By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
“Deaccessioning” is a cold term.
That’s when an institution, be it a library or museum, in the business of collecting, decides to permanently remove items from its collections.
This weekend the Wood County District Library is holding a book sale including items pruned from its collection. That’s one example.
On a larger scale, the Toledo Museum of Art has just announced it will sell three paintings from its collection – Paul Cézanne’s Clairière (The Glade); Henri Matisse’s Fleurs(Flowers); and Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Nu s’essuyant (The Bather).
While the Friends of the Library hopes to bring in a few hundred dollars, the museum says it expects to earn more than $40 million when the three paintings go on the block at Sotheby’s May Impressionist & Modern Evening Auction.
That’s more than the total of the Libbey Funds supporting art purchases for the museum, noted Museum Director Adam Levine.
In his letter to the museum’s supporters, Levine writes that the museum’s founders Edward Drummond and Florence Scott Libbey “made expressly clear in their wills that artworks purchased with funds left by them may be sold so long as the proceeds are used to purchase other artworks.”
That was farsighted on the Libbeys’ part. In contrast to, say, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, where the founder not only forbade the selling of works, but even relocating them within the museum. That’s why when you visit that esteemed institution today, you will see empty spaces where the works, including a Rembrandt, stolen in the world’s largest art heist, once were displayed.
Instead, “The Libbeys imagined TMA as an organization that would consistently upgrade its holdings,” Levine wrote.
Still deaccessioning can be heart breaking for patrons who have come to expect seeing certain paintings when they visit the museum. I would think that’s true most for the Renoir painting. It and the Cezanne have been on view, while the Matisse is in storage.
The Toledo Museum, Levine explained, “never sought to have multiple examples by the same artist—fewer than 11% of the artists in our collection are represented by two or more paintings; masterpieces by Cézanne, Matisse, and Renoir will remain regularly on view on our walls.”
The money generated by the sale will go toward buying new works to help the museum in its initiative to diversify its collection. That’s been evident in recent special exhibits.
The current “Living Legacies: Art of the African American South” exhibit highlights recent acquisitions from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation. Even the previous armor show, included a helmet from Japan and a few other non-European pieces.
[RELATED: African American art from the South finds a home at the Toledo Museum of Art]
That mission is most dramatically displayed in the newly refurbished Cloister. While maintaining the essential character of the space, new works have been added along its walls to illustrate the broader range of influences on Medieval Europe from Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.
[RELATED: Toledo Museum reopens Cloister with a brighter, broader, more inclusive view]
“The proceeds from this sale will accelerate our ability to tell stories like those featured in the Cloister,” Levine told supporters.
“There are whole cultures, chronologies, and geographies not represented in our collection; there are demographics that are under-represented; and in all the foregoing cases, there are exceptional artworks that can help us tell a truly global art history.”
This move comes, Levine wrote: “After review by outside experts, our curators, me, the Art Committee, and the unanimous endorsement of our Board, we determined that the three artists who made these works were better-represented by other examples in TMA’s collection.”
The sale, he said, is also in keeping with the policies of the American Alliance of Museums, the Association of Art Museum Directors, and the International Council of Museums.
The sale will undoubtedly be controversial. It would almost be disappointing if it wasn’t. The Toledo Museum is a beloved institution, and such a significant move will have its critics.
Of greater interest to me are the works that will find their way to Toledo that may never have come here were it not for saying goodbye to these old friends.
