MOMA

Deaccession. It’s a word that brings chills to donors and would-be donors of art to public galleries.   The ingratitude.   The betrayal.  How can they sell my gift, my art?!  To deaccession is, in conventional curatorial thinking, to break trust with donors.  It chases them away. In the spirit of pragmatism, most museums and galleries rule out selling works from their collection. It becomes a matter of policy.   “We never sell….