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Museums and the Lure of the Sell-Off, with the PMA’s director and CEO Timothy Rub
64 Plays5 years ago
The Association of Art Museum Directors killed something of a sacred cow last year when it ruled that museums will be permitted to use funds from deaccessioned artworks—previously strictly controlled—to pay for a wider array of institutional costs. On the occasion of this year’s virtual Philadelphia Show, Ben Miller speaks with the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s director and CEO Timothy Rub about the AAMD’s ruling and ripple effects it might have throughout the museum world. In a wide-ranging conversation, which gets into the nitty gritty of collecting and deaccesioning habits and procedures, as well as fundraising niceties, Rub makes a strong case for continuing to keep the departments of museums—and their fundraising efforts—firmly separated.
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Transcript
Pandemic Impact on Art Museums
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello, and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques.
00:00:14
Speaker
I'm Ben Miller.
00:00:15
Speaker
The pandemic has been particularly hard on cultural institutions, including art museums.
00:00:20
Speaker
Many have faced financial catastrophe over the past year, forcing extreme budget capex, including laying off staff.
00:00:26
Speaker
At the same time, many of these museums possess extraordinary wealth in the form of their collections.
00:00:31
Speaker
So the solution to their fiscal problem seemingly is right at their fingertips.
00:00:35
Speaker
But museums selling art leaves a bad taste in a lot of people's mouths.
00:00:39
Speaker
I think it's a bit like the Greek myth of Tantalus.
00:00:42
Speaker
He's desperately thirsty and standing in a pool of water, but when he bends to take a sip, the water recedes.
00:00:49
Speaker
You know, the collections are there, they're massively valuable, and the museums are desperately thirsty, but it's not so easy to take a drink.
00:00:55
Speaker
Now, normally at this time of year, I'd be packing my bags and catching the train to Philadelphia to exhibit at the Philadelphia Antique Show.
00:01:03
Speaker
The show is a non-profit benefiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
00:01:07
Speaker
And in fact, over the years at that show, our firm has sold a number of pieces to the museum itself.
00:01:13
Speaker
This year, of course, the show is virtual.
00:01:15
Speaker
And so I'm sitting around here in New York.
Introducing Timothy Rubb and Deaccessioning
00:01:18
Speaker
But to think through this deaccession dilemma, who better to talk with than my guest today, the director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Timothy Rubb.
00:01:27
Speaker
Timothy has led the PMA since 2009.
00:01:30
Speaker
And relevant for today's conversation, he is also a former president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, or AAMD.
00:01:37
Speaker
Timothy, thank you so much for joining me.
00:01:39
Speaker
Well, thank you.
00:01:40
Speaker
I'm delighted to be with you.
00:01:42
Speaker
Now, in ordinary times, institutions are forbidden from selling their art, except in very narrow and specific purposes.
00:01:50
Speaker
Well, I should say they're not necessarily forbidden by law, but rather by the Association of Art Museum Directors.
00:01:57
Speaker
And the AAMD has a policy that states, quote, funds received from the disposal of a deaccessioned work shall not be used for operations or capital expenses and may only be used for the acquisition of works.
AAMD's Deaccessioning Moratorium Debate
00:02:10
Speaker
So in other words, you can't sell off your collection just to help make ends meet.
00:02:14
Speaker
However, last April, with COVID becoming an existential threat to many institutions, the AAMD issued an emergency two-year moratorium, saying that they would not punish any museum or director who sell their works to keep their staff employed and their doors open.
00:02:31
Speaker
Now, some museums have raced to take advantage of that moratorium, sending major works to the auction block.
00:02:38
Speaker
Others have flinched at the idea.
00:02:39
Speaker
Some have even gotten in trouble, including the Baltimore Museum of Art, which last October drew harsh criticism for their plan to deaccession works by Bryce Martin, Clifford Still, and Andy Warhol.
00:02:51
Speaker
But Timothy, let's start with you in Philadelphia.
00:02:55
Speaker
Tell me, if you can, briefly, how has the PMA reacted to the moratorium?
Philadelphia Museum's Financial Strategy
00:03:00
Speaker
And have you and the board and the curatorial staff talked about the possibility of deaccessions?
00:03:06
Speaker
Yes, we have.
00:03:08
Speaker
And I can't imagine there hasn't been a museum in the country.
00:03:13
Speaker
Certainly, those that are members of the Association of Art Museum Directors that haven't had this conversation among staff and with their boards of trustees.
00:03:25
Speaker
It's in the air.
00:03:26
Speaker
And of course, it is a very interesting option to consider at this time when
00:03:34
Speaker
when the economy has laid waste to our cultural institutions and made it very, very difficult for us to manage our budgets in the short term.
00:03:44
Speaker
So we're always talking about deaccessioning and we do a good deal of it under normal circumstances.
00:03:53
Speaker
But yes, the pandemic and the stresses it's created on our budgets has really brought this into sharp focus.
00:04:01
Speaker
But you haven't arrived at the decision to sell any major works out of the Philadelphia Museum collection.
00:04:07
Speaker
We have not.
00:04:08
Speaker
So it's been about the end of this month.
00:04:11
Speaker
It will be just about a year since that exception to the professional practices of the AAMD was put in place by its board.
00:04:21
Speaker
We haven't because we've been working primarily on trying to engineer a strictly financial solution to the challenges we face.
00:04:32
Speaker
And again, I think that's probably true of most of our peer institutions.
00:04:38
Speaker
We've been obviously trying to sustain support amongst our donors and the community, our members and the like.
00:04:46
Speaker
And that's been really quite successful, I should say, that
00:04:50
Speaker
That donors and those who support our institutions have really stepped up in a significant way to provide annual operating support, really relief during the pandemic.
00:05:01
Speaker
Of course, we've taken, in our case, very drastic measures to reduce our budget because our earned income when we shut our doors essentially went down.
00:05:10
Speaker
to zero.
00:05:11
Speaker
And we found ourselves facing a really significant shortfall in terms of operating revenues.
00:05:17
Speaker
But what we did was take our medicine early and reduce staffing and reduce expenditures, in some cases to the bone, knowing that we had to sail very, very close to the wind to get through the pandemic.
00:05:32
Speaker
And
00:05:33
Speaker
If we could limit the amount of indebtedness that we created through operating deficits, we could come back faster and stronger.
00:05:41
Speaker
So that's what we've been trying to do.
00:05:44
Speaker
Right.
00:05:45
Speaker
So is it fair to say that you would only see deaccessioning as truly a last resort?
00:05:50
Speaker
And in this case, you haven't had to fall on the very last resort.
00:05:53
Speaker
We haven't.
00:05:54
Speaker
And of course, we're not out of the woods yet.
00:05:56
Speaker
So I think here and elsewhere, there will be further conversations about it.
00:06:04
Speaker
I should also say that I think you're right to characterize it as something of a last resort, in part because we've always segregated
00:06:15
Speaker
different kinds of assets in the museum and treated them separately.
00:06:19
Speaker
So our endowments, save for the income that they generate, are not used to fund an operating budget.
00:06:27
Speaker
Our collections have been separated as an asset class, so to speak, so that there isn't the
00:06:34
Speaker
the temptation or the demand to turn a valuable work of art into a financial asset and monetize it.
00:06:42
Speaker
And I think that's frankly a very good and strong policy for the long term.
00:06:47
Speaker
So let's talk about, you know, there are some museums, as I mentioned, that have taken advantage of this moratorium.
00:06:53
Speaker
You know, some high profile examples include, you know, as I said, the Baltimore Museum, the Brooklyn Museum, SF MoMA, and others that have either deaccessioned or attempted to deaccession important and expensive works.
00:07:08
Speaker
And I'm interested in hearing from you, you know, and I'm not going to force you to name names if you'd rather not, but I'm curious to hear your take on what you feel are some of what you might characterize as the sort of positive versus negative approaches to deaccessioning that you've seen during the pandemic.
00:07:31
Speaker
Well, it's hard to look at these and determine whether they're positive or negative.
00:07:38
Speaker
Again, I think in the long term and under normal operating circumstances, the prohibition against deaccessioning or monetizing works of art for operating costs is a good and useful policy.
00:07:54
Speaker
pursue.
00:07:55
Speaker
I think those institutions that have taken this step have done different things and amongst the, I think the most admirable, if you want to use that term, would be the approach taken by the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which deaccessioned a number of paintings to create an endowment.
00:08:19
Speaker
to provide for, as the AAMD's moratorium allows, to provide for funding of the direct care of collections.
00:08:28
Speaker
So they established, as many institutions have, a policy defining direct care of collections, what you could use these funds for.
00:08:36
Speaker
But what they did, of course, was to create an endowment that will help now.
00:08:41
Speaker
to a certain extent, but also continue to yield support for all of those important functions, insurance, storage, curatorial work, conservation, and the like going forward.
00:08:53
Speaker
That addresses both the short-term need, but it also sets the institution up by funding direct care of collections in the longer term.
00:09:02
Speaker
And clearly that's going to make a big difference for Brooklyn.
00:09:07
Speaker
On the other hand, the controversy stirred by the decision made and later retracted by the Baltimore Museum of Art was in one sense understandable because a small portion of the funds, and I think it's important to underscore that it wasn't the bulk of the funds that they would have developed or generated through the sale, but a small portion of the funds were going to be earmarked for things other than
00:09:34
Speaker
the direct care of collections.
00:09:36
Speaker
But as you know, one of the key aspects of that controversy was a disagreement which played out in public over the decision to sell truly important works of art masterpieces from the collection and the effect that that would have on the institution in the long term.
00:10:00
Speaker
Yeah.
00:10:00
Speaker
In other words, these weren't necessarily works that were hiding away in storage closets and that no one would particularly miss.
00:10:08
Speaker
No.
00:10:08
Speaker
And, you know, in that kind of work of, as you put it, of things that are stowed away in storage closets, that kind of work, which I call housekeeping.
00:10:17
Speaker
of making sure you're not maintaining or keeping things that are not useful to you anymore is a good and important practice that goes on in virtually every institution.
00:10:33
Speaker
I know.
00:10:33
Speaker
And it's a tedious but important part of maintaining a collection.
00:10:39
Speaker
You shouldn't keep what you can't use or is of no value or little or no value.
00:10:44
Speaker
And because it's taking up space and it's costing money to do that.
00:10:47
Speaker
So we all do that.
00:10:50
Speaker
as a matter of course.
00:10:51
Speaker
The problem is that- Right, but of course that's not going to raise a large amount of money quickly.
00:10:55
Speaker
Exactly.
00:10:55
Speaker
It may yield some space and make the management of the collection a little bit easier, but it's not going to yield much in terms of income.
00:11:04
Speaker
At the Philadelphia Museum of Art, this is done routinely, particularly in our-
00:11:10
Speaker
our Department of Print, Drawings, and Photographs because we have a number of duplicate prints and we review them very carefully.
00:11:17
Speaker
And of course, once they're sold, they provide funds to enrich the collection through the purchase of other works on paper.
00:11:26
Speaker
I want to come back to this idea of what you're calling housekeeping, because I think there's some interesting themes to touch on there.
Rethinking Museum Missions for Diversity
00:11:35
Speaker
But let's focus for the moment on this crisis that museums are facing during the pandemic.
00:11:46
Speaker
the moratorium that the AAMD has issued.
00:11:50
Speaker
Some museums have seen this as an opportunity to start to rethink their collections and their facilities, and yes, even their compensation.
00:11:59
Speaker
And the Baltimore Museum was criticized for the notion that they might take, as you say, a portion of the proceeds from this proposed sale to raise staff compensation.
00:12:15
Speaker
Now, I think, you know, what the director there, Christopher Bedford, would have said in defense is that this wasn't some kind of cash grab to try to boost the salaries of well-paid curators.
00:12:27
Speaker
This was really focused on raising the compensation for the lowest paid tier of employees and
00:12:35
Speaker
all done, I think, with a very sort of social justice mentality of wanting the museum to better reflect and serve the predominantly African-American community of Baltimore that it's supposed to serve.
00:12:49
Speaker
So that's just one example.
00:12:50
Speaker
But, you know, one thought that museums may have as they consider deaccessions is, well,
00:13:00
Speaker
you know, what is this going to say about our institution?
00:13:02
Speaker
What are our goals and how is this deaccession going to reflect those goals?
00:13:07
Speaker
So, you know, I sort of, I want to ask from your perspective, you know, how do you see the, or what do you see as the potential opportunities for that kind of thinking about deaccession, if there are, and what do you see as the pitfalls of that kind of thinking, particularly during a crisis?
00:13:29
Speaker
Yeah, perhaps I should start by laying out my own position, which is probably at this point considered pretty old school.
00:13:37
Speaker
And that is that I do think good fences make good neighbors and segregating the need for operating support and how that is secured from the care and development.
00:13:55
Speaker
a useful boundary to maintain.
00:13:59
Speaker
Why?
00:14:00
Speaker
Because the, you know, particularly with, and here we're talking about collecting institutions for most of us, our collections are really the heart of the institution, particularly if you're taking a long-term view of
00:14:17
Speaker
of its value to the community and to the field and the like.
