Corona Daily 152: Pandora’s Box

In 1990, I was working and living in Moscow. A Japanese executive working in the same office had requested me to mediate in a delicate assignment. The Japanese government knew or believed hundreds of Japanese paintings were lying in the basement of St Petersburg’s Hermitage, Russia’s greatest museum. They probably made their way to Russia during the war. The Japanese wished to explore the possibility of repatriation of the paintings. Of course, the Japanese government would pay the right price for this invaluable treasure.

The Japanese gentleman and I conducted two informal meetings with a Russian curator from the Hermitage. The paintings were lying in the basement for years, they were more valuable to the Japanese, and in 1990 a Russian museum should have been delighted to get foreign currency.

“No.” the Russian curator said. “You have no idea what it is like to sell a museum’s paintings. To sell to Japan, the bureaucracy will take fifty years, but I will lose my job immediately when I suggest it.”

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I remembered that incident when I read a news report last week. New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially known as the Met, is America’s largest museum. More than 150 years old, it is among the top museums in the world. Last week, it approved a policy that allows selling of its art works to pay salaries and overhead costs.

Deaccessioning is the term used when a museum sells its painting or art work. It is generally taboo. Under certain conditions, paintings can be sold to acquire other paintings, but not to pay salaries. Even in financial distress, if a museum sells a Monet or Picasso, or the Louvre were to sell the Mona Lisa, we intuitively feel it can’t be right.

The pandemic shattered the financial well-being of art museums. Most museums were shut for six months; fund-raising galas, other events, and ticket sales stopped. A closed zoo must still retain staff and spend on maintenance to keep the animals alive and well. Similarly, a closed museum must continue to take care of the paintings and other art works. The fixed expenses remain high.

AAMD (Association of Art Museum Directors), a regulatory body in America issued a statement last April. Considering the historic nature of the crisis, it allowed museums to sell art to take care of the “cost of direct care”. This concession is offered for two years, till April 2022.

Museums across America responded by announcing deaccessioning plans. But in October, the Baltimore Museum of Art invited public ire by announcing it will sell three major paintings to raise $65 million. It is an accepted convention that museums should never sell masterpieces or works by living artists. Baltimore’s plan had proposed both.

Community members and former trustees signed letters of protest, board members resigned, and donors cancelled their planned donations. After a month of non-stop pressure, Baltimore cancelled the auction at the last hour.

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The Metropolitan Museum is short by $150 million. It has reduced its staff by 20% in the wake of the pandemic. Still, operational costs are high. Curators and conservators need to be paid. Money is needed to care for the more than two million items in the museum’s collection. The admission fees, exhibition rental fees, shop sales are gone. Grants and gifts have disappeared.

Some of the museum trustees are super rich. In the pandemic, the wealth of most billionaires has grown by 40%. Why can’t they use the windfall to sponsor the distressed museum, ask some art lovers. (If they wished, they could have done that. Instead, they have approved the new policy allowing the sale of paintings).

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It is difficult to give a verdict in this debate. An irony that these institutions with financial survival at stake are the custodians of paintings and artifacts that are valued in millions.

The Art world is more worried this two-year window allowing museums flexibility to sell art to pay their bills may continue post-pandemic. The Pandora’s Box is already open.

Ravi