Reading list, 6 July 2019

SFMOMA announces its first acquisitions made using funds raised by deaccessioning and selling a Rothko

How the Rhode Island School of Design’s Museum of Art has been working to repatriate a Benin bronze head

Mark Amery and Megan Dunn are editing the new art review section of The Spinoff

Lots of words, not many dollar-figures, but still interesting in the Washington Post: Women are increasingly getting the top museum jobs. Will more of them finally get equal pay?

Bookmarked for later reading: Change Agents: Kaywin Feldman and Bryan Stevenson on Embracing Empathy and Confronting American Racism in Museums

Ditto: Laura Raicovich's Rethinking the “Bigger Is Better” Museum Model

And for listening: my colleague Dr Amber Aranui on her mahi as a repatriation researcher and self-care in this role

Reading list, 22 June 2019

The Cleveland Museum of Art releases the findings of its two-year study into whether digital technology deepens engagement at the museum

Barbara Pollock for Artnews: Exhibiting Change: When Some of the Best-Attended Exhibitions in Museums Are Protests, Where Do Institutions Go from Here?

Simple, effective: The Metropolitan Museum Shrouded a Mark Chagall Painting to Draw Attention to World Refugee Day

Laura Raicovich is a kind of writer in residence for Hyperallergic (I guess that's a columnist really though, right?) and her latest is on Rethinking the “Bigger Is Better” Museum Model 

Nothing to do with art museums but I really enjoyed the style & discomfort of Natasha Stagg's Welcome to the doll's house

The Art Institute of Chicago is deaccessioning more than 300 Chinese artworks from its collection via a Christie’s auction in New York in September

Shows by 20th century surrealist artists Leonora Carrington and Remedios Varo in NYC

Tess Thackara for the NYTimes on the Minneapolis Institute of Art's exhibition “Hearts of Our People: Native American Women Artists”

Reading list, 20 April 2019

Lined up for post-deadline listening: Hrag Vartanian interviews two artist estate managers about how families should cope with a dead artist-relative's legacy.

Also on Hyperallergic: a write-up of a new transcription project from the Smithsonian, focused on female figures from 19th century art history, including the diaries of Anna Coleman Ladd, an American sculptor who made custom prosthetics for soldiers injured during the first world war.

Anne Pasternak, director of the Brooklyn Museum, has the most tricked-out office I've seen to date.

Another "must read later" - The Happy Museum project's list of tools and resources for measuring organisation's impacts on social wellbeing.

I'm sure you used to be able to download the AAM annual TrendsWatch survey for just the cost of your email address? At least you can still download the exec summary. This year's five key trends - "truth and trust, blockchain, decolonization, homelessness and housing insecurity, and self-care".

A nerdily detailed article on the review and decommissioning of minimal and conceptual artworks from the Panza collection at the Guggenheim museum.

Reading list, 14 April 2019

One of the recent issues of The Gray Market newsletters (looking at how museums in England and the US refusing sponsorship from the Sackler Foundation, now deemed too toxic for brand association) introduced me to the concept of the Overton Window, from media theory, which describes the 'window of discourse' in which a politician can suggest policy changes (the window of discourse on military-style weapons in New Zealand, for example, has shifted dramatically following the attacks in Christchurch). When yet another article about an art museum selling collection items off to finance more diverse additions (this time the Art Gallery of Ontario) floated across the transom, it made me reflect that the window of discourse on this particular topic has shifted markedly in recent months, from radical to acceptable, possibly almost sensible (though without a concerted collective decision from the sector, still falling well short of policy).

A similar shift (and dramatic increase in publicity) has happened on the subject of repatriation from museums collections over the last couple of years. The latest piece I've read is by museum curator Chip Colwell, a letter to the editor in the NYT that talks about what museums have to gain, rather than lose, from repatriation.

Ticketed for future reading: Response to the 2018 Sarr-Savoy Report: Statement on Intellectual Property Rights and Open Access relevant to the digitization and restitution of African Cultural Heritage and associated materials

I learned a massive amount from this NYT article, which describes how 12 linked exhibitions in Spain are exploring the art of its former colony Peru (which gained independence in 1821):

“This is the first time we’re showing a painting from colonial America,” Miguel Falomir, the Prado’s director, said in a telephone interview. The Prado owns “between 15 and 20” paintings made in Spain’s former colonies, he said, but they are kept by the ethnographic Museum of the Americas. They have never been shown alongside European old masters. 

For centuries, “we’ve considered this art as second-class,” Mr. Falomir said. “That, thank God, has changed.”