00:14:21
Speaker
So that the ongoing maintenance and care, stewardship of that collection and its ongoing development, I think is not simply an important but a central goal of what we do.
00:14:34
Speaker
And that requires resources to be sure.
00:14:38
Speaker
And it can be a challenge as well financially and otherwise.
00:14:43
Speaker
But it's a task, a responsibility to which we have to attend on a regular basis.
00:14:49
Speaker
And I think, again, maintaining a kind of firewall, so to speak, between the care and development of the collection on the one hand,
00:15:01
Speaker
and the operations of the museum on the other is important, is a very important thing.
00:15:09
Speaker
Again, keep in mind that even the moratorium that the AMD has passed for these two years,
00:15:26
Speaker
for the direct care of collections, not for other purposes.
00:15:29
Speaker
So they're drawing a rather sharp boundary between collections and their care and the rest of the museum's operations.
00:15:43
Speaker
Even so, and again, under normal times, the prohibition against using deaccession funds for anything other than the development of the collection, I think is a useful one.
00:15:56
Speaker
Good fences make good neighbors.
00:15:57
Speaker
And I think that
00:15:58
Speaker
that it allows museums to care for the collections, to defend and support their continued development at a time when values continue to increase and the demand on monetizing collections has increased as well.
00:16:14
Speaker
Now that's an important point and I'll stop when I make this or after I make this rather, that for many of us,
00:16:24
Speaker
acquisition funds, the resources to acquire additional works of art to build and expand and strengthen our collections are difficult to come by.
00:16:34
Speaker
And very often, particularly with a collection like ours, the sale of lesser but nonetheless important works of art is a way to help us fund new acquisitions and to help us develop and strengthen and refine our collections.
00:16:51
Speaker
It's kind of our seed corn.
00:16:53
Speaker
in a way.
00:16:53
Speaker
And if that were diverted to another purpose, I think you'd see the activity around the development of the collection be diminished by that.
00:17:04
Speaker
Yeah.
00:17:05
Speaker
So you've mentioned a number of times now this idea of a firewall between the collections versus operating expenses.
00:17:16
Speaker
What do you think are the risks if that firewall doesn't exist?
00:17:19
Speaker
What are some of the potential conflicts of interest that might come about if an institution were to do something like what the Baltimore Museum had proposed in October?
00:17:32
Speaker
Well, a number of them have been mentioned in many articles written about deaccessioning in the past year.
00:17:43
Speaker
I think it's, first of all, however useful it is.
00:17:48
Speaker
It may be to divert funds from the sale of works of art for the care of collections in the short term.
00:17:56
Speaker
It's debatable whether this is really useful as a long-term solution.
00:18:01
Speaker
Collections, just like anything else, are finite resources.
00:18:07
Speaker
And if we keep on monetizing them,
00:18:10
Speaker
to support operating expenses, that can only go on for so long.
00:18:16
Speaker
I guess it would be like cutting off your nose to spite your face in a sense.
00:18:21
Speaker
And, you know, there are prohibitions which we really don't talk about very much.
00:18:28
Speaker
against the use of endowments, particularly restricted endowment funds for operating purposes.
00:18:37
Speaker
There are legal restrictions in place to ensure that those funds are there to support
00:18:45
Speaker
in this case, the operations of the museum or specific activities in perpetuity.
00:18:51
Speaker
And only the income from those funds can be used.
00:18:55
Speaker
So that's another example of a protected asset that is designed to continue to support and help the museum function in the long term.
00:19:05
Speaker
So I think that collections, in the same way collections should be, the stewardship of collections should be thought of in that sense.
00:19:18
Speaker
You know, another thing that, that
00:19:23
Speaker
has often been brought up.
00:19:24
Speaker
And I think it's really important to keep in mind.
Donor Relations and Museum Sustainability
00:19:28
Speaker
How will donors feel about donating works of art and about the possibility of there being repurposed to provide annual operating support?
00:19:39
Speaker
We typically ask our donor community, and our donor community has been very generous in terms of providing
00:19:46
Speaker
annual operating support, gifts they make each year to a variety of purposes, to general operations, to programs and exhibitions, and so on.
00:19:56
Speaker
We also ask our donors on a regular basis, and again, they respond very generously to funding capital needs.
00:20:06
Speaker
If those boundaries were erased between, let's say, collections and operations, and we're not there yet, this is an extreme hypothetical,
00:20:19
Speaker
Yes, would it be simple for us to sell a very significant painting and fund the renovation of a significant portion of the museum or an expansion or fund a new program or increase salaries?
00:20:32
Speaker
But if we did so, what would our donors say the next time we go around asking for capital support or an annual fund donations?
00:20:42
Speaker
Would they say, be inclined to say, well, you can simply sell a work from your collection that's in the basement and use it?
00:20:48
Speaker
Thank you very much.
00:20:50
Speaker
So I think there is a risk there.
00:20:54
Speaker
And I think all of this masks, obscures an obvious point.
00:20:59
Speaker
And that is how we, the key issue is how we manage our operating costs and
00:21:04
Speaker
and focusing on endowment and building long-term financial resources for the operations of the museum.
00:21:12
Speaker
Now, most of the time, in point of fact, that formula works very well.
00:21:18
Speaker
We do receive an enormous amount of annual operating support from our donors and members.
00:21:24
Speaker
We do receive very significant endowment gifts.
00:21:27
Speaker
We do receive funds for capital improvements and expansions.
00:21:32
Speaker
As I said, most of the time this works pretty well.
00:21:35
Speaker
This time it didn't.
00:21:36
Speaker
But remember that this is a crisis of extraordinary proportions or dimensions rather.
00:21:42
Speaker
And even so, hopefully we'll soon be past it and we'll be back to normal operations again.
00:21:49
Speaker
So I don't think we should lose our heads and push in a direction that ultimately would be, I think, very dangerous for museums.
00:21:57
Speaker
Right.
00:21:58
Speaker
So the sort of the two central concerns that I hear then are, number one, the fear that it could be a slippery slope, that once you take a shot of adrenaline, you want another one.
00:22:10
Speaker
And then what's to stop you from really doing serious damage to the scope and significance of the collections?
00:22:17
Speaker
And then number two is, what does it do for donations for particularly legacy-minded donors?
00:22:29
Speaker
to see the works that they've donated to be sent to the chopping block.
00:22:37
Speaker
I actually had a listener suggest a question about whether families, donors or their families, are ever consulted when a museum is considering deaccessioning a piece that they've given.
00:22:53
Speaker
Is that a conversation that a museum might be able to have to sort of present the case for the deaccession to the donor and gauge their response?
00:23:04
Speaker
Yeah, that's a very good question.
