Overview

Towards a New Reality 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: PARADIGM SHIFTS 1. Object Impermanence: Ethics, Endowments and Deaccessioning 2. Balancing the Needs of Today's Visitors Against Those of Future Generations 3. Optimizing Museum Asset Allocation 4. Understanding Disposal as an Ethical Crisis Response 5. Does the Museum Need a Single Wagon Wheel Without Provenance? TRUTHS AND BELIEFS 6. Deaccessioning and Disposal: A Registrar's Perspective 7. Bricks and Mortar Collections: Collecting, Assessing and Deaccessioning Buildings 8. The Illusory Public Trust in Art 9. Prioritizing the Public Domain in Deaccessioning 10. A Search for Direction: Finding Executive Leadership after a Deaccession Controversy A GOOD THING 11. Deaccessioning, Repatriation and a Global Reckoning 12. Restitution, Social Justice and the Benin Bronzes 13. Museums in the Time of Covid and BLM: Proactive Repatriation 14. Reframing Disposals: Building Confidence in Transfers and Removals 15. The Collection Ranking Project at Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields 16. Repurposing: A Positive Result of Deaccessioning BEYOND DEACCESSIONING 17. The Other End of the Telescope: Deaccessioning as a Public Good 18. Collateralization: Financial Stability Without Deaccessioning 19. Art Investment Collections: Considerations for Museums 20. When Deaccessioning Isn't Enough: Closing the Museum PERSPECTIVES 21. It's Not About Selling Art, It's About How You Use The Money 22. The Case Against Deaccessioning Art to Support Operating and Capital Budgets 23. Progressive Deaccessioning 24. Where It Happens: The Perspective of a Museum Trustee 25. Three Theses on Deaccessioning and Survival 26. Deaccessioning and Protections for Objects and People: The Fair Museum Jobs Stance

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9781912528301

Table of Contents

Reviews

Deaccessioning is often seen as a scary, anxiety-inducing topic, but it can also be an important tool for museums. The authors of Collections and Deaccessioning: Towards a New Reality take a deep dive into the topic, bringing the field essential information and making thoughtful cases for why deaccessioning is useful and sometimes necessary, and when maintaining the status quo is optimal. With this work, museum leaders can make confident decisions building off the experience and perspectives of their seasoned museum colleagues. Sebastián Encina Chair, Collections Stewardship Professional Network, American Alliance of Museums At a time when our collecting institutions finds themselves facing a paradigm shift in how we define the museum's responsibilities and goals within our communities, conversations about how to approach collection building and management has never been more critical--or divisive. This text offers an invaluable and objective resource for both the academic discourse and the practical reality that will shape the future professional standards. It will certainly be an asset to my curriculum. Andrew Saluti Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator, Museum Studies, Syracuse University Towards a New Reality explores the reasons for the controversy arising about deaccessioning and disposal in museums and raises questions about the purpose of these common practices in a post-pandemic world. It explores issues that museums are grappling with at this moment as they re-examine their mission and priorities in the face of demands for equitable pay, challenges to current governance structures and practices, and pressures to decolonize their collections and operations. Jandl and Gold provide a thorough and provocative exploration of the subjects in a manner that will educate those unfamiliar with the issues, offer guidance for museums struggling with decisions, and provide fodder for further debate. Sally Yerkovich Author, A Practical Guide to Museum Ethics This new study of the dilemmas of collection management and the nagging question of deaccessioning illuminates the difficult practical challenges that the custodians of culture must wrestle with regularly. In so doing, it lays bare how cultural patronage is imprinted not just with the donor's good intentions, but also with ego, hubris, power, and dreams of perpetuity. Essential reading for anyone who collects, who manages collections, or who just plain cares about the future of our collective culture. Peter Frumkin Heyer Chair in Social Policy, The University of Pennsylvania 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

Deaccessioning is often seen as a scary, anxiety-inducing topic, but it can also be an important tool for museums. The authors of Collections and Deaccessioning: Towards a New Reality take a deep dive into the topic, bringing the field essential information and making thoughtful cases for why deaccessioning is useful and sometimes necessary, and when maintaining the status quo is optimal. With this work, museum leaders can make confident decisions building off the experience and perspectives of their seasoned museum colleagues. Sebastian Encina Chair, Collections Stewardship Professional Network, American Alliance of Museums At a time when our collecting institutions finds themselves facing a paradigm shift in how we define the museum's responsibilities and goals within our communities, conversations about how to approach collection building and management has never been more critical--or divisive. This text offers an invaluable and objective resource for both the academic discourse and the practical reality that will shape the future professional standards. It will certainly be an asset to my curriculum. Andrew Saluti Assistant Professor and Program Coordinator, Museum Studies, Syracuse University Towards a New Reality explores the reasons for the controversy arising about deaccessioning and disposal in museums and raises questions about the purpose of these common practices in a post-pandemic world. It explores issues that museums are grappling with at this moment as they re-examine their mission and priorities in the face of demands for equitable pay, challenges to current governance structures and practices, and pressures to decolonize their collections and operations. Jandl and Gold provide a thorough and provocative exploration of the subjects in a manner that will educate those unfamiliar with the issues, offer guidance for museums struggling with decisions, and provide fodder for further debate. Sally Yerkovich Author, A Practical Guide to Museum Ethics This new study of the dilemmas of collection management and the nagging question of deaccessioning illuminates the difficult practical challenges that the custodians of culture must wrestle with regularly. In so doing, it lays bare how cultural patronage is imprinted not just with the donor's good intentions, but also with ego, hubris, power, and dreams of perpetuity. Essential reading for anyone who collects, who manages collections, or who just plain cares about the future of our collective culture. Peter Frumkin Heyer Chair in Social Policy, The University of Pennsylvania 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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