Dynamic Policies of Deaccessioning and Disposal in American Museums

Image Credits: The Baltimore Museum of Art (via Baltimore Heritage/Flickr)

By: Nicholas Michael

Alfred H. Barr Jr, Museum of Modern Art’s first ever director, analogized the modern museum’s collection to a torpedo “moving through time, its nose the ever advancing present, its tail the ever receding past of 50 to 100 years ago.”^[1] In his diagrammatic drawings of torpedoes throughout the mid 20th century, Barr likened the museum to the nautical vehicle in motion: forward-moving, adaptive, and contemporary. For a young MoMA, this meant selling works more than fifty years old to other museums — namely the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Whitney Museum of American art — so the museum could acquire works by living artists. While Barr’s model was particular to the modern art museum, his torpedo metaphor proves useful and rather poetic when expanded in scope. In articulating this method of interpreting museum collections, Barr fundamentally introduced a theory and purpose for deaccessioning^[2] and accessioning artworks: when defined by a dynamic forward thrust, the museum and its collection can ever adapt to the public they serve.

The perpetual motion that Barr described seems to have made his definition of the museum perennially relevant, particularly as museum institutions across the country have struggled to stay afloat amidst pandemic conditions. Specifically, in response to policy shifts in the deaccessioning of museum collections, recent debates circle the fundamental question of what purpose the museum institution serves and for whom. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) defines the museum in transparent terms, dictating the institution’s responsibility to cultural preservation and public education: