Overview

Collections and Deaccessioning: Case Studies is about far more than the deaccessioning of museum and gallery collections. It's about how museums will be - must be - different after Covid-19. About a transformed environment, both social and financial, and museums' total response to it. In a changed and charged reality, deaccessioning is one element of a future in which issues of social justice, inequality, race, pay and decolonisation will impact collections as never before. It is part of a major new 950-page resource which draws on the experience and thinking of some of the world's most experienced and respected museum and gallery professionals, with a Foreword by Melody Kanschat and Antoniette M Guglielmo of the Museum Leadership Institute. The three volumes in the collection (available separately) are: Conversations with Museum Directors Towards a New Reality Case Studies Contents include: SURVIVAL 1. Reflections on Deaccessioning Braque's Music from The Phillips Collection 2. Much Ado About Shrimps: Everhart Museum Deaccessioning 3. Randolph College: Act Three 4. Financial Stability vs. Donor Restrictions: Fisk University 5. Financing the Past and Finding the Future: Delaware Art Museum 6. What Matters Most: Building the Future of the Berkshire Museum REINVENTION 7. The Shuttering of Philadelphia's Attic 8. The Best of Times, The Worst of Times: Detroit Institute of Arts 9. Sparking Institutional Change: Deaccessioning at The Baltimore Museum of Art 10. Picture Perfect: Everson Museum of Art

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9781912528318

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Reviews

Rarely does one book look so fully and dispassionately at so many examples of a single issue -- the collective responsibilities associated with dispersing museum collections, with all the associated gut-wrenching decision-making processes. As a proponent of complexity theory, I find the book invaluable for another reason. Every decision examined is a close call, filled with regret, urgency, justification, debate over alternatives, and at best provisional and temporary certitude. When any museum's board members read these studies in their entirety, they will have everything needed to understand the many issues involved, but taking a position will continue to be based on one's own sense of personal responsibilities and judgment. Elaine Heumann Gurian Senior Museum Consultant This volume presents a useful and timely collection of cases about the complexities of deaccessioning in museums, but it does so much more. The editors have wisely and deftly contextualized these historical deaccessioning cases against the backdrop of a sector forever undergoing a major paradigm shift. The authors each present a compelling case of institutional sustainability, legal and ethical challenges, risk-taking, relevance, and reputational management, rich with detail and reference far beyond the headlines. My gears are turning about how to integrate this essential material into my courses at Seton Hall, including history and theory of museums, legal and ethical issues, registration methods, and activism and social issues. My graduate students are sure to engage fully and vocally about these cases and the lessons they present for the future of museums. Greg Stevens Director, Master of Arts in Museum Professions Director, Institute of Museum Ethics Seton Hall University Director, Brooklyn MuseumAt last a book that interrogates the role of collections and deaccessions in museums at this crucial time for questioning all orthodoxies and paving a smarter, brighter path forward. Cara Starke Executive Director, Pulitzer Arts FoundationThis timely, thought-provoking book opens up pressing conversations about the role of museums in our society, about what it might take for them to adapt to our era of inequality, racial injustice, and social reckoning. In twelve insightful exchanges, Jandl and Gold ask museum leaders to consider some of the most urgent and controversial questions in the field - about who museums serve and how, the needs of museum audiences, and what it means to care for culture. Steven Lubar

Author Information

Stefanie S Jandl is a writer and independent museum professional. She co-edited the three-volume Handbook for Academic Museums and has written on diverse museum topics including academic museums, deaccessioning, unionization, and the Mellon College and University Art Museum program. Most recently, she has written for The Art Newspaper. Jandl also writes on topics combining art and food, and contributed to The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets. A former Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Programs at the Williams College Museum of Art, she has over 20 years of museum experience that also includes exhibition planning and collections management. Jandl holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Southern California and an MA in the History of Art from Williams College. She is now at work on a book about the Berkshire Museum's controversial sale of art. Mark S Gold is a partner in the Massachusetts law firm of Smith Green & Gold, LLP. He holds a Master's in Museum Studies from Harvard University, degrees in Economics and International Studies from The American University, and a law degree from Georgetown University. His practice includes business and corporate law, venture capital and traditional financing, and non-profit and museum law. Gold presently serves on the Board of Directors of Community Legal Aid, Inc., providing legal services to low-income populations. He has served as legal counsel to the Berkshire Museum in connection with its deaccessioning and sale in 2018 and, most recently, the Everson Museum in connection with its deaccessioning and sale of Jackson Pollock's Red Composition (Painting 1946) to support the acquisition of art by artists of color, women, and other under-represented groups, and to establish an endowment for direct care of the collection.

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