00:23:08
Speaker
And in point of fact, we do quite often have those conversations.
00:23:17
Speaker
It's good stewardship, number one, to keep in touch with a donor or a donor's family if that donor is no longer with us.
00:23:30
Speaker
But it's important, even though in most cases we receive gifts on a restricted basis, that is there by definition, there are no strict restrictions on what the museum could do with a gift that's made on an unrestricted basis.
00:23:48
Speaker
We could sell the work if we want.
00:23:50
Speaker
But very often we do think about
00:23:58
Speaker
the donors, again, if they're still with us and the reasons they gave the work to us and the obligation that we have as stewards of the object to consult with them and say, we're thinking of
00:24:16
Speaker
of selling this to acquire another work of art or to put into a fund because the work is no longer useful for us.
00:24:23
Speaker
And we hope you'll understand.
00:24:26
Speaker
So we are always sympathetic rather to those kinds of questions.
00:24:32
Speaker
And that's part of, again, our responsibilities as good stewards of the collection.
00:24:39
Speaker
So does that change the calculus if you're aware that a donor is actually comfortable with a deaccession?
00:24:48
Speaker
I mean, it sounds like it makes you more sympathetic to the idea that that's a good piece for the museum to consider getting rid of.
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah, I think it would.
00:25:01
Speaker
In some instances, donors are concerned about what the museum might do with the object in the future and donate it with certain restrictions.
00:25:15
Speaker
And we can choose to accept them or not, as the case may be.
00:25:19
Speaker
And in many cases, we do because we're
00:25:28
Speaker
that the object is going to remain an important part of the collection in the future.
00:25:34
Speaker
But even so, the very act of giving a work of art, even on an unrestricted basis to museum, is to put it
00:25:47
Speaker
the donor's trust in the museum and trusting that the museum will be a good steward of that object.
00:25:54
Speaker
That in itself is something that gives us pause and makes us, I think, reluctant to part with objects because again, if we've accepted them in good faith, we ought to be willing to keep them and utilize them for the benefit of the museum going public.
00:26:11
Speaker
But in some cases, again, when a decision for one or more good reasons is made to sell something, then I think, again, it's a responsibility of the museum to inform the donor, again, if he or she is still with us and make sure that they understand we're doing this.
00:26:31
Speaker
In most cases, they're fine with it.
00:26:34
Speaker
They understand our reasons.
00:26:36
Speaker
Right.
00:26:37
Speaker
It's interesting.
Adapting Collections to Reflect Society
00:26:38
Speaker
I mean, this leads to a question or a theme that is maybe a little thornier than what we've touched on so far, which goes to the heart of the sort of self-examination that institutions have to go through when they're thinking about their collections, which is to say that the collection ought to reflect the purpose and the mission of the museum.
00:27:03
Speaker
Right.
00:27:05
Speaker
But there are, of course, many different groups who have a stake in that, in the collection, in the viewing of the collection, in the treatment and care of it.
00:27:14
Speaker
And that includes, of course, scholars, curators themselves, the staff of the museum or of other museums, artists.
00:27:22
Speaker
There are the avid enthusiasts, the
00:27:26
Speaker
the annual members, the casual visitors, there are school trips, there are tourists, there are the members of the general public in the communities where these museums exist.
00:27:39
Speaker
There are a lot of different people who have some kind of stake in what's going on.
00:27:45
Speaker
And the mission of the institution has to take many of these competing interests into account.
00:27:52
Speaker
And those interests may change over time.
00:27:56
Speaker
So, for example, one issue that's of particular concern to many institutions today are minority communities, which in the case of many museums, like the Brooklyn Museum a few blocks down the street from me or the Baltimore Museum that we've mentioned, minority communities may actually be plurality communities or majority communities in these neighborhoods and in cities that these museums are serving.
00:28:26
Speaker
So, you know, I guess what I want to ask is whether you think museum governance structures as they exist now, generally speaking, are well equipped to adjudicate all of these diverse interests when it comes to both buying and then also deaccessioning artwork.
00:28:49
Speaker
I'm not sure that's so much a governance issue as it's a matter of how the museum interprets its mission at any given point in time and how it adjusts the interpretation of its mission to accommodate changes in the
00:29:14
Speaker
in the community that serves, shifting tastes and shifting expectations about what museums can do for their communities today, how they can engage with their communities and how they can enrich the lives of the audiences that they were founded to serve.
00:29:37
Speaker
As you know, museums right now are, I think, looking at this
00:29:42
Speaker
these interlocking or interrelated issues with more candor and far greater scrutiny than they have, at least in my professional lifetime.
00:29:55
Speaker
And I think what it's going to yield is...
00:30:02
Speaker
Not so much a shift, a seismic shift in collecting.
00:30:09
Speaker
In some cases it may.
00:30:11
Speaker
I think in most cases, museum collections practices and directions will be inflected in one way or another.
00:30:20
Speaker
I think that's inevitable.
00:30:23
Speaker
But I think where it will be reflected most clearly is in two ways.
00:30:30
Speaker
One is programmatically including the development of exhibitions and the presentations of collections.
00:30:41
Speaker
How are these considered?
00:30:43
Speaker
these core activities of the museum considered them and carried out in relation to the interests and needs, voices of these communities.
00:30:54
Speaker
And secondly,
00:30:59
Speaker
what kind of dialogue, and I think this is going to be an area of great change in the next few years, what kind of interaction and dialogue will take place between those various communities and the museum?
00:31:18
Speaker
I think that's going to yield a kind of much richer
00:31:23
Speaker
understanding and set of decisions made with respect to programming exhibitions, the presentation and interpretation of our collections.
00:31:34
Speaker
And I think that will be a very, very good thing.
00:31:39
Speaker
But what I think is also going to happen is
00:31:47
Speaker
far greater and richer two-way dialogue between the museum and those for whom our work is intended to benefit.
00:32:01
Speaker
That kind of interaction exists to a certain extent now.
00:32:07
Speaker
Many museums, including ours, have spent a good deal of time engaging communities over the last several decades, trying to understand audiences in a more sophisticated and thoroughgoing way and listening.
00:32:22
Speaker
to what they want because that's the key to engaging them and bringing them through the door.
00:32:29
Speaker
But I do think the events of the last year and the demands for greater equity in the museum are going to lead us well beyond where we were with those questions into this new territory.
00:32:45
Speaker
And I think will be very interesting and very productive.
00:32:49
Speaker
Music
00:32:52
Speaker
We'll be back with Timothy Rubb in just a minute.
00:32:55
Speaker
As always, I want to say thank you for listening.
