disposals from museum collections ethics and practicalities

Mzaezm ~u~ffge~e~~ md Curatorship (1992), 11, 29-44

Disposals from Museum Collections

Ethics and Practicalities

TRISTRAM BESTERMAN

Introduction to the Problem

It is an axiom today that museums are maintained in the service of society. Though the form of words may differ, this assumption underpins the respective definitions of a museum adopted by both the International Council of Museums and the United Kingdom’s Museums Association. At the heart of true museums are the collections, the ‘material evidence’ which forms their life-blood Lnd r&on d’@tre. There is thus, self-evidently, a thread of social accountability that connects the collection as the ‘medium’ with the ‘message’ which the museum communicates to society. That public interest is protected by the law and by ethical standards. The latter are important as a civilizing influence on any society since they both augment and complement the

shortcomings of the former. The legal status of museum collections is a case in point. In an attempt to obtain

clarification on this, the Secretary of the Museums Association received the following letter from the Department of Education and Science, dated 14 April 1981:

It is necessary first ta distinguish items which are acquired by the Museum Authority out of its own funds and in exercise of the powers conferred on it by the Public Libraries and Museums Act 1964, and those items which have been donated to it by the public. I think that it is fairly safe to say that the first category are freely disposable. (emphasis added)

This somewhat reckless interpretation of the law may or may not have been correct. The point is that ethically the distinction is non-existent. It must be a tenet of curatorial ethics that all accessioned objects place upon the curator the same duty of care and responsibility however those objects were acquired. In relation to the management of collections, the ethical imperatives are clear: it is wrong to neglect material so that it rots away or is easily stolen. But on the subject of managed disposal, the issues are rather more subtle and certainly defy consensus in all but a few aspects.

What, then, is the nature of the problem? Numerically, at least, in proportion to the millions of objects held by museums, it appears to be small. In The Cost of Collecting, commissioned in the United Kingdom by the Office of Arts and Libraries, we learn that only 28 percent of museums in the sample used disposal as ‘a collection management tool’. The mean number of disposals in a single year was 70 per museum, compared with a mean acquisitions rate of 5392 per museum per year.’ But it would be foolish to be lulled into complacency by these data.

The National Maritime Museum defines disposal as:

The permanent removal of an object from the Museum collections involving the termination of the ownership vested in the Board of Trustees.’

0260-4779/92/01 0029-16 @ 1992 Butterworth-Heinemann Ltd

30 Ethics and P~~ct~~~~~~~s of&posat

This is a tight definition with which few would disagree, and corresponds to the general, though more euphemistic ‘deaccession’ favoured in the United States of America. However, in Canada, the Art Gallery of Ontario3 makes a distinction between:

l deaccessioning-the process by which the institution makes its decision to dispose;

and o &+&---the means by which disposal is effected (by sale, loan, etc).

This is a useful distinction to make in the context of the current debate, since the ethical issues involved are quite separate when considering the reasons for disposal and the means by which disposal is execured.

Attitudes to Disposaf

We now look briefly at professional and institutional attitudes to disposal, gleaned from published codes, policies, articles and correspondence.

Old World/New World. There is a significant difference of emphasis between the United Kingdom’s Museums Association Codes and those of colleagues in the United States. In the United Kingdom, the starting point, like that of the ICOM code, is from a ‘strong presumption against disposal’, whereas the current Code of the American Association of Museums states that:

Museums must remain free to improve their collections through selective disposal . . . and intentionally to sacrifice specimens for well-considered . . . purposes.4

David Lowenthal (~9~9), in History ~~se~~~ in the basted States, observes that:

American Museums today reflect changing public demands more swiftly and wholeheartedly than Museums elsewhere. Both democratic faith and economic survival dictate the supremacy of popular taste; entertainment merges with instruction to a degree unacceptable in staider societies; seemliness and dignity exert fewer constraints.5

But, as Lowenthal points out, there is a price to be paid for being so plugged into public demand :

Less lumbered by possessions and less object-orientated than their European counterparts, American museums focus more readily on process and activity . . . . Yet by the same token they may vanish as quickly as they have comes6

It should also be said that the American Association of Museums is currently redrafting its Code of Ethics, Couched in a new, tripartite hierarchical structure of overriding ethical canons, principles and detailed practices, the tenor of its ethical stance on disposal,

however, is little changed.

R&es of Disposal. Turning again to the Lord report, The Cast of Collecting, it is instructive to note where most of the disposal activity is currently occurring in the United Kingdom. In the sample, the mean figure of disposals is by far the greatest for independent museums-103-compared with the mean rate of acquisitions of 532 per independent museum per year. For the nationals, disposals run at 41 per year compared with the mean acquisition rate of 38 500.7 In other words, independents are disposing of material at a rate of 20 percent of their acquisitions, whereas the nationals are disposing at 0.1 percent. For local authority museums the comparable statistic is 0.017 percent.

TRISTRAM BESTERMAN 31

Statistics are always to be regarded with scepticism. However, the difference between the public and independent sectors is so great in these figures that it is tempting to wonder

whether Lowenthal’s observation of ‘economic survival’ and the short-term consequences of this kind of policy may not apply to these museums too.

