It's a Picture of a Fish: The Deaccessioning Dispute

(12-8-10) Responding to criticism of the sale at auction of more than 2,000 items from the Philadelphia History Museum collection—including a Raphaelle Peale still life that sold for almost $850,000—Gregory J. Kleiber, museum treasurer, noted: “We view the entire reconstruction project as preserving and caring for our largest artifact, the building...and making possible the display and conservation under museum-appropriate conditions of the other pieces of our collection.” (The proceeds of the sale will help fund a $5.8 million building renovation.) Kleiber's comment on the still life: “The Peale we felt was very much outside the mission. We’re a history museum, not an art museum. It’s a picture of a fish.”

In a December 5 article for the New York Times, Robin Pogrebin put the sale in the context of recent deaccessioning controversies, including sales or planned sales by the National Academy Museum, Fisk University, and Brandeis.

Deaccessioning guidelines/restrictions are universal, typically set by an institution's founders and donors, and managed according to guidelines determined by the American Association of Museums. Pogrebin provides compelling arguments for and against:

“This rapidly becomes a slippery slope,” said Derick Dreher, the director of the Rosenbach Museum & Library in Philadelphia. “What museum director wouldn’t be tempted to say that air-conditioning is absolutely crucial for care of collections? Heating, humidification and dehumidification, similarly. But if we go down this road, we end up paying our gas, electric and water bills — classic operations costs — with deaccessioning proceeds.”

But, some argue, museums sometimes have to pare down their collections to remain viable. “Museums really cannot continue to accumulate and accumulate and accumulate ad infinitum,” said Janet C. Marstine, founding director of the Insitute of Musuem Ethics at Seton Hall University and now a lecturer and program director at the University of Leicester. “What does one do with former acquisitions policies that did not make sense, or not having an acquisitions policy, or having so many objects they can’t care for or don’t really fit within their purpose?”