Since last May, the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) has been at the center of bankruptcy negotiations between the beleaguered City of Detroit and a myriad of creditors and pensioners to whom a staggering $18 billion is owed. When Kevyn Orr, Detroit’s state-appointed emergency manager, included the museum’s art collection among city assets available forRead More
Detroit Institute of Arts: What’s a museum to do?
Recent threats placed upon the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) have thrust the topic of deaccessioning once more into the popular spotlight. The DIA and its collection are owned by the City of Detroit, which has struggled financially for decades and was recently assigned a city emergency manager by the state’s governor Rick Snyder. InRead More
Free to a Good Home? Or For Sale to the Highest Bidder?
While the museum field has mostly agreed upon best practices around the decision to remove an object from a collection, controversies over big deaccessions still arise year after year, partly because many institutions take liberties with standard practices or ignore them altogether.