The Deaccessioning Debate
Museum debates rarely fit on a wall label. The piece below traces the issue's history, the leading positions, the recent cases, and where the conversation stands today. Few topics in contemporary museum practice generate as much heat as deaccessioning — and for good reason. A museum collection is built over generations, often through gifts made on an explicit understanding that the donated object would be preserved in perpetuity. Reversing that promise raises deep questions about institutional trust, public stewardship, and the purpose of a museum in the first place.
What deaccessioning means
Deaccessioning is the formal removal of an object from a museum's permanent collection — typically by sale, transfer to another institution, or destruction (if irreparably damaged). It is among the most contentious actions a museum can take. The term is bureaucratic by design: it describes a process that begins with a curatorial review, moves through a collections committee, and ideally ends with a transparent transaction whose proceeds are carefully ring-fenced.
When deaccessioning works cleanly, it allows institutions to refine their focus: a natural history museum might transfer duplicated mineralogy specimens to a teaching collection, or a regional art museum might place works outside its geographic scope with a more relevant institution. These transactions attract little attention. The controversy begins when market values are large, donor relationships are at stake, or the institution appears to be liquidating heritage to plug a budget gap.
AAM and AAMD codes
The American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) are the two professional bodies whose codes set the ethical standard for American museums. Both broadly require that proceeds from deaccessioned art be used only for acquiring new works — not for operating expenses, salaries, building maintenance, or endowment. Violation can result in sanctions including restrictions on loans from other AAMD-member institutions, which in practice can cripple a museum's ability to mount major exhibitions.
The restriction on using proceeds for operations reflects a core principle: the collection is a public trust, not a financial reserve. Selling art to pay the electric bill treats accumulated cultural wealth as a piggy bank — which is precisely what donors, in almost every case, did not intend when they made their gifts.
These codes carry significant weight even though they are not law. An institution willing to absorb professional isolation may technically proceed, but the reputational cost is real, and fundraising typically suffers in the aftermath.
The 2020-22 pandemic relaxation
The Covid-19 pandemic created the most significant shift in AAMD policy in a generation. With museums closed for months and revenue from admissions, events, and retail gone, AAMD temporarily relaxed its restrictions beginning in April 2020. The revised guidance allowed member museums to use deaccessioning proceeds for "direct care of collections" — a category that covered conservation treatment, storage, cataloguing, and related work — while still prohibiting use for general operations.
The relaxation expired in April 2022, returning institutions to the pre-pandemic framework. But the two-year window had significant effects. Several museums used the opening to sell works that might otherwise have remained untouched. More importantly, the episode revived a long-standing argument: if the purpose of the collection is to serve the public, and the institution cannot open its doors, should the no-operations rule be suspended? Proponents of permanent relaxation argue that a museum forced to cut staff and close galleries is failing its mission more severely than one that sells a duplicate or a peripheral work to stay open.
Brooklyn Museum 2020 sales
The Brooklyn Museum sold twelve works at Christie's in October 2020, raising approximately $40 million. The works included Lucas Cranach the Elder's Venus and Gustave Courbet's L'Homme à la mer, among others. The museum argued it was acting within the pandemic relaxation by directing proceeds to collection care.
The sale generated immediate controversy. Critics, including some AAMD members, contended that the Brooklyn was effectively using the relaxation as cover for an operation that looked more like a financial rescue than a conservation measure. Supporters countered that the distinction between "collection care" and "operations" is artificial when the institution's survival is in question. The Brooklyn case illustrated, more sharply than any abstract policy debate, how fuzzy the line between permissible and impermissible use of deaccessioning proceeds can become under financial pressure.
Berkshire Museum 2017-18
The Berkshire Museum case in Pittsfield, Massachusetts remains the most legally fraught American deaccessioning in recent memory. In 2017, director Van Shields announced a plan to sell approximately forty works — including two Norman Rockwell paintings, Shuffleton's Barbershop and Blacksmith's Boy, and pieces by Albert Bierstadt and Henry Moore — to fund a multi-year transformation of the museum's programming and physical plant.
