BlogBack: The Deaccessioning Dilemma

Reader John Heghinian responds to Museums’ Tangled Web—Part II:
It’s been interesting to read your opinions of deaccessioning, even though I don’t quite agree. Would you consider amending your “radically conservative proposal” to have institutions include the amount of money they believe they could gain by a given sale? If you wanted to demand they also describe what they might do with the money, that would be fair too.
I ask because I wonder if visitors to the Metropolitan Museum might sympathize with a deaccession, if a judicious sale or two might help offset the purchase of an iconic but dearly expensive early Renaissance painting, or help reduce the now-famous $20 admission fee.
Frankly I think the lack of deaccessioning is the main reason for skyrocketing art prices and fees. We all know about the laws of supply and demand. If demand for art always increases but supply always decreases, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the cost of buying, maintaining and viewing art should increase geometrically.