Reversed a 30-year ban on selling art...

[garybrun]

The Museums Association, founded in 1889 to represent Britain’s museums and galleries, reversed a 30-year ban on selling art and urged its 1,500 members on Monday to get rid of objects that are gathering dust, the BBC reported. “Museums typically collect a thousand times as many things as they get rid of,” Mark Taylor, the association’s director, said in a posting on its Web site (museumsassociation.org.). “Wonderful collections can become a burden unless they are cleared of unused objects.” The association told its members to give unused art to other museums or public institutions or, in exceptional circumstances, to sell it. The organization expressed hope that its new policy would encourage museums to put some pieces on display, and said it expected only a few sales each year. Vanessa Trevelyan, convener of the association’s ethics committee and head of Norfolk Museum and Archaeology Service, said, “Although disposal of items is not without risk, it is preferable to transfer items to an alternative home where they will be treasured, rather than retain material that is not supporting a museum’s research, display or interpretation functions.”




Website for responsible Metal Detecting
http://www.ukdfd.co.uk
Recording Our Heritage For Future Generations.

[BAJR Host]

the bit that has been picked up is the seling... but fortunately.. it is in exceptional circumstances

"No job worth doing was ever done on time or under budget.."
Khufu

[mercenary]

Surely there is a world of difference between lending/giving objects to another museum compared to letting them go to private individuals. The former would presumably increase access for research and be a positive move, while the latter would surely decrease it.

Presumably this also has implications for a museum's acceptance or retention of archaeological archives, which surely fall into the category of "unused objects".

[vulpes]

Is a museum it's collections or just the building? Or not even that? The accountants will love this one, presumably enabling them to view collections as assets rather than something core to the very existence of the museum, arguably even more important than the building that houses them. Kerching!:face-confused: