In fact high
value works are sold out of public collections every year all around the world.
In the US, for instance four high-end works have recently being
talked up and sold at auction. The Cleveland Museum of Art has just let go
Monet’s Cornfield which was gifted to
them just after the Second World War (they got just shy of $15 million for it),
the Virginia Museum of Art put Renoir’s Vase
of Roses and Dahlias on the block ($1.2 million) and the Hirshhorn Museum
and Sculpture Garden in Washington decided to sell a 1967 Picasso Musketeer With a Hat ($5.2 million at
auction earlier this week). So together the four lots accrued around $21.5 million.
Announcing that
works are to be removed from an art museum's collection often results in an explosion
of public indignation. Ironically this reaction often mirrors the indignation
expressed when public money was used to get the item into the collection in the
first place. For this reason museums here often border on the furtive about any sales
although the Govett-Brewster ran a model process we’ve mentioned before that
involved getting past directors together to discuss each item proposed.
In a previous post we pointed to Te Papa's works by Natalia Goncherova as prospects for sale.
These stand outside the rest of the collection but have an extraordinarily high
value in the market. Dunedin’s Monet is another example. Is local pride a good
enough reason to hold onto them? As the collections of public art museums in NZ
grow year by year and demand more resources to care for them, you can bet deaccessioning
will be a conversation that funders will want to have with our museums before
too long. Maybe the museums should start it themselves and head them off at the pass.
