I am pleased to report that my short essay on an aspect of deaccessioning only occasionally discussed appears in the December issue of The New Criterion: "The ethics of deaccessioning." It addresses potential collection destruction as a result of unrestricted, largely commercial, deaccessioning. Presumably the topic will be of particular interest to trustees who either approve or initiate the final decisions for this action which, on the surface at least, contradicts the preservation imperative all museums assume by definition.
My first couple of sentences set the topic:
"...I have noticed that, in spite of a professed concern for the preservation of their collections, and in spite of the shock expressed when
collections are lost to disastrous human or natural actions, museums are more than willing to engage in the purposeful destruction of their
collections.
Museums consciously trash things expected to be held in perpetuity for the public good by deaccessioning items without requiring
preservation caveats of the next owner. This largely happens when museums sell items on the open market"
Regards,
Steve