00:32:58
Speaker
You, dear listener, are the reason this podcast exists and the reason we're having these conversations.
00:33:03
Speaker
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00:33:09
Speaker
Tell a friend or a colleague about Curious Objects or just leave us a rating or a short review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening.
00:33:18
Speaker
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00:33:28
Speaker
If you're on Instagram, you can see updates about upcoming episodes from at AntiquesMag, and for me, at Objective Interest.
00:33:36
Speaker
You can reach me by email at CuriousObjectsPodcast at gmail.com.
00:33:41
Speaker
I'm always interested in suggestions for topics and guests.
00:33:44
Speaker
Thanks again.
00:33:45
Speaker
Now, back to the show.
00:33:49
Speaker
What do you think of, so how to put this, you know, one of the priorities that Chris Bedford at Baltimore has spoken about, and as we've alluded to already in this conversation, is the notion that, you know, Baltimore is a two-thirds majority African-American city, and
00:34:11
Speaker
And the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art, I don't know what fraction of it represents African-American artists, but I would be shocked if it were as high as 3%.
00:34:20
Speaker
So there's obviously a huge disparity.
00:34:25
Speaker
Now, the museum's only purpose isn't just to display artwork by...
00:34:32
Speaker
I think there is probably a disproportionate number of Italians represented in the Baltimore Museum versus the number of Italians living in Baltimore.
00:34:42
Speaker
So I'm not saying there ought to be some kind of perfect representation.
00:34:46
Speaker
But I think there's a lot of people that are in the Baltimore Museum.
00:34:49
Speaker
leaving the firewall in place, but then considering the idea of deaccessions in order to reconfigure the museum's collections.
00:35:00
Speaker
And this is, by the way, activity that's allowed under the AAMD regulations even during normal times, which is if the work is being sold, quote, as part of the museum's effort to refine and improve its collections,
00:35:19
Speaker
then deaccessions can be permitted.
00:35:23
Speaker
How much do you think is reasonable for a museum to consider deaccessioning?
00:35:29
Speaker
And it's not obviously going to be possible to give a quantitative answer to this, but give me some kind of qualitative sense.
00:35:36
Speaker
I mean, if a museum wanted to turn over 20% of its collections to replace it with work representing a much broader group of artists and periods and places and regions, I'd
00:35:51
Speaker
What would you think about a move like that?
00:35:56
Speaker
Well, that's an interesting question.
00:35:58
Speaker
And the first answer I would give you is that depends on the institution and its own collections.
00:36:10
Speaker
It also, I think, depends on, as your question implies, on an appetite for
00:36:19
Speaker
for change in institutions that, you know, to be candid, are conservative by nature and in some ways, rightly so.
00:36:30
Speaker
As stewards of the past, keepers of collections that represent the achievements of the past, the inclination is to, you know,
00:36:46
Speaker
not only to keep those intact, but build those out and enrich those very important stories because it is our job to map out the complex, map out and then present to our publics the very rich and complex history of the arts any given period and in any given place.
00:37:18
Speaker
And so that, you know, to some extent, how we do that is a product of our own history.
00:37:25
Speaker
And I bring this up because we, you know, the Philadelphia Museum of Art is not comprehensive.
00:37:33
Speaker
We have focused in part because we kind of have divided up the world, so to speak, long ago between the Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Pennsylvania, which has a great collection of ancient antiquities and arts from the arts of Africa.
00:37:55
Speaker
and Central and South America and so on.
00:38:00
Speaker
We have tended to focus by contrast on art from the early medieval period, about 800 AD to the present.
00:38:09
Speaker
And we've also focused almost entirely on Europe and North America, and then also on East Asia, Japan, China,
00:38:20
Speaker
and Korea and South Asia, primarily India.
00:38:27
Speaker
So those areas have been traditionally where we focused and we've tended, at least in recent decades, to limit the development of art collection to those areas as well.
00:38:40
Speaker
Within them, we are always seeking to diversify our collections and think about newly emerging phenomena or the ways that the art of those periods in those places is being reconsidered at any given time.
00:39:00
Speaker
But we haven't, for example,
00:39:03
Speaker
branched out into new areas of collecting in part because they've never been really the focus of the museum.
00:39:11
Speaker
And to start now would be to have to divert a lot of resources towards those.
00:39:15
Speaker
And other museums can do them in our stead.
00:39:19
Speaker
So for me, the question leads in two different directions.
00:39:24
Speaker
Should we
00:39:25
Speaker
map out new territory and expand the coverage of our collection and different directors will answer that perhaps variously.
00:39:33
Speaker
My answer is no, I'd rather focus on what the museum has specialized in historically and continue to do that.
00:39:43
Speaker
we reconsider American 19th century or 20th century art, European art, British art, French, Spanish, and so on during the period that's covered in the collection.
00:39:57
Speaker
How are those fields being redefined, reconsidered?
00:40:04
Speaker
And does our collection reflect this new thinking and the new possibilities of collecting in these areas?
00:40:12
Speaker
And so we're always coming back to this remarkable renewable resource, which is our collection and understanding it through, by reframing it through different perceptions and different ideas and different understandings.
Expanding Museum Narratives with Vernacular Arts
00:40:28
Speaker
Just one example of that, which I think is really interesting and really important.
00:40:33
Speaker
is that we here at the museum for many decades now have focused a lot of our attention in a number of fields on the vernacular arts, folk art, and so on from different cultures in different periods.
00:40:51
Speaker
So we have a tremendous collection now of outsider art by American artists, particularly of the last several decades.
00:41:01
Speaker
But we also have in our great collection of Indian art, a very broad array of things, not simply what you would consider the arts of the court or high culture, but also vernacular arts, the arts of the village.
00:41:19
Speaker
And we've recently had a number of conversations around continuing to collect art.
00:41:25
Speaker
the art of the village, the art of the vernacular in India and in other cultures as well.
00:41:32
Speaker
So it's, I sort of gone far afield in answering your question.
00:41:37
Speaker
And I think that it, what I've left out of my answer is whether or not the museum like ours can and should make very significant shifts.
00:41:49
Speaker
in response to the changing demographics in our own communities.
00:41:53
Speaker
I think there's a compelling reason to collect works of art that our visitors see themselves reflected in.
00:42:01
Speaker
And so clearly it's been important to us and will continue to be important.
00:42:06
Speaker
to us to collect, for example, African-American art, to rethink what we collect and expand perhaps in the field of Latinx art and these newly emerging and very important areas in terms of our contemporary culture.
00:42:25
Speaker
Well, that leads nicely into the housekeeping question that we tabled earlier, because the deaccessions that have drawn the most scrutiny have, of course, been big ticket items, six, seven, eight figure pieces being sold to raise large amounts of money very quickly.