Smart work at SFMOMA: Tracing the Roots of Photo Sharing, From Mail Art to Instagram

One of curator Okwui Enwezor's final interviews: “There are code words to push back against change”

Reading list, 23 March 2019

My dormant nerdy art historian side really enjoyed the quiz that accompanies this lengthy NYT piece on deaccessioning from American art museum collections, where you can try to guess which of three artworks from the Indianapolis Museum of Art's collection has been ranked by its curators as of lower importance than similar works.

In repatriation news: 16 German states have joined in issuing guidelines and releasing funding for repatriation of art and artefacts stolen or looted during the colonial period; the Rijksmuseum begins talks with Indonesia and Sri Lanka to return items; the Dutch National Museum of World Cultures (NMWC) has published guidelines last month for countries wanting to repatriate from the three co-managed institutions that make up the museum, though these have been criticised for centring the museum.

Taylor Whitten Brown's statistical analysis for Artsy: Why Is Work by Female Artists Still Valued Less Than Work by Male Artists?

So interesting to see what Olga Viso is advocating following leaving the Walker after the Sam Durrant affair: here, writing about the need for changes in leadership style and focus; Finding Resilience in Challenging Times

The Sackler Trust has withdrawn the offer of a long-discussed 7-figure donation to the English National Portrait Gallery to avoid embarrassment to the institution. The New York Times article on the decision (fascinatingly worded) also links to the NPG's donations and grants policy.

I hadn't been aware of this aspect of the Metropolitan Museum's introduction of entrance charges: Met Admission Fees Will Send $2.8 Million to Over 175 City Cultural Groups.

May we all receive such a generous obituary when our times come: Vale Edmund Capon

Well played

At the beginning of the year there was a deaccessioning furore in the States, triggered by the National Academy Museum in New York's decision to sell two Hudson River School paintings.

Deaccessioning is a touchy subject. There's money involved, of course - sometimes sizeable amounts. There's moral issues around works that were donated or bequeathed to institutions, or where money was donated to assist with acquisitions. There can be accusations of faddishness of taste, or of short sightedness. There are some who simply believe that once acquired, a collection item is forever.

I think that's why there was a little flurry of tweets last night in response to the Indianapolis Museum of Art's deaccessioning page on their website.

Not only does the IMA explain why they deaccession items (including a link to their policy) and list the collections that have been reviewed since 2007. They also have a searchable database of items that have been deaccessioned, which includes information about how and when the items were disposed of, or if the items are still waiting to be sold, transferred or exchanged.

Funds raised through deaccessioning are dedicated to purchasing new works in the relevant collection area, and the IMA notes "We will soon be linking deaccessioned artworks [in the database] to artworks newly acquired by means of the relevant funds."

They say that sunlight is the best disinfectant. In this case, I think the IMA is proving that transparency and the ungrudging release of information is the best way to tackle potentially tricky situations.

Brass tacks

As we ponder entry charges, the visual arts community in the States is loudly debating deaccessioning, following the National Academy Museum in New York's decision to sell two Hudson River School paintings for approx. $US15 million to help keep the institution afloat.

The professional standard is that collection items should only be sold in order to buy more works for the collection (e.g. selling off a lesser Rembrandt print in order to trade up to a better version). Carmine Branagan, director of the NAM, alerted the American Association of Museums and the Association of Art Museum Directors about the decision, but according to this article in the New York Times, was unprepared for their response:

In an e-mail message on Dec. 5 to its 190 members, it denounced the academy, founded in 1825, for “breaching one of the most basic and important of A.A.M.D.’s principles” and called on members “to suspend any loans of works of art to and any collaborations on exhibitions with the National Academy.”

Ms. Branagan, who had by that time withdrawn her membership from both groups, said she “was shocked by the tone of the letter, like we had committed some egregious crime.”

She called the withdrawal of loans “a death knell” for the museum, adding, “What the A.A.M.D. have done is basically shoot us while we’re wounded.”

Beyond shaping the fate of any one museum, this exchange has sparked larger questions over a principle that has long seemed sacred. Why, several experts ask, is it so wrong for a museum to sell art from its collection to raise badly needed funds? And now that many institutions are facing financial hardship, should the ban on selling art to cover operating costs be eased?

The NYT article provides good background if you want to start reading some of the debate about deaccessioning for reasons other than collection enhancement. I'd recommend:

• Richard Lacayo's two pieces (one and two)
• Michael O’Hare's blog post (cultural policy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, quoted in the NYT article)
• Donn Zaretsky (also cited in the NYT article) has a number of posts on the topic on his art law blog - maybe start with this one.
• This NPR article, where Graham Beal, director of the Detroit Institute of Arts, suggests that the NAM should have sold their building before selling collection items.