When museums have to sell art and artifacts

The little child’s piano just grabbed hold of me when I walked through the door of the auction house. Someone with a marketer’s eye knew what they were doing.

It faced me like a yearning 2-year-old waiting to be picked up and played with. It looked to be old, vintage as it sat there among other old-and-vintage-looking items near the front door of one of my favorite auction houses.

Since I’ve long been enamored with pianos – even took lessons but never was able to master it – I instantly was drawn to it. The piano stood no taller than about three or so feet. I opened the top and saw that the keys were crudely handmade and hand-painted. All the keys had the same tinny sound; there was no middle C here. (Click on photo above for a fuller view.)

The other items included:

A trunk with a greenish tint and a paper sign on which someone had written: “Dolls. Gift of Mrs. E. Florens Rivinus.” Unfortunately, there were no dolls in it. I would’ve loved to have seen them. I found the name Dr. Edward Florens Rivinus connected to papers from the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

A wooden trunk with black metal straps and newspaper remnants from the 1900’s stuck to its interior. The newspaper – the articles were from the financial section(“Book agents wanted”) – was apparently used as a liner.

A lime green trunk with wood and metal straps

A child’s school desk

A white cast-iron umbrella stand

When the items came up for bids, the auctioneer pointed out that they were deaccessions from the Atwater Kent Museum. That was the second time in the last few years that I had heard him mention the word. The first time, the auction house was deaccessioning artifacts from Philadelphia’s Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies – now the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Those items had been similar: old pharmacy labels; clay pipes; crushed Civil War metal, possibly bullets; bottles, and the like. Items that were lovingly donated, but were of very little value and were collecting dust (most of them were actually dusty and worn).

The Atwater Kent, now known as the Philadelphia History Museum at the Atwater Kent, has been selling off items from its collection for almost 10 years. The going-price at ths auction was chicken feed compared to what the museum has picked up from bigger sales at Christie’s  in New York:

A still life by Raphaelle Peale for $842,500. A carved “Lady of Fashion” trade figure, $385,000. Carved and painted figure “Jack Tarr,” $541,000. A painting of Andrew Jackson by Thomas Sully, $80,500. A horse weather vane, $20,000. Two portraits of George Washington by Charles Peale Polk, $290,500 and $68,500.

The museum has been trimming its collection and raising money to renovate its building, which has been closed for two years and is scheduled to reopen in the spring.

Museum officials said in an interview with the New York Times late last year that they had sold other small items through Philadelphia auctions – with sales totaling $115,000. Items sold at Christie’s, some of which were donated by the historical society, totaled $3.4 million. The historical society decided in 1999 to transfer many of its items to Atwater Kent when it changed its mission to focus solely on historical manuscripts. It gets 50 percent of any proceeds from sales of the donated works.

Atwater Kent has attracted attention to its deacessioning, just as some other museums, universities and institutions. Much of the debate has come over the past few years as items have been sold for what some may consider unorthodox reasons (a new science building, for example), including a move by Fisk University to sell Alfred Stieglitz works donated by artist Georgia O’Keefe and Brandeis University’s decision to sell off its entire Rose Art Museum collection.

Museums from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts to the Carnegie Museum of Art to the Art Institute of Chicago, among others, have also stirred it up.
Museums largely comply with the deaccessioning rules of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), which says that items should be sold only to make new acquisitions. About two years ago, it applied those rules against the National Academy Museum in New York after the museum sold two Hudson River Valley paintings to help pay its bills.

Some museums, as I found on the web, have their own guidelines to make the process more transparent. Having thought-out rules for when to sell makes sense, because donors don’t give their stuff away lightly. They donate pieces to a museum for public enjoyment, and not to a collector or buyer combing an auction table looking for a cheap deal.

The institutions offer various reasons for selling. The Philadelphia History Museum said that its mission had changed and that it needed a new environmental system – which is included in the $5.8 million renovation – to protect its collection.

In a December interview with the Philadelphia Inquirer, the former director said that the museum had followed the guidelines of the AAMD and the American Association for State and Local Museums that allowed for sales to preserve and care for the collection. She also acknowledged that they did not strictly follow the part about using the money only for more acquisitions.

At the recent auction, most of the items were not necessarily of museum quality, and I could understand the need to let them go. Some of these did have museum tags on them; others I did not notice. Here’s what several of the items sold for (the prices do not include the 15 percent premium):

Child’s piano, $65

Wooden chest for dolls, $125

Wooden humpback trunk, $30

Lime green and black trunk, $60

School bench, $5