Media Clip Highlights First Quarter 2011 Media coverage generated by the Cleveland Museum of Art communications department and Resnicow Schroeder Associates, Inc., New York Thursday, January 26, 2011 THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART Thursday, January 26, 2011 The Permanent Collection May Not Be So Permanent By Robin Pogrebin On Thursday at Sotheby’s in New sale. “We should be constantly re- torney general in 1972, after an in- date. The museum’s fi rst major York, the Cleveland Museum of fi ning and upgrading. I’ve given vestigation into the museum’s sale gift, in 1931 — a group of works Art is putting 32 old-master paint- the message to all the curators that of pieces from its modern art col- dominated by Cézannes from one ings up for auction, and the J. Paul I regard deaccessioning as a nor- lection to help fi nance the purchase of the museum’s founders, Lillie Getty Museum is offering 15. In mal act, and I encourage them to of Velázquez’s “Juan de Pareja.” P. Bliss — came with the stipula- the meantime the Pennsylvania reassess the collections constantly.” In the last three fi scal years the tion that the Modern should sell Museum of Fine Arts and the Some curators and museum Met has sold close to $3.7 million whatever it needed to buy works Carnegie Museum of Art are sell- directors worry that the problem- worth of objects from its collec- deemed more important (which it ing fi ve paintings each, and the Art atic practice has been confl ated tion, including a statue of the has). MoMA’s fi rst director, Alfred Institute of Chicago is selling two with the routine culling of collec- Egyptian goddess Sekhmet, a fi rst H. Barr Jr., described the museum Picassos, a Matisse and a Braque at tions integral to a museum’s mis- edition of Vitruvius’s “Ten Books as “metabolic” in terms of its pro- Christie’s in London. Last week sion. Others protest that the entire on Architecture,” and Albert grams and the changing nature of the New Jersey Historical Society profession is being tarred with the Bierstadt’s oil on canvas “Rocky its holdings. “We were predicated sold 17 items at Christie’s in New same brush, when the museums Mountain Goats.” The museum on an evolving collection,” said York, including a 120-piece din- selling work to pay bills tend to be used some of the proceeds from Glenn D. Lowry, the museum’s di- ner service used to entertain Presi- smaller institutions that are strug- the Sekhmet to purchase other rector. “We seek to acquire broad- dent Martin Van Buren that went gling to stay alive in an especially Egyptian pieces: a vizier statuette, ly when it comes to contemporary for $17,000. diffi cult economic climate. a canopic jar and a sculpture of art and let the next generation or Richard Armstrong, the Gug- In part the criticism surround- a king’s head; the Vitruvius, sold even the generation after that de- genheim’s director, said “trading ing deaccessioning has focused with 26 other works, enabled the termine what is essential.” up” should not be the goal. on whether museums have been purchase of 19 objects, 8 of them “Many of the greatest works A few years ago sales like these open about selling work from leaves from an unpublished Ital- in our collection are the result were likely to have gone unno- their collections. The Indianapo- ian manuscript copy of the “Ten of deaccessioning,” Mr. Lowry ticed. Yet deaccessioning — the art lis Museum of Art on its Web site, Books on Architecture”; the Bier- added, citing as examples Gerhard world term for selling pieces from lists every object being sold, why stadt proceeds have yet to be used. Richter’s Baader-Meinhof series, a museum’s collection — has be- it is being offered and the ultimate “It’s sometimes portrayed in Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s soup come a dirty word and the focus sale price or estimated value. The the press as if we’re trading houses, cans, van Gogh’s “Postman Joseph of increasingly intense attention. site has also begun to link newly with objects going in and going Roulin” and Picasso’s “Demoi- Cultural institutions like the Na- acquired artworks to the sold ob- out,” said the museum’s director, selles d’Avignon,” all of which tional Academy Museum and the jects that enabled their purchase. Thomas P. Campbell. “That’s not were bought with funds raised by Rose Art Museum at Brandeis “Without doing all of those steps, the case. It’s like a gardener prun- selling other artworks. University have generated contro- museums expose themselves to ing a tree over a long period of The policies of