Attitudes Within United Kingdom Museums. The Museums Professionals Group and Social History Curators Group jointly organized a conference on the theme of Disposul of Museum Collections in March 1987. Speakers were invited from each of the main disciplines that comprise the majority of material in United Kingdom museums, with the exception of industrial and technology collections. The views they express cannot, of course, be taken to represent an evaluated consensus within each discipline. However, they range from a position where strategic and responsible disposal is the best means of rationalization for social history collections, as advocated by Stuart Davies, who states that ‘There is nothing wicked per se about the disposal of collections. Mobility of and change in collections is part of good museum management’;’ to the defence of archaeological excavation archives being maintained intact once they enter the museum, with judicious weeding beforehand, as explained by Ian Robertson;9 and the provocative two-tier acquisition approach advocated by Julian Spalding,” in which art objects acquired by an adventurous policy would be held in curatorial limbo for 20-40 years, reassessed and only then would a decision be made to acquire or dispose. Remarkably, there is common ground here between art and technology collections and the proposals for the Science Museum in London discussed later in this paper.

However, the picture that emerges is that different disciplines have quite different practical and ethical problems, both in relation to the nature and sheer volume of material they deal with, and with very different levels of resource available. It is a timely reminder that the museum profession is in reality an alliance of specialist interest groups with similar objectives but quite different ways of achieving them. We forget this at our peril when considering the ethics and practicalities of disposal.

Disposal Decisions

But we can now look in more detail at the ethical and practical implications of deaccessioning in the sense of the redsons for disposal, the disposal/retention choices to be made, and the means by which disposal decisions are put into effect.

1. Disposal by Attrition

(a) Deterioruted material. A feature common to most Ethical Codes and Collections Management Policies is the acceptance that material which has deteriorated badly through infestation or other degenerative processes has to be disposed of. Whilst the grounds for the decision are ethically beyond reproach, it does raise the question of why the museum had in its care material which it was clearly not competent to curate.

In the United Kingdom, one local authority museum faced with sudden eviction from long-standing ‘temporary’ premises turned this into an opportunity to dispose of ‘totally rotten and unaccessioned bits of buildings’.” Another major local authority museum admitted having to dispose of infested natural history specimens ‘degraded to the point where they are of no further value to the museum for any purpose’. l2 Two independent industrial-site museums owned up to having to dispose of material, in one case ‘damaged beyond repair, mainly due to vandalism’. l3 In the other, the intriguing but devastatingly

32 Ethics md Practicaltt~ees ~~~~s~~s~i

honest admission was made that ‘we have not, as yet, officially disposed of any material, although, due to less than adequate cataloguing over the years and poor storage conditions, I am sure that we have disposed of material by default’.‘” I would be very surprised indeed if these cases did not strike a chord with most curators. The root of the disposal issue here lies in ill-advised and frankly unprofessional collection management, which can be traced back to the original decision to acquire.

2. Loss of Documentation

Picking up on that last museum’s admission, I would like to air an issue that is too often omitted from the disposal debate, one stemming from the need to reconcile the United Kingdom Museums Association’s definition of a museum, when it refers to ‘materiat evidence and associated information’,‘s and the institution’s duty of collection and preservation. The value of any museum object in terms of scholarship, research and education is in direct proportion to the quality of its associated data. This is as true of a beetle, a painting, a potsherd or a steam engine. In a well-run museum, the quality of associated data will always be maintained, and will often be increased through research. Bad or ill-informed curatorial practice can lead, and often has led, to loss of data. By data, I am not referring merely to labels and catalogues but also publications, manuscripts and old correspondence files that can all too easily be swept away by a new broom. In one local authority museum, the original wooden drawers of an ‘old’ mineral collection were retrieved from a skip by senior members of staff, where the untrained keeper had consigned them. Stuck to the sides of these drawers were handwritten labels providing an irreplaceable link in the documentary lineage of what turned out to be one of the few surviving, intact, l&h-century mineral collections in the United Kingdom.

The relevance of this to disposal is crucial. A small and intrinsically unremarkable specimen, without data, is in danger of being junked as valueless to the museum. Whereas a label that reads ‘Le& Ghce, Cumberland, Earl of Bute, 1772” changes the value and status of that same specimen profoundly. Curators should always be aware that even the most unpromising material, devoid of data, can by careful detective-work be reinvested with its true significance. Adrian Norris describes how research on some large stuffed mammals in the Leeds City Museum saved them from disposal, when sufficient data were uncovered to establish their true value and make it worthwhile to restore and display them. i6

Another form of disposal ‘by default’ may become increasingly an issue in the prevailing economic climate. This concerns the fate of collections in independent museums that close because of bankruptcy. In winding up the affairs of such a museum in the United Kingdom, the Charity Commission will apparently regard the collections as assets of the charity, no different in status from its buildings, land or plant. A museum society in the West Country has been advised as follows in a letter from the Charity Commission, dated 7 January 1991:

there would be no legal objection to the (collection) and other items of personal I&perry belonging to the charity being sold, and the proceeds of sale being applied towards the discharge of the liabilities . . . this would not require any authority from us.

The edict of the Charity Commission (based on the law) clearly conflicts with the exhortation of the ~useunls and Galleries Commission (based on ethical principle),


which will firmly redirect a museum that includes the collection as an asset on the balance sheet of the Charity. As the Guidelines for Registration state: ‘A museum should be sufficiently well supported and financially viable irrespective of any valuation placed on

the items in the collection’. l7 The Museums and Galleries Commission’s message is clear: it is ethically unacceptable for collections to be considered as realizable financial assets. I understand that the two Commissions are currently discussing this issue, with the Museums and Galleries Commission arguing the case for the inalienable status of collections, held in public trust, to be recognized by the Charity Commission.

