Deaccession

Perhaps he forgets that museums, too, have basements full of stored art, and not every piece is equally adored. The temptation must be great to “deaccession” some of it, and museums often do succumb.

Over the past few years, the museum has quietly begun deaccessioning—the genteel art-world euphemism for “getting rid of”—large numbers of its city artifacts.

The second is an unwritten rule that when a museum deaccessions a picture, the money should be used to purchase art only of the same period.

At the last board meeting, trustee Edmund Carpenter moved to clamp down on private trades. All deaccessions, he proposed, should go to other museums, or failing that, to public sale with full disclosure of records and documentation. The motion failed to get a second and there the matter died.