Holland Cotter says "last May the Baltimore Museum of Art planned to auction works from its collection to pay for — among other things — equitable staff salaries, only to be hit by a firestorm of protests," and that they had "legitimate arguments to make, but didn’t make them convincingly, and had to pull back."
And Jason Farago says "on deaccessioning, I’m not a strict constructionist. Selling art that hasn’t been shown for decades can sometimes be justified. But strategically raiding your galleries for cash is a scandal; equity and preservation are not at odds; and woke austerity is still austerity."
Cotter's list includes a number of other art law related things: "continuing a trend from 2019, museum workers, voicing grievances based on racial discrimination and economic exploitation, have increasingly sought to unionize"; "after three years of foot-dragging, the French Senate signed off on a bill in November promising to return a group of looted objects to Africa"; and "this past July, after years of advocacy, a bill proposing the establishment of a National Museum of the American Latino in Washington was finally passed by the House of Representatives."
