Selling works off the walls has always been a temptation for cash-strapped governments, local authorities and even trustees - but nothing increases the urge like a booming art market. It is tempting to wonder how determined Bury council would have been to go to auction if prices were not currently so strong.
Its Lowry, A River Bank (1947), was estimated in autumn last year at £500,000-£800,000, considerably higher than a decade ago. Even that turned out to be conservative, with the work, including premium, making £1.4m in Christie's 17 November sale last year.
But if the phenomenon is an issue here, spare a thought for museums in the US, where 'trading up' has long been accepted practice, and where museum codes of ethics come with fewer financial penalties and legal constraints than in the UK.
In the US, only 10 per cent of museums are accredited, and the scheme carries little of the weight of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council's accreditation scheme, which has the support of financial backers such as the Heritage Lottery Fund. In the US, codes are voluntary, and charity law is regulated at state level, with few attorney generals taking even a cursory interest in museums.
But in the US the current market is leading to sales that senior museum directors describe as 'worrying' and there is growing disquiet about the ease with which trustees can put collections on the block.
Jefferson University in Pennsylvania has been doing a complicated dance trying to sell first one, then another of its three works by the 19th-century Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins.
The university is in severe financial difficulties: so far The Gross Clinic (1875), has been bought in a joint bid by two other Pennsylvania museums for $68m, while Alice Walton, the heiress to the US retailing giant Wal-Mart, secured a portrait for $20m. #
But as Walton is creating Crystal Bridges, a museum of American art that is to open in Arkansas in 2009, this too is likely to end up in the public domain.
But the sale causing widespread comment is the de-accessioning of 207 items by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. Sales at Sotheby's of Chinese, Indian and Southeast Asian works in March netted the museum $25.4m.
These included a Chinese Bronze Age wine vessel sold to the UK's Compton Verney gallery for $8.1m and granite carving of Shiva as Brahma that fetched more than $4m. The latest total for sales by Albright-Knox is $76m, which the gallery says it intends to use to increase its collection of contemporary art.
Despite local opposition, the museum has rewritten its collecting policy and these, and other historic works, no longer fit. Under the American Association of Museum's (AAM) ethical code on disposal, as long as the plan has been discussed, consulted on and then agreed by the trustees, it is effectively OK.
'It is quiet straightforward: you are not allowed to sell off works to fix the roof or build a new extension,' Jason Hall, the AAM's director of government and media relations, says.
'And if you do that, you can hardly be surprised at the shame and opprobrium that will follow. You can only use the money for things directly related to the care and development of the collection. Albright-Knox is using the funds raised to buy further works of art to go on public display, and there is nothing wrong with that.'
But he admits it has caused a stir: 'What the gallery has suffered are the PR problems that go hand-in-hand with disposal. The trouble is communities often feel that something that was "theirs" is effectively being taken away.'
But leading members of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), which has its own code of ethics, take a rather different view. Maxwell Anderson, the director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, is a former chief executive of the Whitney, a contemporary art museum in New York, and a recent AAMD president. He is nowhere near as sanguine as Hall.
'The Albright-Knox case is about the complete abandonment of a collecting mission in favour of something currently fashionable,' he told Museums Journal. 'The museum serves a large community, which will no longer have access to important historical works in what is a hasty grab to get more contemporary works.'
Anderson blames the market and short-sightedness among staff and trustees for what he considers an unusually large amount of US museum objects coming up at auction. 'As soon as there is a correction of the currently over-heated market, things will slow down.
But this obviously suggests that decisions are being made for short-term financial reasons rather than deeply-thought out, long-term curatorial reasons.' He also believes these sales jeopardise future donations, 'potentially worth billions of dollars', as collectors watch works donated in earlier years go under the hammer.
Few directors are as outspoken as Anderson, but in a surprise move the Guggenheim Museum in New York announced last month that it is to 'self-designate' 620 works from the founding Solomon Guggenheim collection.
'Since the gift was made, a portion of the collection has been sold or traded,' says Lisa Dennison, the director of the Guggenheim. 'By putting a designation on these works, the board is tightening its guidelines, restricting any further dissolution of the collection.'
So is it ironic that US museums are becoming queasy about some aspects of sale just when the Museums Association (MA) is considering a more liberal disposal policy in the UK? No, says Caitlin Griffiths, the MA's adviser on professional issues. 'So far the consultation has found backing for our view that responsible disposal is an important part of museums' work.
The new codes have been consulted on and go to the vote at the next MA AGM. But our research has confirmed a strong feeling that the emphasis on disposal should be about transferring objects to an appropriate holding somewhere in the public domain, and not about sale.'
Yet even with this new and in most museums' view sensible policy, awkward cases remain. Two months ago, London's Estorick Collection revealed it wants to sell an £8m de Chirico: the museum has needed repeated bail outs from the personal funds of its founding family and it says it urgently needs an endowment.
And the Watts Gallery in Surrey, verging on bankruptcy, but with valuable pre-Raphaelites alongside the core works of its eponymous founder, is believed to be waiting on the result of the MA's consultation with understandable interest.
UK museums need to be aware of the growing concerns of their American counterparts but on the whole should be thankful for what is a more sensible middle ground between the current collections constipation and the almost unfettered free-for-all in the US.
