James Panero responds to Christopher Knight's response to his Wall Street Journal piece on the Montclair Art Museum deaccessioning: "In fact, the only 'hit job' is the one Knight decided to take out on me."
He offers a summary of the "key points" of his argument, including: (1) "The Montclair art museum is engaging in a deaccessioning campaign"; (2) "this campaign is being done (in whole on in part—the ethics of the case are still the same) in order to back the museum's bonds"; and (3) "this raises a greater question--if museums are forbidden from collateralizing their bonds with the art on their walls, is it appropriate that they should be able to sell the art and use the proceeds to back their bonds?"
That seems to me to be a fair, not at all malodorous question.
