Very interesting Artforum piece by Julie Pelta Feldman on the Baltimore Museum deaccessioning controversy.
She observes that "the vitriol aimed at BMA director Christopher Bedford and the curators responsible, Asma Naeem and Katy Siegel, has been particularly bitter," mentioning in particular criticisms from Brenda Richardson ("nothing short of horrified"), Christopher Knight ("The sleaze is almost too hard to wrap your head around"), and Martin Gammon (an "onslaught of unbridled commodification"). Summing up the art world reaction, she writes: "Deaccessioning, many critics believe, should not be instrumentalized, no matter how worthy the museum’s plans for its yield."
"Yet," she then points out, "restitution, too, is a type of deaccessioning: through it, an object is removed from the otherwise inviolate realm of a museum’s permanent collection and finds a new home. Unlike many other instances of deaccessioning, this occurs not because the object itself is in some way flawed, damaged, or otherwise undesirable, but because it is the right thing to do. Indeed, restitution would mean little if the artworks and artifacts in question were not precious and important. It represents an acknowledgment of the colonial pillaging that undergirds many of the world’s finest museums, a demonstration of respect to the people who were robbed, an apology to their descendants, and a commitment to redress historical abuse."
She goes on: "For decades, museums that collect modern art have privileged certain artists and art histories at the expense of others. Collection diversification is not simply a worthy goal, it is—like restitution—a necessary correction of inequities embedded deep within museums’ structures, histories, and collections. ... Museums that deaccession works to diversify their collections indeed give up a piece of themselves, but they do so in pursuit of a new wholeness. ... [I]f restitution means surrendering the ownership of an artwork—even or especially a treasured one—in pursuit of justice, the BMA’s new plan might also be understood this way. Critics of deaccessioning worry that curators will succumb to mere fashion. But women and artists of color are not a trend, and neither is a security guard’s right to a living wage."
I suspect one response to this, from those many critics, will be "yes, those are worthy goals, but let the board members pay for them."