00:42:51
Speaker
But of course, the vast majority of objects and artwork that belongs to museums is not that.
00:43:01
Speaker
And it depends on the institution.
00:43:03
Speaker
But there are, of course, a number of museums in this country that have amassed collections that are
00:43:13
Speaker
vastly larger than what they are able to put on display.
00:43:18
Speaker
And there are even cases where the collections are so large that it's rather difficult for institutions to care for them.
00:43:28
Speaker
You know, there's a finite number of curators and finite number of hours in the day.
00:43:33
Speaker
And when the number of objects in your collection approaches the infinite, well, you have a mathematical problem.
00:43:40
Speaker
And, you know, Robin Pogerman at the New York Times has done some quite interesting reporting on this and looking at the expansion of collections of American museums over the past several decades, which in some cases has been...
00:43:56
Speaker
truly enormous, hundreds of percent increases in the size of collections, which usually do not accompany similar expansions in the size of the museum's square footage, its exhibition space.
00:44:17
Speaker
So, you know, there are, as we've talked about, multiple purposes that a museum collection serves, and a visiting public looking at pictures hanging on the wall is only one of them.
00:44:29
Speaker
But I do have to wonder at a certain point, um...
00:44:35
Speaker
what purpose is being served by additional acquisition?
00:44:38
Speaker
So my question is whether acquiring these, and again, I'm not going to name names and I'm not accusing any particular museum of doing this, but speaking generally,
00:44:59
Speaker
Would you say that acquiring and maintaining these extensive collections, is that an appropriate use for museum funds?
00:45:11
Speaker
And is it in fact possible for a museum collection to grow to be simply too large?
00:45:20
Speaker
And if that is possible, what can be done to address that issue?
Ethics and Management of Large Collections
00:45:30
Speaker
Well, it's an interesting question.
00:45:33
Speaker
It's one that we wrestle with here at the Philadelphia Museum of Art every day because storage is finite and the resources for caring for collections are infinite, are finite as well, including the number and hours, as you put it, of our staff.
00:45:57
Speaker
It's not as if these problems emerge or these questions emerge full blown overnight.
00:46:08
Speaker
Collections are developed over a very long period of time incrementally.
00:46:15
Speaker
And sometimes it is a bit surprising
00:46:21
Speaker
to realize as you take a look back about how much has actually been acquired by the museum.
00:46:30
Speaker
And I think at that point, you are, whatever the reason for those acquisitions, you are required to ask, do they still serve some useful purpose?
00:46:45
Speaker
And the answer, of course, is sometimes yes and sometimes no.
00:46:51
Speaker
If not, then you are obligated to review the collections, ethically obligated, I believe, to review the collections and dispose of those things appropriately.
00:47:07
Speaker
There's a whole set of procedures for this at any museum, including ours, and dispose of them so they don't simply take up space and serve no useful purpose anymore.
00:47:20
Speaker
It takes a lot of time and energy to do that.
00:47:23
Speaker
What keeps collections of this type in place is simply inertia.
00:47:30
Speaker
But still, I think it's important to ask that question again and again and again.
00:47:37
Speaker
And museums do.
00:47:40
Speaker
We certainly do.
00:47:41
Speaker
And that's what I meant when I used the term housekeeping before.
00:47:48
Speaker
It's part of the work of our curators and our conservators and registrars to periodically review the collections to identify parts of the collections, individual objects, sometimes groups of objects that are no longer useful because they don't serve the mission or because they're just marginal in terms of their importance to the history of art and basically deaccession those and then to use those funds for another and more productive purpose.
Digitization and Global Access
00:48:17
Speaker
Now, that said, as you pointed out, there are a lot of reasons that museums assemble and continue to develop their collections.
00:48:29
Speaker
One of which is, to be sure, public display in their galleries and the loan of works of art to other institutions.
00:48:37
Speaker
And that's a very important part of the aspect of what we do with our collection.
00:48:46
Speaker
But we also, as you suggested, hold collections for other reasons, for research and particularly when collections, as is the case with the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in terms of our, let's say, our American furniture or the works of the great photographer Paul Strand or the life and work of the great modernist Marcel Duchamp.
00:49:08
Speaker
Philadelphia is the place to go to study those artists and their work in its entirety.
00:49:19
Speaker
go to do that.
00:49:20
Speaker
So serving as a great and enduring intellectual resource for the ongoing study of the history of art, history of key figures in it, is a really important part of what we do and how our collection is utilized.
00:49:36
Speaker
The other thing I will want to point out, because it's a relatively recent phenomenon and a very important one, and that is that
00:49:47
Speaker
With the advent of digitization and the gradual lowering of cost of taking photographs and digital photographs and transmitting images across broadband, we have now the ability to share our collections digitally near and far in ways that were
00:50:13
Speaker
unimaginable even 10 or 15 years ago.
00:50:17
Speaker
And so I think it's a matter today of redefining the utility of a collection and understanding that access to a collection is not simply a
00:50:28
Speaker
through the curated display of works of art in the galleries, but also digitally in terms of sharing that, again, near and far.
00:50:36
Speaker
It's interesting.
00:50:37
Speaker
Yeah.
00:50:38
Speaker
A listener actually suggested a question on that subject, which is when a museum deaccessions a work,
00:50:48
Speaker
Do they typically maintain their records, their online catalog, entry, photos, notes, that sort of thing, so that the knowledge and information is still visible, at least on the Internet?
00:51:02
Speaker
We do in our files.
00:51:03
Speaker
I think when we deaccession something, we typically remove that from the catalog or our collection on the Internet.
00:51:13
Speaker
I wonder if there would be some...
00:51:16
Speaker
utility, and particularly if a museum is considering a deaccession, say, of a large group of redundant pieces, whether there might be some utility in at least keeping a catalog entry online.
00:51:34
Speaker
As a
00:51:36
Speaker
As a dealer in antique silver, I often find myself trying to trace the histories of pieces, where they've been, what's happened to them.
00:51:45
Speaker
I may find references to objects, but then it's impossible for me to find a photograph of them.
00:51:53
Speaker
And just for research purposes, it could be quite handy, I think, to have access to that information, even if the piece no longer exists physically at the museum.
00:52:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's a good suggestion.
00:52:06
Speaker
I would say that if, again, we had the resources to do it, we would probably want to do it.
00:52:15
Speaker
that and make them available online.
00:52:18
Speaker
Right now, it's still a challenge to digitize a collection that's the size of ours and to continue to add all of the data on collections that we actually have rather than those objects that we've sold.
00:52:34
Speaker
So I think it's a matter of a very practical choice right now.
