ARTS AND IDEAS
Should art help pay museums’ bills?

It began as a response to the pandemic: A temporary policy allowed American museums to sell art from their collections to help cover operating costs. Now museums across the country are debating whether to keep the measure.

The old guidelines, from the Association of Art Museum Directors, allowed museums to sell items if they no longer fit an institution’s mission and if the proceeds went to buy other art, not to pay staff salaries or other bills.

Museums that favor keeping the new arrangement say it’s necessary for their long-term survival. “It’s misinformed to think that every museum has a board full of billionaires,” said Anne Pasternak, director of the Brooklyn Museum. During the pandemic, the Brooklyn Museum has raised nearly $35 million at auction sales.

Last month, even the Met — the largest art museum in the U.S. — said it might sell items to help underwrite the salaries of staff members involved in collection care.

Those opposed to these sales argue that they undermine the mission of these museums. “If you want to flip paintings, there are many other types of institutions where you can do that,” Erik Neil of the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Va., told The Times. “And they are called commercial galleries.”
The New York Times
Me: Why donate Art to a museum, for them to sell it at a profit for themselves?