单选题
Whose Rules Are These, Anyway?
A. The director of the art-rich yet cash-poor National Academy Museum in New York expected strong opposition when its board decided to sell two Hudson River School paintings for around $15 million. The director, Carmine Branagan, had already approached leaders of two groups to which the academy belonged about the prospect. She knew that both the American Association of Museums (AAM) and Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) had firm policies against museums' selling off artworks because of financial hardship and were not going to make an exception.
B. Even so, she said, she was not prepared for the directors group's 'immediate and punitive' response to the sale. In an e-mail message on Dec. 5 to its 190 members, it condemned the academy, founded in 1825, for 'breaching (违反) one of the most basic and important AAMD's principles' and called on members 'to suspend any loans of works of art to and any collaboration on exhibitions with the National Academy.' Ms. Branagan, who had by that time withdrawn her membership from both groups, said she 'was shocked by the tone of the letter, like we had committed some crimes.' She called the withdrawal of loans 'a death knell (丧钟声)' for the museum, adding, 'What the AAMD have done is basically shoot US while we're wounded.'
C. Beyond shaping the fate of any one museum, this exchange has parked larger questions over a principle that has long seemed sacred. Why, several experts ask, is it so wrong for a museum to sell art from its collection to raise badly-needed funds? And now that many institutions are facing financial hardship, should the ban on selling art to cover operating costs be eased? Lending urgency to the discussion are the painful efforts of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, which has one of the world's best collections of contemporary art but whose endowment (捐赠) is said to have shrunken to $6 million from more than $40 million over the last nine years. Wouldn't it be preferable, some people asked this month, to sell a Mark Rothko painting or a couple of Robert Rauschenberg's legendary 'combines' —the museum owns 11—than to risk closing its doors? (Ultimately, the museum announced $30 million bailout(援助) by the billionaire Eli Broad last week that would prevent the sales of any artworks.)
D. Yet defenders of the prohibition warn that such sales can damage an institution and the damage is impossible to repair. 'Selling an object is a knee-jerk(下意识的) act, and it undermines core principles of a museum,' said Michael Conforti, president of the directors' association and director of the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. 'There are always other options.'
E. The sale of artwork from a museum's permanent collection, known as deaccessioning, is not illegal in the United States, provided that any terms accompanying the original donation of artwork are respected. In Europe, by contrast, many museums are state-financed and prevented by national law from deaccessioning. But under the code of ethics of the American Association of Museums, the proceeds should be 'used only for the acquisition, preservation, protection or care of collections.' He code of the Association of Art Museum Directors is even stricter, specifying that funds should not be used 'for purposes other than acquisitions of works of art for the collection.'
F. Donn Zaretsky, a New York lawyer who specializes in art cases, has sympathized with the National Academy, asking why a museum can sell art to buy more art but not to cover overhead costs or a much-needed education center. 'Why should we automatically assume that buying art always justifies a deaccessioning, but that no other use of proceeds—no matter how important to an institution's mission—ever can?' he wrote. Even Patty Gerstenblith, a law professor at DePaul University in Chicago known for her strong standpoint on protecting cultural heritage, said her position had softened over the years. 'If it's really a life-or-death situation, if it's a choice between selling a Rauschenberg and keeping the museum doors open, I think there's some justification for selling the painting,' she said. But several directors drew a much harder line, noting that museums get tax-deductible donations of art and cash to safeguard art collections for the public. Selling off any holdings for profit would thus betray that trust, they say, not to mention robbing a community of art, so no exceptions for financial hardships should be allowed.
G. Dan Monroe, a board member of the directors' group and the director of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass, said that almost any museum can claim financial hardship, especially now that endowments are suffering. 'It's wrong to look at the situation from the standpoint of a single institution,' he said. 'You have to look at what would happen if every institution went this route.' It's a classic slippery slope this thinking goes: letting one museum sell off two paintings paves the way for dozens of museums to sell off thousands of artworks, perhaps routinely. 'The fact is as soon as you breach this principle, everybody's got a hardship case,' Mr. Monroe said. 'It would be impossible to control the outcome.' Deaccessioning has proven thorny for museums even when the money is directed into accepted channels like acquisitions.
H. Sometimes the controversy centers on the irreplaceable nature of the object for sale, as when Thomas Hoving, then the director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, began aggressively sorting out its collection in the early 1970s, selling high-profile paintings like Van Gogh's 'Olive Pickers' and Rousseau's 'Tropics'. The Metropolitan owned only one other painting by Rousseau, and the resistance was fierce. Yet critics of strict deaccessioning rules make a public-access argument as well. 'Most big museums can't show 90 percent of the objects they own—it's all in storage,' said Michael O'Hare, a cultural policy professor at the University of California, Berkeley. 'What's wrong with selling these objects to smaller museums or even private collectors, who are more likely to put them on display?'
I. At the National Academy, Ms. Branagan called deaccessioning an act of last resort, one that she would not have considered without a 'long-range financial and programmatic' plan. Branagan said she told her members as much before they voted for the sale—181 to 2 in favor—in November: 'I remember saying unless you believe you can support sweeping change, then do not vote for deaccessioning,' she said. 'The tragedy isn't that we're going to sell these four pieces. That's not a tragedy. The tragedy would be if in 10 or 15 years we were back here having the same conversation.'