Tempest in a Teacup?

There has been a back and forth going on between Christopher Knight of the LA Times and arts lawyer Donn Zaretsky on de-accessioning of artwork. First here is Knight slamming this article in Art in America by Zaretsky. Then Zaretsky responds.

When I first read this it sounded like Knight was handing Zaretsky his lunch. But reading Zaretsky the “what a nutter” ad hominem from Knight (and Tyler Green over at Modern Art Notes) seems unserious. Zaretsky argues that “each proposed sale be analyzed on its own merits, rather than assuming that it's always wrong, no matter the circumstances,” which is essentially the position of Knight and the AAMD. Of course Zaretsky does tweak the concept of "held in trust for the public." I think he is right in so far as the language of "public trust" implies an immutability to museum holdings that is something less than reality. However if there is a disconnect between a museum's aim and the language it uses to describe it, that only seems to argue for a more articulate or particular language, not an excuse to weaken safeguards against predatory use of one's own collection.

I had an acquisition/de-acquisition experience in microcosm last week. I donated a copy of Apollinaire’s Chroniques d’Art to a library. The library took it for the collection, then decided it really wasn’t useful to the library and gave it an individual. Now, as someone who works in vaults housing pieces acquired decades ago under weaker standards, my traditional thought process is that once a gift is made, the responsibility and judgment over what is best for that work is transferred also, so ultimately it is the museum’s call if something needs to go. It might be a long and thoughtful process with lots of hurdles, and even then it might never happen, but the avenue is there. However that was not my reaction when the library gave away my donated Apollinaire! Access to works in French is very sketchy in AR and I wanted the public to have access to it, so I thought either the library (where it would be nice to have one of the top ten seminal works of art criticism in the original language) or my high school French program (where the Picasso/Braque angle might be fun). I had a larger goal in mind (access of public) and a backup choice if the library didn’t want the work. By giving my gift away, the library was defeating my larger purpose. There is warm glow associated with thinking you’ve given something to a wider public, a bit of a burn when that is thwarted, even if the institution goes about it in the most regulated of ways. So I was briefly in sympathy with the saddest little estate donation passing it's life in vault three, or gracing someone’s mantelpiece via a de-accessioning fund raiser, not because I think there is necessarily much value in those works, but just because “public trust” might have been said on the front end, and the reality is a little sadder. Museums will de-accession, and any curator will tell you that there are things in their collection they would secretly love to move on, but as long as the museums are using a language of higher duty to which other considerations are secondary (public trust), then the rub will be there. Maybe that's a good thing.