorous, than getting rid of old ones. Yet, it too is in the midst of yet another costly renovation (price tag $400 million) to be able to exhibit more of its ever growing collection. MoMA regularly culls its collection and in 2017 sold off a major Léger to the Houston art museum. But more importantly, we would be far better off allowing others to have those works of art who might enjoy them.” “There is a huge capital cost that has a drag on operations. Lowry, the director of the Museum of Modern Art. “It doesn’t benefit anyone when there are thousands, if not millions, of works of art that are languishing in storage,” said Glenn D. Venable is now at the vanguard of a growing number of museum directors who are taking a hard look at how much they have and how they collect art because they fear a history of voracious stockpiling and the pressure to acquire still more is creating a crisis for American museums. Not long ago, such ratings would have struck many in the museum world as crass. In sum, a curator wrote: “Extremely poor condition. The Chagall won praise for its “whimsy and pathos,” but curators celebrated “Jimson Weed,” calling it O’Keeffe’s “largest and most ambitious floral work.” They noted, “The use of three blooms separates it in quality and importance among its peers of similar composition and subject.” “Seascape” earned its low grade in part because of a large hole in the canvas but also because it’s not by Velde, but a “follower of” Velde. Seascape A follower of Willem van de Velde II 17th century Twenty percent of the items received a D, making them ripe to be sold or given to another institution. Instead, it embarked on an ambitious effort to rank each of the 54,000 items in its collection with letter grades. His museum was so jammed with undisplayed artwork that it was about to spend about $14 million to double its storage space until he abruptly canceled the plan. Venable, the director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields. “There is this inevitable march where you have to build more storage, more storage, more storage,” said Charles L. Most museums display only a fraction of the works they own, in large part because so many are prints and drawings that can only sparingly be shown because of light sensitivity. Some collections have grown tenfold in the past 50 years. In storage at the Brooklyn Museum: a roomful of home décor textiles, a full-size Rockefeller Center elevator and a trove of fake old master paintings the museum is barred from unloading.
At the Indianapolis Art Museum: doilies, neckties and women’s underwear. So now, many American museums are bulging with stuff - so much stuff that some house thousands of objects that have never been displayed but are preserved, at considerable cost, in climate-controlled storage spaces.Īt the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston: ashtrays, cocktail napkins, wine glasses. Fueled by philanthropic zeal, lucrative tax deductions and the prestige of seeing their works in esteemed settings, wealthy art owners have for decades given museums everything from their Rembrandts to their bedroom slippers.