Katya Kazakina breaks the news that the Met is deaccessioning "219 prints and photographs to help plug a $150 million revenue shortfall resulting from the pandemic."
This should not come as a surprise.
Brian Frye "can't wait to see the deaccessioning police freak out, even though this should be the most unobjectionable kind of deaccessioning. After all, museums sell duplicates to buy new works for their collection with the AAMD's blessing all the time."
So far, the deaccession police have been quiet. Give it time.
As I said in the post I linked above, you've identified 200 some works -- "duplicates, multiples, copies of the same thing [we have] in better quality," according to the Met's director, Max Hollein -- that are to be sold as part of your routine collection management. They're going to be sold anyway. At that point, what difference does it make what you do with the proceeds?