4. Restitution

The return of cultural ‘property’ cannot be ignored in this debate, and is an issue that must be approached with immense care. Notwithstanding the fact that the United Kingdom government is not a signatory of the ICOM Unesco Convention on the Means of Pro~i~it~~~ and ~reven~~~~ the Illicit, Import, Export and Transfer of ~~ners~~~ of Cultural Property, the United Kingdom’s Museums Association Code of Practice for Mttseum Authorities makes it clear that its member museums should comply with the ethical principles of the Convention. That being the case, there is a clear ethical obligation for museums not to accept material which they have reason to believe has been procured in contravention of the Convention. Equally, material that has been acquired by the museum before the Convention was ratified in 1970, and whose acquisition would have contravened the Convention, should ethically be considered for restitution. However, life is never that straightforward, and in some cases the political and economic circumstances prevailing in the country of origin have to be taken into account when assessing the likely survival of the material upon repatriation.

The Director and Trustees of the British Museum are constrained by the ~~~t~s~ Musetim Act 1963, which simply doesn’t allow for disposal of artefacts on the grounds of the claims of national governments. Here, I will nail my colours to the mast and declare for Sir David Wilson in stating that for once legal and ethical considerations are coincident. There is a very genuine sense in which the concept of global heritage needs to be upheld by the world’s great museums, of which the British Museum is a leader. Moreover, leaving aside the polemics of the claims of a modern nation based on the patrimony of an ancient people, I tend towards David Lowenthal’s view that there are benefits to, say, the Greek people that can be balanced against any impoverishment at home:

The Greek diaspora has done much both to shape modern Greece and to aid its economy. No less consequential has been the diaspora of Greek heritage, notably the classical tradition given visible form in enduring monuments. These monuments might further enable Greeks to make the most of the fact that the Greek heritage is also, uniquely, an international heritage. Whether or not the Parthenon sculptures return to Athens, many Greek classical treasures are bound to remain in other lands. Greek pride in this material diaspora might stimulate more emphatic recognition of the Greek locales from which they stem.“*

On a more local scale, transfer of material between museums serving the same region can result in a game of disposal shuttlecock. One large East London local authority museum has acquired a number of items disposed of by museums in Essex over the past twenty years. Now the governing body of the receiving institution has decided it has ‘too much “Essex” stuff’ and, as a result, much of this material is now being ‘repatriated’, which, the Curator assures me, ‘these places are thrilled to have back’.” An interesting and significant point that underlies this game is the reversibility of the disposal decisions.

34 Ethics and Practicalities of Disposal

5. The Issue of Human Remains

An emotive facet of the restitution of cultural property is the return of sacred remains. Codes evolved for the United Kingdom have, until recently, been surprisingly mute on the issue, while the American Association of Museums Code of Ethics (currently in draft) faces up to the issue in the context of collection management with a clear recognition that: ‘Repatriation requests for sacred objects from rightful claimants should be considered seriously and in good faith’.20

The United Kingdom Museums Association’s Code of Conduct for Museum Professionals advises that every request for the return of human remains should be treated on its own merits, and that: ‘All requests should be accorded respect and treated sensitively’.21

Ethically, the issue is poised between the value of such material for genuine scientific research and the wishes of a people that may be descendants of or have some very deep cultural or religious tie to the human remains in the museum. Despite the unique scientific resource which such remains represent, morally these must ultimately be set aside in favour of genuine spiritual and humanitarian claims in a civilized society. This is certainly the conclusion to which the Manchester Museum recently came with regard to approaches from New Zealand for the return of some Maori remains. Accordingly, in May IWO, a skeleton was returned for re-burial and two tattooed, mummified heads have been placed in a special, consecrated vault in the National Museum of New Zealand. In this particular case, no scientific research had been carried out on the specimens, and none was envisaged. A similar approach from Australia for the return of aboriginal remains is currently under consideration.

But one caveat. The Smithsonian Institution recently returned some human remains in good faith, only to find themselves faced with a rival claim two weeks later from another aboriginal group!

6. Realizing Financial Assets

Perhaps the most ethically contentious form of disposal is the use of collections as a realizable financial asset. The motives that prompt the sale of collections fall into four main categories that: (i) generate cash for the governing body to deploy with no benefit to the museum; (ii) help to finance a museum capital project, such as the acquisition or construction of buildings; (iii) assist with defraying the running expenses of the museum: and (iv) provide a means of improving the collections.

(i) Ripping off the M useum. First, then, the generation of cash for purposes that have

nothing directly to do with the museum brings two examples to mind. The George Brown Ethnography collection was purchased by the University of Newcastle upon Tyne in the 1950s for their Department of Anthropology, where it was used for teaching and research. Following the decline and eventual closure of that department, the collection was transferred to the Hancock Museum, which is maintained by the University, where it was fully catalogued. The University suffered a succession of funding cuts, and in 1985, in the grip of this financial squeeze, turned to the George Brown Collection as a means of financial relief. It was duly sold at auction to the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, Japan, for a reputed sum of E600,OOO. The sale was conducted against the Curator’s advice and the museum never received a penny from the sale.

