By Donn Zaretsky | From issue 204, July/August 2009
Published online 24.6.09 (opinion)
As Lindsay Pollock reports in the July/August issue and on theartnewspaper.com, about a third of the works included in Christie’s 20 May sale in New York were from US museums. One of those museums was the Montclair Art Museum in New Jersey, which, in March of this year, issued a very strange announcement. It revealed that, having “been deeply affected by the current financial crisis”, it was putting into place a “Financial Security Plan”, one part of which was the sale of more than 50 works from the collection, including an important 1951 drawing by Jackson Pollock.
What was strange about the announcement was how the proposed deaccessioning was supposed to fit into the “Financial Security Plan”. Under professional standards promulgated by the American Association of Museum Directors (AAMD) and the Association of American Museums (AAM), US museums can deaccession only to buy more work—and Montclair was quick to point out at every turn that they fully intended to comply with that rule. But if the sales proceeds were to be used to buy more work—simply replacing one set of objects with another—how could that possibly help make the museum more financially secure?
In an article for the Wall Street Journal, critic James Panero seemed to have solved the mystery: the works were being sold to satisfy the requirements of the museum’s bonds. The museum’s director confessed to Panero that “we took out tax exempt bonds…[and] whenever you do that…you agree to have a certain amount on hand in an endowment fund. At times when our endowment is flagging, we go below that line. So this is a creative way to keep the endowment full and to stay above the water line…just so we are in the good graces with the bond covenants.”
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