"One of the few silver linings to emerge from the pandemic was the announcement, back in April, that the American Alliance of Museum Directors had relaxed its guidelines on deaccessioning. For now, museums can sell works to pay for operating expenses. Few have followed through, however—perhaps because art-world pundits, once again, responded with conservative alarm."

I just came across this piece by Nikki Columbus in n+1, which includes the following on the BMA deaccessioning controversy:

"The latest scandale du jour is the Baltimore Museum of Art’s deaccession plans. While legitimate questions have been raised about the upcoming sale of three paintings, the castigation is redolent with racial privilege. In a particularly ghoulish piece of commentary ('As night follows day, natural disasters bring out the scammers ready to exploit public confusion and fear'), the Los Angeles Times’s Christopher Knight recently complained about 'mission-driven' deaccessions—i.e., selling works to finance increased equity and diversity for both museum employees and audiences, by raising salaries, restructuring staffing, offering free admission, and expanding museum hours. Yet the alternative is ensuring that the office and the visitors remain white, while security and maintenance stay Black and brown. It is effectively an argument for maintaining white supremacy at museums."

"How ‘deaccession’ became the museum buzzword of 2020"

LA Times: "For the art world, 2020 was the year that the Black Lives Matter movement spurred a deeper conversation about inclusion and equity, ultimately leading some museums to sell off works by certain artists — usually white, often male — ostensibly to diversify their permanent collections."

"On Friday, Sotheby’s filed a 27-page memo in New York State Supreme Court asking a judge to dismiss the case."

Eileen Kinsella at artnet news: Sotheby’s Pushes to Dismiss the New York Attorney General’s Lawsuit Over Its Alleged Role in Helping a Collector Evade Taxes. Background here.

"It cannot be seriously disputed that the COVID-19 pandemic is a natural disaster. One need look no further than the common meaning of the words natural disaster."

Phillips has prevailed in the force majeure lawsuit brought against it by Joe Nahmad, mentioned earlier here.

Two of the three New York Times art critics mention the BMA deaccessioning controversy in their year in review lists

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."

Meow Wolf Case Survives Motion to Dismiss

 Sarah Cascone has the story here. The decision is here. Background here.

Copyright year in review

From Rebecca Tushnet.

"A Baltimore museum tried to raise money by selling three pricey artworks. It backfired stupendously."

Sebastian Smee and Peggy McGlone go over the BMA saga in the Washington Post. They end up here:

"But there’s one thing the Baltimore episode made clear: even the most noble of causes, including paying the mostly minority guards a living wage and improving access for the community, can’t be funded by monetizing the collection."

Leaving aside that there is one noble cause that everyone agrees can be funded by monetizing the collection (buying more art), that really is the question, isn't it? Is the correct moral principle that, no matter how noble the cause, it can never be funded through the sale of art?

"Tania Bruguera Detained Amid Protests Over Artistic Freedom in Cuba"

 ARTnews story here. This is not the first time.

"Will 2020 be seen a turning point in the debate?"

 AEA's Harry Fisher-Jones on The deaccessioning debate: 1990-2020.

"The sale is the second since the summer, when MOLAA announced an online auction of 167 artworks from Latin American and Latino artists to benefit a COVID-19 recovery fund. The museum has been shuttered since March."

Christopher Knight in the LA Times: Museum of Latin American Art is selling dozens of works from its collection.

The story points out that "according to financials posted on the museum’s website, in 2019 MOLAA already faced a deficit of $340,617 on an annual budget of nearly $3.7 million."

Vermont Law School VARA Suit

There's a brief mention at Courthouse New Service here. This is the one where they gave the artist 90 days to remove the mural back in the summer, but he claims in his complaint (which you can read here) that it can't be removed without destroying it.

New York adopts post-mortem right of publicity

 A pretty big deal.

"5Pointz Developer Agrees to Pay $2 Million in Attorneys’ Fees"

 Bloomberg story here. This is on top of the $6.75 million judgment previously awarded.

"When the BMA tried to diversify its collection, it learned just how shallow the art world’s commitment to social justice can be."

"According to its critics, if the BMA wants to diversify its collection, it should raise money from donors to buy more art, rather than trading some art for other art, as the AAMD deaccessioning rules permit and even encourage. In other words, art museums should diversify their collections with all deliberate speed. I think they can and should move a little faster."

Brian Frye at Hyperallergic.

"Restitution is widely considered a just and appropriate form of deaccessioning. Might there be other circumstances under which deaccessioning could be considered a form of restitution?"

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."

Another tragic deaccessioning story

A David Hockney portrait sold by the "financially strapped" London Royal Opera House at Christie's for $17 million last month has ended up ... at the London Royal Opera House. It was bought by the chair of the Opera House's board of trustees. "He also has plans to loan it to the reopening exhibition of London’s National Portrait Gallery, where [he] is a trustee, in 2023." "As the Chairman of the Royal Opera House and the National Portrait Gallery," he says, "I care deeply about the arts being as accessible as possible and their educational value. I decided to participate in the auction to secure the painting for the British public."

"The artists argue the removal of the mural was in violation of their rights, specifically the legally-required preservation of their work, under the Visual Artists Rights Act" (UPDATED 2X)

 "Artists of iconic mural at the Stud sue building owner for 'whitewashing' their work."

UPDATE: Brian Boucher picks up the story at artnet. He gets quotes from Sergio Muñoz Sarmiento ("Do these property owners simply wish to not seek legal advice from lawyers? Or, if they do, do they simply disregard the advice?") and Amy Adler ("[VARA is] incompatible with deep-seated American notions of what it means to own property, and the idea that if you own something, you can do whatever you want with it").

UPDATE 2: Brian Frye says "the discussion of 'recognized stature' should be interesting in the case of this work." Andrew Gilden adds that it's "really hard to assess [a] VARA claim when you subjectively mourn the loss of a particular queer art/space but fear that the space lacks sufficiently 'recognized stature' within the community more broadly."

"Should British museums sell to stay afloat?"

The Guardian on the UK version of the deaccessioning debate.

It includes the following: "In England, the rules about these matters are laid down by the Museums Association’s code of ethics, used to set Arts Council England’s standards, and they state that artefacts 'should not normally be regarded as financially negotiable assets'."

Obviously that puts a lot of weight on normally. In the U.S., by contrast, the "ethical" rule is artworks should not normally ever be regarded as financially negotiable assets unless the plan is to use the sale proceeds to buy other artworks in which case feel free to regard them as financially negotiable assets.

"'It’s an artwork,' he added. 'It’s freedom of expression. It’s not complicated.'"

The New York Times reports that the Village of Kinderhook says a Nick Cave text-based work installed on the facade of Jack Shainman's upstate gallery is "a sign, and hence in violation of local code, and wants it removed."