?kSTWiX &STEXMAN 35

Derbyshire County Council, which currently maintains Buxton Museum and Art Gallery, has appointed Bonhams to offer at auction nineteen pictures which are from the walls of the Museum. All nineteen are fully accessioned into the Museum’s collections. Sixteen were acquired origi~~aily for the school loans collection, but transferred in 1979 to the permanent coffectian of the Museum when their intrinsic value was realized (the artists represented in&de Lowry, Stubbs, de Wint and etchings attributed to Rembrandt and Goya). Of the three remaining works, two oils by Pratt, each of a local stately home, had been purchased by the Museum in 1985 with the aid of a Pilgrim Trust grant. The ostensible reason why Derbyshire County Council, as the governing body of the Museum, decided to self these works was apparently to raise an estimated %0,000 towards the Council’s $45 million cut in their 199Ci91 budget.

The profession, as represented by the curatorial staff of the County Museum Service, the Museums Association, the Museums and Galleries commission and the Minister for the Arts, is united in its condemnation of Derbyshire’s actions. But all were powerless actua‘lly to prevent the Council going through with the sale, That there is a professional consensus on the issue is a reflection of the clear, practical implications of Derbyshire’s unethical behaviour in the message it sends to all local authorities which maintain museum services. Derbyshire County Council, as the museum authority, has now been judged to have acted in breach of the Museums Association’s Code of.Pr~tice, and has, as a result, been expelled from membership of the Association.

f;;i searing f or B . k FK s and &%r~~r. The Sale of Goliections for museum capital projects raises similar ethicaf issues. En 1980 the Dorset Natural History and Ar~haeo~ogi~a~ Society sold at auction, through Bonhams, 157 tots of English coins from the Dorset County Museum Coliection, of which the Society, as a charity, is the governing body. As the catalogue entry helpf~~~ly explains:

If we (the Society) are to continue to be abfe to conserve and display the evidence of Dorset’s rich past and provide adequate accommodation for students and researchers, we must seek additional space. Included in the buildings offered to us is a Grade 2 Listed Building . . . The chance to buy the property is unlikely to occur again and it is for this reason that the Society’s Council has decided to sell a number of coins which are irreievant to the Museum’s coIlecting policy , . . .*’

+l%e iots, valued from 2% to 21400 each, included coins from several named colIections and from a bequest. The fen& of the catafogue preamble makes me think that the Society doth protest a little too much. Whilst this kind of fund-raisins is terribly tempting to meet the costs of exciting new develo~ments~ museums would be wise to resist the temptation. Whether or not the items are ‘irrelevant to the museum’s collecting policy’ is itself irrelevant, Ethically, you should not treat coilections as trade-in commodities.

(iii) Selling to Pay f or R unning Costs. Sale of items for the good of the collections as a whole is urged by one London Borough. Sell a major work of art of high financial value (if it has no locat relevance and no context within the collections) and hey presto, you can create a substantiaf endowment whose annual return can be spent on the care of the remaining coi~ectiuns. Iiow tempting, and how seductivefy logical-to sacrifice one for the good of the rest, But ethically this is as obj~~tionabie as any reasuns for asset-stripping the coliections. It is letting the museum authority duck out of its obligations to provide adequate resources for the Guration of the collections. And what a

36 Ethics and Practicalities o~~~~~~sa~

splendid precedent it sets. Every time the Curator presents a case for more funding for a post or conservation-no problem: just flog off some more collections to pay for it. With such a policy, any governing body can establish one of the best-endowed museums in the country (minus, of course, the most important works in its collections), until, that is, the next round of spending cuts, when those museum endowments would be tempting game indeed . . . .

There is currently fierce debate in the United States over the future management of the Barnes Foundation at Merrion, near Philadelphia. Described as the finest art collection of its kind formed in the United States in the 20th century, it comprises 800 paintings and 200 sculptures, including numerous works by Renoir, Cezanne, Matisse, Van Gogh and Picasso. The collector, self-made millionaire Albert Barnes, established the foundation in 1922 as an educational experiment for the benefit of plain working people (he positively discouraged the cognoscenti from access). The current president of the foundation, Richard Glanton, intends to remodel the foundation and its role, funding his plans to convert it into a ‘regal and elegant art institute’23 by selling off selected works of art. This is being energetically challenged by the American Association of Museums as being contrary to their Code of Ethics.

There is also an ethical risk of a conflict of interest for any museum that sells collections to subsidize its running costs. Stephen Weil of the Smithsonian Institution wrote in 1990:

If de-accessioning is ever permitted . . . to raise operating expenses, the whole procedure becomes immediately suspect. There is an obvious conflict of interest for instance between the staff’s care for the collection and interest in the museum and the staff’s desire for a higher salary. If de-accession&g is the key to getting higher salaries, you have a tainted process.24

(iv) Selling to B uy, And finally, in the purview of raising cash from the collections, there is the ‘trade-up’ option. The logic is simple: through the judicious sale of objects in the collection, the museum acquires the resources to further its collecting objectives either by improving the quality of the collection or by increasing its relevance to the aims of the museum. Now it is crucial here to distinguish motive from means. There is a clear ethical obligation for sales proceeds from disposal to be ploughed back into the care and development of the collection. This is unobjectionable. What we are discussing here, however, is the deliberate disposal of an object with the primary aim of raising money to

develop the collection. This is a practice that is not uncommon in the United States and the Metropolitan

