Open Forum

Dear Sir/ Madam,

The last years, new regulations have been promoted in Europe as to allow museums to sell items to other public institutions or, more rarely, to private collectors. This practice is called "deaccessioning". In US, as in other European countries, museums possess many items that are never exhibited, mostly due to a lack of space and resources. On average, only 10% of the total collection of a museum is actually displayed.

As professional of an US museum, you are kindly invited to express your opinion on this topic by filling in the present survey. Your contribution is relevant in order to understand this practice and how it can be improved in the next future. We thank you very much for your time and support!

Dr. Marilena Vecco, Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands)
Dr. Andrej Srakar, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia)

https://www.1ka.si/a/92352

Dear Sir/ Madam,

The last years, new regulations have been promoted in Europe as to allow museums to sell items to other public institutions or, more rarely, to private collectors. This practice is called "deaccessioning". In US, as in other European countries, museums possess many items that are never exhibited, mostly due to a lack of space and resources. On average, only 10% of the total collection of a museum is actually displayed.

As professional of an US museum, you are kindly invited to express your opinion on this topic by filling in the present survey. Your contribution is relevant in order to understand this practice and how it can be improved in the next future. We thank you very much for your time and support!

Dr. Marilena Vecco, Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands)
Dr. Andrej Srakar, University of Ljubljana (Slovenia)

https://www.1ka.si/a/92352

Just to clarify, "deaccessioning" is not the act of selling an object from a museum collection.  Deaccessioning is the removal of the accessioned status of an object, or, removing the object from the accessioned collection.  What happens to it after it is deaccessioned is often called disposal, although deaccessioning with no disposal certainly can and does happen.  

For instance, an object may be deemed after research to be of a level of quality or historical importance that falls short of other works in the accessioned collection, but it retains some value as an educational object-- perhaps one that can be handled by visitors.  It would therefore be a good candidate for deaccessioning and retention, perhaps to then be cataloged as part of a study collection.

Another misconception is that deaccessioned works must be sold.  This may indeed be the case if a museum's particular policy for disposal of objects stipulates that objects may only be sold, but in some cases of low market value works, a transfer or donation to another collection makes more sense.  If a work has a high market value, however, even if a policy allows for a donation, the museum would be prudent to sell the object for the best possible price, or to find a work of equal value in another collection and broker an exchange.  

My personal opinion (and just to be clear, this whole post is really my personal opinion) is that you can keep yourself out of hot water much more easily if you keep "deaccessioning" and "disposal" as two separate but related concepts in your mind and in your policies.  First, decide if an object should be deaccessioned, keeping your mission and policies in mind; then, decide if disposal is appropriate and if so, the method that will create the best return for your institution, realizing that sometimes that means transferring the object to another collection if the costs of finding an appropriate sale would outweigh the object's monetary value.

As Steven Miller noted, there has been a copious amount of information published on this subject.  AAM's page on deaccesioning in the Resource Library is a good place to start that's free for members:  Members Only  I think that link should bring you to a login page, and then to the deaccessioning page.  AAM also has numerous publications for sale on collections stewardship that touch on deaccessioning, such as Museum Registration Methods.

Best of luck!

Romy's reply is excellent, particularly in its emphasis on the separation of the deaccession and disposal parts of the process. Having been involved for a number of years in the close examination of a particular collection (artifacts and library), I'd like to add an additional perspective from the point of view of history museums.

During the recent move of the Museum of History & Industry, we found certain items of low monetary value in the collections that had no connection to our locality but strong connections to another. For example, four early 20th-century school notebooks from a tiny town in what is now the "oil patch" of North Dakota, had come from a donor who had moved to Seattle some years later. Containing things like a description of the town and names of the donor's classmates, they were clearly of more value to the history of North Dakota, so we contacted an institution there and transferred them. Of course this won't be true all the time, but I think it's good if policies can allow for such things as transfers with or without exchanges.

I have always been a fan of deaccession by inter-museum transfer.  It is a win-win-win arrangement.  The deaccessioning museum removes something it does not want or cannot keep for whatever reason; the accepting museum gets something it wants and can care for; and the object stays in the public realm.  Whether such a transfer occurs by sale, gift, or exchange depends on a variety of factors.  I wrote about this in the September/October 1996 issue of the AAM's Museum News (now Museum) magazine.  "'Guilt=Free' Deaccessioning."

Steve

Romy's reply is excellent, particularly in its emphasis on the separation of the deaccession and disposal parts of the process. Having been involved for a number of years in the close examination of a particular collection (artifacts and library), I'd like to add an additional perspective from the point of view of history museums.

During the recent move of the Museum of History & Industry, we found certain items of low monetary value in the collections that had no connection to our locality but strong connections to another. For example, four early 20th-century school notebooks from a tiny town in what is now the "oil patch" of North Dakota, had come from a donor who had moved to Seattle some years later. Containing things like a description of the town and names of the donor's classmates, they were clearly of more value to the history of North Dakota, so we contacted an institution there and transferred them. Of course this won't be true all the time, but I think it's good if policies can allow for such things as transfers with or without exchanges.