U.S. museums put their works on the market cause Covid. Sales wave begins

In America, several museums are placing some of the jewels of their collections on the market to raise cash with which to deal with the economic crisis due to the coronavirus: the taboo of selling works for museums in financial difficulty, considered inviolable until a few months ago even in the United States, has inexorably collapsed this year, precisely because of the Covid-19 pandemic that has disrupted the finances of many museums (which are much less tied to public funding in America than they are in Europe). It was theAssociation of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), the powerful organization of museum directors that effectively regulates the lives of U.S. institutions, that gave the go-ahead for the sales, with the goal of avoiding closures.

For several weeks, however, no museum had made use of this tool. The first was, in mid-September, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, which offered for sale at Sotheby’s as many as twelve works, including paintings by Lucas Cranach, Gustave Courbet, Camille Corot, Giovanni dal Ponte, Donato de’ Bardi and other important painters of the past, with the aim of raising 40 million euros. And now the New York museum is being closely followed by several other major institutions.

On Friday, the Baltimore Museum of Art announced the sale of three paintings from the collection: the most prized is a 1986 LastSupper by Andy Warhol (which will be sold privately), joined by a work by Brice Marden(3 from 1987-1988) and one by Clyfford Still(1957-G from 1957), which will instead be sold through Sotheby’s (Marden’s work is estimated at between $12 million and $18 million, Still’s at between $10 million and $15 million). The museum’s goal is to raise $65 million. Then there is theIndianapolis Museum of Art, which is putting a Maurice de Vlaminck canvas and works by late 19th-century French artists on the market at Christie’s. And again, theEverson Museum in Syracuse, near New York, which will try to dispose of an important Red composition by Jackson Pollock estimated at $12 million to $18 million: the work, from 1946, will be sold at Christie’s. The Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach is selling an $80,000 Matisse drawing, and also at Christie’s the Springfield Museum will sell a Picasso painting with an estimate of between 3 and 5 million.

Some museums such as the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Laguna Art Museum, reached by the Artnet news outlet, said that the sales had already been planned before the pandemic: in the United States, in fact, it is legitimate for museums to sell works if the goal is to acquire others to enrich the collection. But for others, the goal is precisely to prevent the crisis from hitting the museum.

This has been openly stated, for example, by the Baltimore Museum of Art, which has included the three sales in a financial recovery plan called Endowment for the Future (“Grants for the Future”). The three paintings by Marden, Still and Warhol that will be sold, the museum explained, “were chosen after careful consideration by the curatorial team to ensure that the narrative essential to understanding art history can continue to be told with the same depth and richness.” Of the 65 million that the Baltimore museum hopes to raise, 10 will go to the acquisitions fund (“will be used to rebalance the collection with an eye on works executed by women and artists of color, particularly those related to Baltimore’s history and present”), 500,000 will go to a plan for diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion, and the remaining 54.5 will be used to ensure the museum’s operations.

Sales, in short, have only begun a few days ago, and more museums are likely to be added in the coming weeks.

Pictured is the Pollock work sold by the Everson Museum in Syracuse.

U.S. museums put their works on the market cause Covid. Sales wave begins

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