Museum in New York has for a long time pursued a policy-based on aesthetic judgements-of ‘refining’ its collections through judicious disposal in order to liberate funds for the purchase of major works. In the United Kingdom, the Office of Arts and

Libraries Consultative Paper on ‘Powers of Disposal from Museum and Gallery Collections’ sought views on new legislation that would:

Empower institutions to ‘trade-up’, for example by allowing a gallery to sell a lesser picture to help pay for a greater, even if the lesser picture could not be regarded as ‘unsuitable’ for retention in the collection.a5

Professional comment on the sale of two paintings by Melendez by the States of Guernsey from the collections of Guernsey Museum and Art Gallery typically focussed

on procedural issues. The Director, Rona Cole, was very reluctant at first even to entertain the idea of disposal. However, over a period of years involving very public negotiations, conducted in a scrupulous manner, the sale was allowed to proceed and a


handsome endowment of 51.8 million realized for the Museum’s acquisition fund. This yields an income of 2200 000 per annum, which compares favourably with the museum’s pre-sale acquisition fund of 510 000 per annum. This has already secured for the States of Guernsey a rare and valuable Guernsey archive dating from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, which they purchased for !Z120000. This was made possible only by the Melendez sale.

Personally, I have reservations about this kind of decision, and of course wonder whether now, or in years to come, there will be regrets that Guernsey residents have to travel to America to see the paintings that were once held in trust for them on their own island. However, provided such a sale is strictly one-off, and the proceeds are protected in perpetuity for the museum service (although ironically the first major purchase was for the Guernsey Record Office), then these are clearly strong practical arguments in favour of an action that has ethical shortcomings.

By contrast, however, art museums that employ this form of funding to develop collections on a regular basis are in danger of manipulating the art market just as powerful commercial galleries do. It is no coincidence that some of the big auction houses time specialist sales to coincide with exhibitions of similar work in the major London galleries. As Julian Spalding points out.

. . . you must be tempted, as a gallery, to use your position to manipulate the market by putting on shows, producing publications which secure and enhance your investment . . . .26

Despite its widespread acceptance in the US, this approach to collections as evolving realizable assets I find ethically repugnant, as it can all too easily degenerate into a museum policy of ‘buying to sell’. Playing the market is a game that can turn very sour in financial terms alone. Sir David Wilson has described2’ the sale in 1958 by the Lady Lever Gallery in Merseyside of a painting by Fantin-Latour for 29045. Later, the museum attempted to repurchase the work when it next appeared on the market, only to find that the asking price of $950 000 was well beyond its means. Indeed, it is beyond the means of most publicly funded museums, so the Trustees’ decision in the 1950s has effectively removed an important work from the public domain altogether.

In its report on The Nutiomzl Museums, the Museums and Galleries Commission notes in particular that the decision on disposal must be:

. . . a free choice by the Trustees advised by the Director. Disposal should not be forced on them directly by the Government’s urging them to ‘manage’ their collection, or indirectly by its failure to provide the basic funding the museum needs.28

Whilst on the subject of market forces, perhaps it is time that museums started taking the true cost of collecting into account in the disposal (as well as the acquisition) equation. When a museum disposes of an item to another museum, it is in a real sense offloading a liability. The National Trust will generally accept responsibility for a property only provided it is accompanied by an endowment large enough to fund the projected deficit on its running costs. Perhaps a similar principle should be applied to the transfer of material between museums. Such a realistic approach would focus minds most powerfully on the consequences of both acquisition and disposal! I believe that the disposal of collections for fund-raising purposes is so fundamentally unethical that I would recommend the UK Museums Association to consider reviewing the Code of Practicefov Museum Authorities to include a clause specifically drawing attention to the unacceptability of this practice as a purpose of disposal. This is an issue quite distinct from the application of disposal income, which is dealt with already in the Code.


7. The ‘Dedicated Follower of Fashion’

A pervasive shadow lurking behind so many disposal decisions is fashion, which appears in many guises. It can creep up on a collection by stealth, gradually eroding its status and relevance as policy directives for the museum evolve away from the collection. Or it can pounce openly with the disposal of items considered no longer relevant or ‘useful’ to the museum. The Director of a major British provincial museum expressed concern to me in

a letter:

Like many others, I am becoming increasingly aware of the irrelevance of many museum collections to the developing policies of the institution as a whole . . .29

This pinpoints a dilemma that museums face when their message (as set out in policy objectives) becomes progressively disengaged from the medium (the collections) and reflects, I suggest, a loss of confidence by the profession in the cultural richness inherent in a collection and the way in which relevant policies can-and should-develop from the strengths of the collection. This puts the integrity of the museum on the line.

In London the gulf that now yawns between the Natural History Museum’s Corporate Plan and its collections represents a genuine threat to those collections. Exhibitions such as Biology of Man, Creepy Crawlies and animated dinosaurs leave thousands of square feet of gallery space devoid of a single museum specimen. Could the Trustees be forgiven for wondering why they have all these collections soaking up resources that could be more usefully spent on stainless steel counters and a change of title from Natural History Museum to . . . Natural History Museum? No, of course not-they understand that the purpose of a great national museum includes research on collections. Fine, except that research on whole areas of the collection has now been abandoned, and the services of the specialist staff concerned have been dispensed with. So presumably these collections are now irrelevant to both the display and research purpose of the museum. Well, of course there could nezier be a decision to dispose of these collections merely because they were of no further use to the museum . . . could there?