Jane Morris is a freelance arts writer and editor
Its Lowry, A River Bank (1947), was estimated in autumn last year at £500,000-£800,000, considerably higher than a decade ago. Even that turned out to be conservative, with the work, including premium, making £1.4m in Christie's 17 November sale last year.
But if the phenomenon is an issue here, spare a thought for museums in the US, where 'trading up' has long been accepted practice, and where museum codes of ethics come with fewer financial penalties and legal constraints than in the UK.
In the US, only 10 per cent of museums are accredited, and the scheme carries little of the weight of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council's accreditation scheme, which has the support of financial backers such as the Heritage Lottery Fund. In the US, codes are voluntary, and charity law is regulated at state level, with few attorney generals taking even a cursory interest in museums.
But in the US the current market is leading to sales that senior museum directors describe as 'worrying' and there is growing disquiet about the ease with which trustees can put collections on the block.
Jefferson University in Pennsylvania has been doing a complicated dance trying to sell first one, then another of its three works by the 19th-century Philadelphia artist Thomas Eakins.
The university is in severe financial difficulties: so far The Gross Clinic (1875), has been bought in a joint bid by two other Pennsylvania museums for $68m, while Alice Walton, the heiress to the US retailing giant Wal-Mart, secured a portrait for $20m. #
But as Walton is creating Crystal Bridges, a museum of American art that is to open in Arkansas in 2009, this too is likely to end up in the public domain.
But the sale causing widespread comment is the de-accessioning of 207 items by the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. Sales at Sotheby's of Chinese, Indian and Southeast Asian works in March netted the museum $25.4m.
These included a Chinese Bronze Age wine vessel sold to the UK's Compton Verney gallery for $8.1m and granite carving of Shiva as Brahma that fetched more than $4m. The latest total for sales by Albright-Knox is $76m, which the gallery says it intends to use to increase its collection of contemporary art.
Despite local opposition, the museum has rewritten its collecting policy and these, and other historic works, no longer fit. Under the American Association of Museum's (AAM) ethical code on disposal, as long as the plan has been discussed, consulted on and then agreed by the trustees, it is effectively OK.
'It is quiet straightforward: you are not allowed to sell off works to fix the roof or build a new extension,' Jason Hall, the AAM's director of government and media relations, says.
'And if you do that, you can hardly be surprised at the shame and opprobrium that will follow. You can only use the money for things directly related to the care and development of the collection. Albright-Knox is using the funds raised to buy further works of art to go on public display, and there is nothing wrong with that.'
But he admits it has caused a stir: 'What the gallery has suffered are the PR problems that go hand-in-hand with disposal. The trouble is communities often feel that something that was "theirs" is effectively being taken away.'
But leading members of the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), which has its own code of ethics, take a rather different view. Maxwell Anderson, the director of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, is a former chief executive of the Whitney, a contemporary art museum in New York, and a recent AAMD president. He is nowhere near as sanguine as Hall.
'The Albright-Knox case is about the complete abandonment of a collecting mission in favour of something currently fashionable,' he told Museums Journal. 'The museum serves a large community, which will no longer have access to important historical works in what is a hasty grab to get more contemporary works.'
Anderson blames the market and short-sightedness among staff and trustees for what he considers an unusually large amount of US museum objects coming up at auction. 'As soon as there is a correction of the currently over-heated market, things will slow down.
But this obviously suggests that decisions are being made for short-term financial reasons rather than deeply-thought out, long-term curatorial reasons.' He also believes these sales jeopardise future donations, 'potentially worth billions of dollars', as collectors watch works donated in earlier years go under the hammer.
Few directors are as outspoken as Anderson, but in a surprise move the Guggenheim Museum in New York announced last month that it is to 'self-designate' 620 works from the founding Solomon Guggenheim collection.
'Since the gift was made, a portion of the collection has been sold or traded,' says Lisa Dennison, the director of the Guggenheim. 'By putting a designation on these works, the board is tightening its guidelines, restricting any further dissolution of the collection.'
So is it ironic that US museums are becoming queasy about some aspects of sale just when the Museums Association (MA) is considering a more liberal disposal policy in the UK? No, says Caitlin Griffiths, the MA's adviser on professional issues. 'So far the consultation has found backing for our view that responsible disposal is an important part of museums' work.
The new codes have been consulted on and go to the vote at the next MA AGM. But our research has confirmed a strong feeling that the emphasis on disposal should be about transferring objects to an appropriate holding somewhere in the public domain, and not about sale.'
Yet even with this new and in most museums' view sensible policy, awkward cases remain. Two months ago, London's Estorick Collection revealed it wants to sell an £8m de Chirico: the museum has needed repeated bail outs from the personal funds of its founding family and it says it urgently needs an endowment.
And the Watts Gallery in Surrey, verging on bankruptcy, but with valuable pre-Raphaelites alongside the core works of its eponymous founder, is believed to be waiting on the result of the MA's consultation with understandable interest.
UK museums need to be aware of the growing concerns of their American counterparts but on the whole should be thankful for what is a more sensible middle ground between the current collections constipation and the almost unfettered free-for-all in the US.
Jane Morris is a freelance arts writer and editor