The plan triggered a lawsuit from the Massachusetts Attorney General's office, a petition signed by thousands of citizens, and an AAMD sanction that effectively froze the museum out of the loan network. Norman Rockwell's family and the Norman Rockwell Museum in nearby Stockbridge, Massachusetts were vocal opponents; Rockwell had been closely associated with the region, and the paintings were considered community heritage.
The museum's defense was straightforward: without the funds from the sale, the institution would close within years. Courts ultimately allowed the sales to proceed after the Attorney General's office negotiated conditions, but the AAMD sanction remained in place for a period. The Berkshire case raised a question that has no clean answer: if deaccessioning is the alternative to closure, does the no-operations rule serve its intended purpose?
Detroit Institute of Arts 2013-14
The Detroit Institute of Arts became the most dramatic test of whether a municipal bankruptcy could force a public collection onto the auction block. When the city of Detroit filed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy protection in July 2013 — the largest municipal bankruptcy in United States history — the DIA's collection of approximately 66,000 works was a significant asset on the city's books. Creditors and the bankruptcy court appointed Christie's to appraise the collection; early estimates suggested the most sought-after works alone could fetch hundreds of millions of dollars.
The eventual resolution — the Grand Bargain — was unprecedented. A coalition of foundations including the Ford Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, and the Knight Foundation, together with the State of Michigan and the DIA's own fundraising, assembled roughly $816 million over twenty years. In exchange, the DIA was spun off from city ownership as an independent nonprofit, with its collection protected in perpetuity. The city's pensioners received a less severe cut than they had feared; the collection survived intact.
The Detroit case demonstrated that even well-established institutions with major works — including pieces by Bruegel, Rembrandt, van Gogh, Rivera, and Matisse — are not immune to external financial catastrophe. It also showed that the philanthropic sector can, when motivated, mobilize quickly to protect cultural assets.
European context
European national museums are typically prohibited by law from deaccessioning altogether. The French principle of inalienability for national collections is the most absolute: works in French national museums are in principle permanently part of the public domain and cannot be sold under any circumstances. This legal framework applies to institutions including the Louvre, the Musée d'Orsay, the Centre Pompidou, and the Musée du quai Branly.
Italy and Spain maintain similar legal protections for state collections. The German framework is somewhat less absolute but still highly restrictive for publicly funded institutions. The United Kingdom occupies a middle position: national museums such as the British Museum, the National Gallery, and the Victoria and Albert Museum are generally prevented from deaccessioning by the legislation under which they operate, though smaller municipal institutions have more flexibility.
The transatlantic difference reflects distinct traditions of cultural stewardship. European national collections evolved under the assumption of state permanence; the American system, built more on private philanthropy and institutional independence, developed professional codes as a substitute for legal mandates. Neither system is immune to pressure, but the mechanisms of accountability differ substantially.
Conservation deaccessioning
Not all deaccessioning is controversial. A large and largely undiscussed category of collection disposals involves objects that any professional curator would agree are appropriate for removal: duplicate copies of a work when only one is needed, objects in such poor condition that stabilization is impossible and display will never be feasible, or items that entered the collection through historical accident and have no connection to the institution's mission or geographic focus.
These transactions are routine, handled through collections committees, and typically result in transfers to teaching collections, other museums, or — in the case of genuinely duplicated material — the scholarly community. They rarely make news, but they represent the majority of actual deaccessions in any large institution. The permanent collection of a major encyclopedic museum is a living thing, not a sealed archive, and careful stewardship requires periodic review of what belongs there.
Reform proposals
The heated cases of the 2010s and 2020s have generated a range of reform proposals that seek to reduce both the frequency of controversial deaccessions and the damage they cause when they occur.
Several auction houses, including Sotheby's, have developed tiered restitution programmes that attempt to give donor families or source communities advance notice and a right of first refusal before a work goes to the open market. Museum-to-museum exchange networks, modelled loosely on inter-library loan systems, propose that institutions seeking to divest works in their own scope find direct partners rather than selling through commercial channels.
Public deaccessioning registries — lists maintained by professional associations or regulatory bodies showing all planned and completed deaccessions — would increase transparency and allow civic pressure to function before a sale is completed rather than after. None of these proposals has been universally adopted, but the conversation has shifted the default toward disclosure and consultation.
Museum policy and ethics are moving targets. The above represents the situation at the time of writing; check current developments before drawing firm conclusions.
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