The lessons of history prove otherwise. The fate of hundreds of irreplaceable ethnography collections, junked as out of keeping with the new mission of museums, is chronicled in the Museum Ethnographers’ Group Survey of UK Collections. Cautionary tales abound of ill-advised disposal decisions taken on the basis of fashion. The American Association of Museums’ Mttseum Ethics states, inter alia, that:

In general, objects should be kept as long as they retain their physical integrity, authenticity and usefulness for the museum’s purposes (emphasis added).30

‘Usefulness for the museum’s purposes’ leaves the ethical door wide open for the kind of mistakes that museums here have learnt to regret, and I am glad that the United Kingdom’s Museums Association Codes include no such permissive clause for disposal, though it does, I regret to say, appear in some museum collection-management policies.

8. Duplicates/Copies/Fakes/The Second Rate

Distinct from this aspect of disposal is the issue of a museum’s ethical right to weed out material that may well be relevant to the mission of the institution, but which is adjudged to be surplus or substandard. Into this category we can place fakes, copies, so-called ‘duplicates’ and the second-rate. Again ‘Caveat Curator’ must be the cry. The Metropolitan Museum decided to sell what they were advised was a fake. The Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, subjected the specimen to thermoluminescence analysis which

TRISTRAMBESTERMAN 39

established it as a genuine Catalan ivory dating from the 10th century. They purchased it for a song. AS for duplicates, it would be churlish to prevent a museum from disposing of, say, an incomplete cast-iron mangle, complete with foundry mark, if a complete, identical model in pristine condition later becomes available. The British Museum, whose controlling legislation permits the disposal of duplicates, defines a duplicate as an object ‘struck from the same die, or printed from the same block or plate’. The term ‘duplicate’ is often misguidedly used with respect to natural history specimens. Penny Wheatcroft clarifies the issues:

Each natural history specimen is unique; a drawer full of, say, ladybirds is not a set of duplicates. Each individual may come from a different location and date; even specimens taken at the same time and place will vary as much as the individuals (in this room).31

And she then explains the important primary source of objective data that such collections can supply concerning changes in the environment. This point seems to be lost on the office of Arts and Libraries, whose consultative paper advocates widening

powers of disposal to:

Amend the reference to a ‘duplicate’ to ‘similar object’, ‘ equivalent object’ or some such expression. It might be helpful to do this in the case of a natural history collection, for example.32

9. In the Best Interests of the Museum Object

In this catalogue of disposal doom and disaster, there are instances of disposal which seem to me to be ethically beyond reproach. Any museum that recognizes its lack of resources to look after an object or collection, which may be actually deteriorating or at risk as a result, has a clear obligation to transfer material to a museum where the resources for its proper curation can be deployed. The Passmore Edwards Museum, interestingly enough, having advertised in the Museums Journal for a new home for an Essex oyster smack, have failed to find a museum able to take her on. As a last resort, a ‘classic boat’ enthusiast, who will take enormous pride in restoring and caring for her, may have to be considered as a private purchaser. Valerie Bott, the Director, points out that:

This would be a better way of ensuring her long-term preservation than keeping her in our care. So I feel that disposal of Ethel Alice is more ethical than keeping her.33

If ever a story proves the point that certain kinds of disposal need never arise if you get your acquisition policy right, then this does. As a profession we must grow out of the bad habits of the past when opportunist acquisition occurred without thought for the resource implications of looking after an object ‘in prepetuity’. The Museums and Galleries Commission have been vigilant in querying applications for Registration supported by an acquisition policy which included categories of material that the museum concerned clearly lacked the resources to curate adequately.

Choosing Not to Acquire

1. Accommodating the Ever-expanding Museum

I would be negligent if I failed to address the issue of indefinite expansion of museum collections. In the immortal words of Thomas Messer, Director at the Guggenheim

40 Ethics and ~ract~ca~it~es of Disposaf

Museum: ‘A museum, no more than an individual, cannot consistently ingest without occasionally excreting’. 34 Barry Lord et al. report, in The Cost of Collecting, that the average rate of collection growth among reporting institutions was 1.5 percent per year, 35 By far the highest rates of acquisition were recorded by recently formed museums with small collections of about 1600 artefacts. If I am correct in assuming that these will be mainly independent museums, they have the highest ‘excretion’ rate anyway, as mentioned earlier. Numerically, their problem is of a different order from that of the largest, long-established, publicly administered museums. I think the Lord statistic shows that museums dre being very much more careful and considered in their approach to acquisition. A realistic evaluation of long-term resource implications (staff, accommodation, conservation, research, etc.) must inform every acquisition decision, and be compatible with the development plans of the museum.

However, this begs the issue faced by museums which are actively collecting contemporary material in an attempt to preserve an authentic document of domestic, social and technological development. Such material is often freely available and in large quantities. Neil Cossons, Director of the Science Museum, recognizes that the problems of ‘recency’ are complex.

We know we cannot collect everything. We know that what we fail to acquire we may well lose forever. We know too that, if left to chance, the objects that do survive will not necessarily be the most significant and seminal that we’d wish to collect. The on1 forward IS to treat acquisition and disposal as part of a single dynamic process. Y,

way

He then explains a system of active and catholic collecting in volume with a decision to retain taken perhaps as long as 25 years after acquisition. This presupposes the availability of warehouse storage beyond the wildest dreatns of most curators.