00:52:42
Speaker
So one more question just on this subject.
Streamlining Deaccessioning Processes
00:52:47
Speaker
You refer to housekeeping as an ethical obligation.
00:52:51
Speaker
And I wonder the mechanisms that are in place to encourage curators in particular to review their collection, the collections within their purview and determine which pieces may be redundant or may no longer seem to be of the level of quality or rarity or interest that
00:53:11
Speaker
such that they still belong in the collection.
00:53:15
Speaker
Are those mechanisms sufficient, do you think?
00:53:18
Speaker
And I'll just say, from my perspective, looking at a number of large museum collections, it just doesn't look like they are, because these collections, many of them include...
00:53:33
Speaker
tens of thousands of objects or hundreds of thousands that really are not of such a quality that they are likely ever to be displayed for the public, probably never to be loaned to another institution, and frankly, in many cases, not of any great value to researchers either.
00:53:57
Speaker
And yet, as you say, it takes a great deal of work to go through the process of deaccessioning them, deciding to deaccession them and then deaccessioning them.
00:54:09
Speaker
And in the meantime, they are cluttering up storage spaces.
00:54:16
Speaker
They are or they should be consuming conservationists' time and effort and
00:54:24
Speaker
Do you think that there is a reason for at least some museums to consider rethinking those mechanisms and creating a much more ambitious program for deaccessioning these kinds of objects?
00:54:41
Speaker
Well, I do.
00:54:43
Speaker
And I think you've hit on a very, very important point and a bit of a sore one with many of us in the field.
00:54:53
Speaker
And that is there are a lot of things that
00:54:57
Speaker
not languishing in basements because they should be exhibited on a regular basis.
00:55:05
Speaker
To be sure, we have plenty of objects that should be displayed more often.
00:55:11
Speaker
But we also, I think again, primarily through inertia, we have a lot of things that remain in storage that simply need to be
00:55:26
Speaker
evaluated and a thoughtful judgment made about whether or not they should stay in the collection.
00:55:34
Speaker
In many instances, I think the answer would be no, they don't need to stay in the collection and they need to be disposed of.
00:55:42
Speaker
The one thing I can say that I think is really important in this regard that pulls in the other direction is that
00:55:54
Speaker
The procedures for deaccessioning are quite rigorous and they require research and a review of individual objects and their relationship to the collection, their provenance, the touch on the topic that we spoke about earlier, and
00:56:13
Speaker
and an assessment about whether or not they should, of course, remain in the collection.
00:56:19
Speaker
And when you go through this process, I think it is inevitable that most of your staff, your curatorial staff,
00:56:31
Speaker
will come to fairly conservative or cautious conclusions about objects, wanting to make sure that something that they are assessing now will not be reevaluated in the future and found to be worthwhile keeping.
00:56:50
Speaker
And of course,
00:56:51
Speaker
The history of the development of museum collections and deaccessioning from them is full of those kinds of cautionary tales of things being sold at a moment in time when they might be out of fashion or might not be well understood.
00:57:11
Speaker
only to come to the fore in ensuing decades and be reconsidered and reevaluated and thought to be rather more valuable than perhaps they had been considered in, let's say, the 1930s or 1940s.
00:57:30
Speaker
So a good deal of circumspection needs to be applied to
00:57:34
Speaker
to the analysis of deaccessioned objects or proposed objects that have been proposed for deaccessioning.
00:57:43
Speaker
And I think in the balance, that's a very good thing, quite frankly.
00:57:52
Speaker
Right.
00:57:52
Speaker
I mean, there, of course, is going to be risk in either direction.
00:57:56
Speaker
On the one hand, risk of making the mistake of selling things that you later wish you had kept, in which case, presumably, you'd have to go about trying to buy them back or buy something similar back again.
00:58:10
Speaker
It takes more money and more time.
00:58:12
Speaker
On the other hand, there's the risk of
00:58:16
Speaker
of sort of paralyzing the collection in piles upon piles of pieces that you just don't have the time to sort through and figure out that in fact they don't belong there.
00:58:32
Speaker
It's
00:58:34
Speaker
I don't envy the position of trying to adjudicate those risks.
00:58:43
Speaker
But I do have to say from the outside, at least when it comes to some of these larger museum collections, it seems that on balance, the risk aversion has leaned very far in the direction of holding on to as much as possible rather than
00:59:04
Speaker
letting go when perhaps it's time to let go.
00:59:08
Speaker
But I'm inserting maybe a little more of my opinion than I ought to here.
00:59:15
Speaker
I take your points.
00:59:16
Speaker
That's okay.
00:59:17
Speaker
I would agree with you that it's a...
00:59:20
Speaker
It's a firmly entrenched habit of mine to hold on to things.
00:59:24
Speaker
And as I've just said, there are good and compelling reasons to be circumspect about deaccessioning objects.
00:59:34
Speaker
On the other hand, you're right, it shouldn't paralyze institutions like ours.
00:59:38
Speaker
But often, what I think you need to realize is often it's an almost overwhelming proposition because we, and I'll just speak about the Philadelphia Museum of Art,
00:59:49
Speaker
We're dealing with the legacy of decades, literally decades, of acquiring objects that sat in storage and weren't given proper attention.
01:00:03
Speaker
And in some cases, when they are, the decision is made, yes, that it no longer should be in the collection.
01:00:09
Speaker
But it is also a place where great discoveries continue to be made.
01:00:17
Speaker
And I think that's something to keep in mind, that these are places in which things are waiting to be reconsidered and rediscovered and brought to light again.
01:00:35
Speaker
And that's an important part of our work as well.
Impact on Private Art Markets and Moratorium Discussion
01:00:41
Speaker
Well, I want to raise just one more point of concern about the world of deaccessioning.
01:00:49
Speaker
And you've been very generous with your time.
01:00:51
Speaker
I appreciate it.
01:00:53
Speaker
But I wonder, and this is a question that a dealer just has to ask, which is,
01:01:00
Speaker
You know, the more material that belongs to museums and institutions, the less, of course, that there is out on the private market and in the world for collectors and dealers to seek.
01:01:17
Speaker
And there is a supply and demand effect.
01:01:21
Speaker
The less that there is available in the private market, the higher it drives prices.
01:01:29
Speaker
I certainly have witnessed this when it comes to certain categories of antique silver, which have been so sought after by museum collections that actually there are scarce examples of it left for a private collector to pursue.
01:01:46
Speaker
And I wonder if you share at all the concern that I have about the inflationary effect that this has on the art market.
01:01:54
Speaker
Because, you know, it does, I feel, contribute toward this perception of art collecting and by extension, the whole world of artistic interest to be one that's available really only to the very wealthiest.
