Tuesday, July 28, 2009

"Another day, another deaccession controversy"

Daniel Grant has the latest in the Maine Antique Digest. It involves the St. Augustine Historical Society, which apparently "maintains a collection of documents, maps, photographs, and other printed material about the history of St. Augustine (the oldest city in the U.S.) and early Florida." They sold a bunch of sketches by artist Martin Johnson Heade, "who is often associated with the Hudson River school." As a historical (rather than an art) museum, they're not bound by the AAMD/AAM anti-deaccessioning rules, but there are calls for implementation of the Ellis Rule nonetheless ("Another local museum director ... noted that he ...would have been less unhappy had the historical society sold the collection in its entirety 'to another institution or at a public venue'").