Curiously, this has much in common with Spalding’s two-tier approach to acquisition, though Cossons would claim that his policy of assessment through historical hindsight would be unencumbered by subjective judgements of aesthetic merit. Such policies imply that a museum can manage two kinds of collection: a dynamic ‘in limbo’ collection maintained in a documentary state short of accession, from which disposal can be made relatively freely; and a second, permanent, inalienable collection of objects that have been judged worthy of full accessioning. The ethical implications of this are so far-reaching that I suggest that the Museums and Galleries Commission and Museums Association

both need to address the issue as a matter of policy.

2. Cessation of Acquisition-a course for disposal?

In reviewing its priorities, a museum should not, I suggest, be afraid to stop collecting in a particular area. One of the great shibboleths of museums was articulated by Goode in

1891:

One thing should be kept prominently in mind . . . that when the collections cease to grow they begin to decay. A finished museum is a dead museum, and a dead museum is a useless museum.37

This is dangerous nonsense. A collection is an archive, capable of indefinite mining for information and sustaining a wealth of activity besides. A boat museum in the West Country, for example, possesses more vessels than it can currently look after. In order to

~~I~~~M~~~~ERMAN 41

survive at all, that museum needs to stop collecting and get on with the jobs of conservation and interpretation. That’s an extreme example. Within large, multi- disciplinary museums a similar principle can apply to areas of the collection without, I suggest, this being ‘ the kiss of death’. In my own museum we have a fine ethnographic collection and a small collection of foreign archaeology. Both are used for teaching and research, and will be redisplayed. Both, however, fall outside Plymouth City Museum’s acquisition policy.

In the United Kingdom the Audit Commission has made an inexcusable blunder on this point, perpetrated in two current documents which it has recently published.38 The terms ‘collecting poticy’, ’ acquisition poficy’ and ‘coflection management policy’ are used in an ill-defined, inconsistent and ~nterchangeabIe manner that is sfoppy and confusing. This is not merely a matter of semantics, for we read in the Road to Wigan Pier739 that if an object in the collection is not ‘covered by our collecting policy’, then we should ipso facto embark on a series of steps leading to its disposal. If this means an object falling outside our collection management policy, fair comment. However, what I think it means is an object falling outside our acq~js~~~o~ policy, for the 1990 A&t Guide asks:

Is the authority reviewing its existing collection, in the light of its acquisition policy, to identify items which lie outside that policy? Is it taking steps to dispose of such items . . . ? If not, why?40

This is an appalling misunderstanding of the nature of museum coilections and of their development. A museum may stop colfecting traction engines because it has no room for more; which does not mean the museum has to give its traction engine collection the old ‘heave-ho”. It might possibly mean that a museum stops collecting certain items because, in the interests of good management, it realizes that it no longer has the resources to make informed acquisition decisions. Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, for instance, in its Collecting Policy, very responsibly states: ‘The museum will not collect/add to the. . . Japanese prints, until such time as the necessary specialist skills are available within the section’.4’ So it happens that this choice small collection is quite regularly displayed and is, of course, available for study. For an auditor-or anyone else for that matter-to require Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery to explain why they are not disposing of this collection is, to put it mildly, startling.

Disposal Procedures

In contrast to the motives or reasons for disposal on which most of the debate focuses, there is a reasonable consensus on the procedures to be followed when disposal is being carried out in an ethically proper manner. For this reason, I do no more than list the key factors that are common to the ICOM, American Association of Museums, and Museums Association Codes:

l disposal should be considered on the advice of the curator; * the decision to dispose rests with the governing body; * the material being disposed of should be offered first, by exchange, gift or private

treaty sale, to other museums before sale by pubfic auction is considered; l full records of the disposal be maintained; l moneys from disposal should be applied solely for the benefit of the museum”s

collections42


The Essentials o~Etb~ca1 Disposal

Being naturally foolhardy, I have stuck my neck out here by offering some ethical imperatives to bear in mind whenever disposal is under consideration:

1. The governing bodies of museums should behave as trustees rather than owners of collections which they hold on the public’s behalf. This is a policy of enlightened self-interest, since it encourages public confidence and future benefactions to

museums. 2. The starting-point when disposal is suggested is that museums are in the business of

acquiring and preserving material in perpetuity, not in the business of disposing. That is what ‘a strong presumption against disposal’ means.

3. Collections must never be treated as consumables, to trade in for other objects, running costs or buildings.

4. Where disposal is in the best interests of the material, try to ensure that transfer is at least theoretically reversible, certainly to another museum, ideally by loan.

5. Responsible acquisition, in which adequate resource provision for the long-term care of material is assured, is the key to eliminating inadvertent or forced disposal in the

future. 6. Live with the decision of your predecessors insofar as is practical and ethical:

The Collection has a character; it is made up of many separate collections and collection minds, and reflects the changing taste of different periods and individuals. It is, as a whole, an entity reflecting the community, curators, private collectors and other organizations who have contributed to its growth.43

7. Have the courage to ensure that the museum’s mission stays connected to its collections. Develop service and collection management policies in tandem to ensure the continued integrity of the museum.

8. Always distinguish carefully motive from means in the disposal equation. A decision to dispose of an item made on ethically suspect grounds is still suspect no matter how ethically that decision is carried out.