01:02:16
Speaker
You know, if you look at auction results for similar kinds of objects over the last hundred years, you know, there's an incredible, incredible amount of inflation of prices.
01:02:30
Speaker
And now I'm not going to suggest that.
01:02:32
Speaker
Museum collections are entirely or even primarily responsible for it.
01:02:36
Speaker
But I do think it's hard not to imagine that these collections don't play some role in impacting, influencing the market in that way.
01:02:50
Speaker
So I just wonder if that's a topic of consideration or concern for museums.
01:03:00
Speaker
You're not dealers.
01:03:01
Speaker
You're not trying to turn a profit on your collections.
01:03:05
Speaker
But you do have a stake in the same world that the rest of us have a stake in, which is cultivating interest among new generations of collectors.
01:03:19
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a very good question.
01:03:24
Speaker
And as the way you put your answer suggests, it can be argued from various points of view, some of them partisan.
01:03:37
Speaker
There's no doubt that over the last...
01:03:41
Speaker
particularly over the last 30 years, but far longer than that, the increase in value and the rise in prices of works of art from virtually every category you might imagine, Asian art, American, European ceramics, silver photography, very few media,
01:04:04
Speaker
Very few fields have been unaffected by this.
01:04:09
Speaker
That's been a fact of our professional lifetimes and it's a challenging one.
01:04:14
Speaker
To be sure, I think a lot of that, as you've been suggested, is a function of demand and supply and the fact that there are fewer great things out there.
01:04:30
Speaker
But also, I do think it's also a function of, not so much a function of museums taking a lot of things off the market.
01:04:43
Speaker
And over time, of course, that has happened.
01:04:46
Speaker
But perhaps more compellingly, really a function of increasing demand in two senses.
01:04:55
Speaker
One, that there's
01:04:57
Speaker
We're far wealthier society than we were 30, 40, 50 years ago.
01:05:02
Speaker
And there are simply more people collecting and willing to pay greater and greater sums in many different fields.
01:05:13
Speaker
The second thing which I've watched with some fascination over a long period of time is the increasing demand on a global scale for art, that there are new players coming into the market from different countries seemingly every year equipped with enormous resources.
01:05:34
Speaker
to acquire works of art.
01:05:36
Speaker
So I think the demand side of the equation has been the far more dynamic one and the major contributor to this, the run-up in prices and to your point, increasing scarcity of product, of works of art to buy and sell.
01:05:57
Speaker
The thing that's been fascinating about this to me is that
01:06:01
Speaker
The one area that in theory at least should be unaffected by this because production continues is in the field of contemporary art.
01:06:11
Speaker
But in point of fact, it's in the contemporary field where we've seen, I think, the greatest increase in prices and valuations over the course of the last several decades.
01:06:26
Speaker
And that's not a matter of supply to a large degree.
01:06:30
Speaker
It's a matter of just a remarkable surge in demand.
01:06:36
Speaker
And a lot of collectors moving into that part of the market, as you know, it's been one of the most robust parts of the art market.
01:06:46
Speaker
And in some ways, given the cost of things, one of the most confoundings.
01:06:53
Speaker
Well, we started this conversation on the subject of the AAMD moratorium on deaccessions.
01:06:59
Speaker
So having taken quite a fascinating, if very circuitous route around that theme, just to close things out, I should ask, what's your evaluation of that moratorium?
01:07:15
Speaker
We're about halfway through, you know, it was...
01:07:18
Speaker
proposed as a two-year moratorium.
01:07:21
Speaker
Do you think it's had a positive effect?
01:07:25
Speaker
Do you think two years is enough, too much?
01:07:28
Speaker
Should it be extended?
01:07:30
Speaker
Was it a mistake to make it so long?
01:07:33
Speaker
What's your overall thinking about that moratorium?
01:07:38
Speaker
Well, if I were to look at this statistically, I would say that we have too few data points yet to really determine
01:07:47
Speaker
whether it's been a useful tool for museums like ours, the membership of the AMD to help during this pandemic and the fiscal crisis it has created.
01:08:01
Speaker
I will say that I think as a short term remedy option,
01:08:13
Speaker
that it strikes me as a useful thing for directors and boards to consider.
01:08:21
Speaker
But I want to underscore that I think its value is in the short term.
01:08:28
Speaker
doesn't mean that the issue is going to go away.
01:08:32
Speaker
I think the question of whether the funds from deaccessioning can and should be used for the direct care of collections on a long-term basis is something that's going to be vigorously debated within the field for quite some time.
01:08:51
Speaker
But again, in the short term, I think it is and probably will continue to be useful.
01:08:59
Speaker
Again, my concern, and I brought this up before, is really about this as a long-term change because I do think that, well, we were just talking about scarcity, we were talking about the increase in the prices of works of art.
01:09:17
Speaker
That has made, as I'm sure you well know, that has made it increasingly difficult
01:09:23
Speaker
for museums to be competitive in the marketplace, to be able to pay the cost of works of art that we judge to be masterpieces of very, very high quality, and to be competitive in the field in terms of acquiring things to develop our collections.
01:09:43
Speaker
And for me then, that speaks to the continued value and perhaps even the increased value now of limiting
01:09:53
Speaker
the proceeds from sales of works of art to the enrichment of our collections, because it is, as I put it before, it's a source of seed corn for the ongoing development of our collections.
01:10:09
Speaker
In those instances where we've done something more than housekeeping,
01:10:15
Speaker
in recent years sold some American furniture or a painting from the collection.
01:10:22
Speaker
We've done so purposefully to acquire something that's far more important and better.
01:10:28
Speaker
And we've funded that acquisition partly through deaccessioning.
01:10:36
Speaker
and partly through raising funds from donors.
01:10:38
Speaker
If we had to do that only by raising funds, we'd be facing an insurmountable obstacle.
01:10:46
Speaker
So I would say right now, perhaps more than ever, and certainly for the foreseeable future, being able to use those funds to redevelop and refine and improve the collection is more important than it's ever been.
01:11:02
Speaker
That's our show today.
01:11:03
Speaker
Thank you so much to Timothy Rabe and the Philadelphia Museum of Art for this conversation that I can only hope was as interesting to you as it was to me.
01:11:13
Speaker
I know this one was a long haul, and we didn't technically have a curious object.
01:11:18
Speaker
But never fear, we'll be back next episode with a very curious, definitively objective object.
01:11:25
Speaker
This one from the Corning Museum of Glass.
01:11:28
Speaker
Something to look forward to.
01:11:30
Speaker
Today's episode was edited and produced by Sammy Delati.
01:11:34
Speaker
Our music is by Trap Rabbit, and I'm your host, Ben Miller.