each institution versy by selling or even consider- ridicule and risk unnecessar- time. Deaccessioning is a healthy vary on selling works from their ing selling items to cover operat- ily,” said Maxwell L. Anderson, part of the management of any collections. If a living donor to ing costs, a practice forbidden by the museum’s director. “There is museum collection. We’re not the Met objects to his gift’s being the professional association for art nothing devious going on. They playing the market.” deaccessioned, the Met will honor museum directors. are just not handling it in a way A 1910 gift from Mrs. Russell that wish. The Modern takes the So even though all of the sales that is candid and explained.” Sage that formed the basis of the opposite tack, refusing any gift — with the exception of the his- The Metropolitan Museum of Met’s American furniture holdings that prohibits a possible future sale. torical society’s — are to be used Art is required to list in its annual originally included 430 colonial The Whitney Museum of Ameri- to generate funds for future acqui- report the total cash proceeds from pieces; now the cache numbers can Art will not sell any work by a sitions, institutions that deacces- art sales each year and to itemize 190. “In the intervening years living artist because it could dam- sion these days fi nd themselves on any deaccessioned objects valued more than 50 percent” of that col- age that artist’s career. But it will the defensive. “Part of the normal at more than $50,000 each. It must lection “has been deaccessioned trade a living artist’s work for an- biological clock of museums is to also sell those pieces at auction and for reasons of quality or condi- other piece by the same artist. examine their collections,” said provide advance public notice of tion,” Mr. Campbell said. The Met did that last year, David Franklin, the director of the a work’s being sold if it has been The Museum of Modern Art exchanging Pat Steir’s oil on can- Cleveland Museum, which hopes on view in the last 10 years. These considers the review and revision vas “The Water Series: The Port to gain about $1 million from its rules were imposed by the state at- of its collection part of its man- Refl ected at Night in the Water- THE CLEVELAND MUSEUM OF ART PERMANENT COLLECTION NOT SO PERMANENT January 26, 2011 Continued fall” for her “Sixteen Waterfalls he added, “we could not have de- of Dreams, Memories and Senti- accessioned Hartleys for a better ment.” Ms. Steir said it was her Hartley.” idea. “I wanted them to have a While collections “should be better painting than the one they dynamic,” Richard Armstrong, had,” she said. director of the Solomon R. Gug- A few years ago the Whitney genheim Museum, said, institu- sold some “secondary” works by tions should not be acquiring Marsden Hartley, said Adam D. work with an eye toward trading Weinberg, the Whitney’s direc- up. “It’s not good to be thinking of tor, to get Hartley’s portrait of a the collection as a log-rolling ex- wrestler, “Madawaska — Acadian ercise: ‘I’ll take two of that if you Light-Heavy.” let me get one of those,’“ he said. “The Whitney has a great col- “That’s just not the way to make lection of Hartley,” Mr. Weinberg progress as a collecting institu- said. “One thing it did not have tion.” was a portrait.” He added that the At most museums items des- Whitney did the same thing with ignated for sale go through a rig- a John Sloan. “One of the key rea- orous evaluation process, starting sons is to refi ne the collection, to with curators and ending with make it a better, stronger example approval by the full board. Such of a particular artist’s work,” Mr. sales are often precipitated by new Weinberg said. “At the end a mu- galleries or building additions. The seum collection is about quality.” Cleveland Museum’s coming sale, It was in part to protect this for example, was prompted in part type of freedom that museums like by the reinstallation of its collec- the Whitney opposed temporary tion after a renovation. “If you’ve regulations from the New York determined that a work is less sig- State Board of Regents that im- nifi cant or in poor condition or posed stricter guidelines in 2008 never been on view, it becomes governing deaccessioning. “They superfl uous,” said Mr. Franklin, the did not allow for that philosophi- museum’s director, “and to store it cal, aesthetic decision that is fun- becomes a luxury we can’t afford.” damental to the curatorial exercise Deaccessioning is “kind of of judgments of quality and im- a Humane Society,” he added.