As a parting shot, I offer a recent case of unavoidable disposal involving expertise of a very special order:

Museum staff were stunned to learn that two incendiary bombs proudly displayed for more than 20 years were probably live.

The bombs had pride of place in the war section of Dawlish Museum in South Devon for 22 years until a visitor spotted them earlier this week and raised the alarm.

They were immediately removed by a very cautious police sergeant who bunkered them inside sandbags at the police station and they have now been taken away by disposal experts.44

Acknowledgements

The author records his thanks to those colleagues in national, local-authority and independent museums, and in other museum institutions, who took the time and trouble to supply him with much of the information upon which this paper is based.

Editors’ note. A much shortened version of this paper was published under the title of ‘The Ethics of Emasculation’, Mtkseums Jottmul, 91 (3), 1991, pp. 25-28.

Notes


1. 2.

3.

4. 5.

6. 7. 8.

9.

10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

18. 19. 20.

21.

22.

23. 24.

25.

26. 27. 28.

29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

B. Lord et al., ‘The Cost of Collecting’ (London, 1989), p. 112. National Maritime Museum, ‘Subject and Collections Management Policy: Disposal’ (London 1989), p. 1. Art Gallery of Ontario, ‘Deaccessioning and Disposal Policies of the Art Gallery of Ontario’, The International Journal of Museum Management and Curatorship, 2 (2), 1983, p. 204. American Association of Museums, Museum Ethics (Washington, 1978) p. 12. D. Lowenthal, ‘Pioneer Museums’ (1989) in W. Leon and R. Rosenzweig (ed.), History Museums in the United States, p. 124. Ibid., p. 124. B.Lord, op.cit. Note 1, p. 112. S. Davies, ‘The Disposal of Museum Collections: Social History Collections’, Museums Journal, 87(3), 1987, p. 125. I. Robertson, ‘The Disposal of Museum Collections: Archaeological Collections’, Museums Journal, 87(3), 1987, pp. 127-129. J. Spalding, ‘The Disposal of Museum Collections: Art Collections’, Museums Journal, 87(3), 1987, pp. 130-131. Pers. comm. Pers. comm. Pers. comm. Pers. comm. The Museums Association, Museums Yearbook (London, 1991), p. 7. A. Norris, ‘Vanishing Herds: Large Mammals in Museum Collections?‘, Biology Curators Group Newsletter, 4 (8), 1988, pp. 148-149. Museums and Galleries Commission, Guidelines fey a Registration Scheme for Museums in the United Kingdom (London, 1988), p. 7. D. Lowenthal, ‘Classical Antiquities as National and Global Heritage’, Antiquity, 62, 1988, p. 734. Pers. comm. American Association of Museums, Code of Ethics (draft for discussion) (Washington, April 1990), p. 24. Museums Association, Code of Conduct fey Museum Professionals-draft for discussion (London, 1991), para. 5.9. Bonhams, A Catalogue of Ancient, Mediaeval and Modern Coins sold at auction 23 & 24 Sept (London, 1980) p. 58. G. Norman, ‘Dr Barnes’s Art for Aggravation’, Independent (London, UK) 18 May 1991. S. Weil, contributor to debate ‘To de- or not to de-‘, held 1987, Brisbane CAMA Conference, Art Museums of Australia, AMAA News, 17, 1990, p. 15. Office of Arts and Libraries, Powers of Disposalfrom Museum and Gallery Collections (consultative paper) (London, 1988), p. 10. J. Spalding, op.cit. note 10, p. 131. D. Wilson, The British Museum: Purpose and Politics (London, 1989), p. 24. Museums and Galleries Commission, Report on the National Museums: The National Museums and Galleries in the United Kingdom (London, 1988), p. 31. Pers. comm. American Association of Museums, Museum Ethics (Washington, 1978), p. 12. P. Wheatcroft, ‘The Disposal of Museum Collections: Merely Rubbish’ Museums Journal, 87(3), 1987, p. 133. Office of Arts and Libraries, op.cit. Note 25, p. 9. Pers. comm. S. Weil (quoting Messer) op.cit. Note 24, p. 16. B. Lord, op.cit. Note 1, p. 103. Pers. comm. Goode, Museums of the Future: Report of the US National Museum 1888-1889 (Washington, 1891), pp. 427-445. Audit Commission for Local Authorities and the National Health Service in England and Wales, The Road to Wigan Pier? Managing Local Authority Museums and Art Galleries (London, 1991). Audit Commission for Local Authorities and the National Health Service in England and Wales, Audit Guide: Museums, the Arts, Cultural Activities and Entertainment (London, 1990).

44 Ethics and practicalities of Disposal

39. Audit Commission, The Road to Wigan Pier?, op.cit. Note 38, p. 32. 40. Audit Commission, Audit Guide, op.cit. Note 38, p. 70. 41. Birmingham City Museum and Art Gallery, Collecting Policy (1989) Fine Art Section. 42. International Council of Museums, Code of Professional Ethics (Paris, 1987), pp. 21-22. American

Association of Museums, Museum Ethics, op.cit. Note 30, pp. 11-13. Museums Association Code of Practice for Museum Authorities, Mtkseums Yearbook (London, 1991) pp. 11-12.

43. Art Gallery of Ontario, op.cit. Note 3, p. 204. 44. Western Morning News (Plymouth, UK), 8 February 1991.

disposals from museum collections ethics and practicalities

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