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The Berkshire Museum to sell nine more works from its collection

6/29/2018

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By Gabriella Angeleti. From The Art Newspaper. Posted on 6/25/18. 

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​The Berkshire Museum of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, has announced it will sell off nine additional works from its collection. Last month, the museum failed to meet its goal of raising $55m for a major renovation through the controversial sale of 13 works at Sotheby’s New York, coming in short at $43m. The deaccessioning was allowed as part of an agreement with the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office that kept one of the most valuable pieces, Shuffleton’s Barbershop (1950) by Norman Rockwell, on public view. It was acquired by George Lucas for his soon to be built museum in Los Angeles, the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.

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After Selling Holdings for Sake of Diversity, Baltimore Museum of Art Acquires Work by Jack Whitten, Amy Sherald, and More

6/28/2018

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By Alex Greenberger. From ArtNews. Posted on 6/26/18. 

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​In April, the Baltimore Museum of Art announced a controversial decision to deaccession works by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and Franz Kline in hopes of using the proceeds to add pieces by women and persons of color to its collection. Those works hit the auction block at Sotheby’s auction house in New York in May, and today the museum named seven new acquisitions made with money gained from those sales.
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Among the new holdings are an abstracted vision of September 11, 2001, by Jack Whitten, who witnessed that fateful day from his studio and painted it using his chipped acrylic tile method, and a painting by Amy Sherald, of two people on a plain watching a rocket launch into space. (Sherald, who is a board member at the BMA, recused herself from the decision to acquire her work, according to a museum spokesperson.) The other purchases include a video work by Isaac Julien, a painting by Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, a sculpture by Wangechi Mutu, and two film pieces by Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley.

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Two former trustees rap decisions by Berkshire Museum board

6/8/2018

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By Larry Parnass. From The Berkshire Eagle. Posted on 6/05/18.

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PITTSFIELD — Trustees allowed debate over the Berkshire Museum's financial challenges to snowball into an excessive art sale, two former board members tell The Eagle, as officials backed a costly shift to interactive exhibits based on thin evidence.

Carol Riordan and Nancy Edman Feldman say that while the museum's money problems were real, the Pittsfield institution could have ensured its future with far less than the $55 million it is allowed to raise through sales under terms of an agreement with Attorney General Maura Healey. 

Both fault trustees and Executive Director Van Shields for not doing enough to right the museum's finances through fund appeals and other means.

"I was not going to sell the assets of the organization before trying everything," said Riordan, a Pittsfield resident who served as treasurer of the board of trustees. "I care. I care about the community and I care about the museum."

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Outdated Rules Are Killing Museums—Here’s How Things Can Change

6/1/2018

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By Michael DeMarsche and Bob Ekelund. From artsy.com. Posted on 5/30/18. 

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A number of art museums over the past decade have run into financial trouble, for reasons ranging from declining donations to adverse local situations (Detroit, for example), as well as increasing storage costs for housing ever-increasing acquisitions. Often, as is the case of the Berkshire Museum, factors are out of museum management’s control. The region around the museum’s seat of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, fell victim to industrial decline. Unfortunately, museums of all sizes may face future financial headwinds, thanks to an increase in private museums; changes in the tax treatment of gifts since last year’s tax bill was signed into law; and the high probability of a recession within the next two or three years, which could dampen charitable giving.

​There is a solution within reach. Museums could deaccession, or sell, works from their collections, in order to shore up their finances, mount more shows, and reduce admission costs. The only hitch? The country’s major accrediting group, the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), won’t let them. Just last week, the AAM in conjunction with the Association of Art Museum Directors, announced sanctions on the Berkshire Museum for doing so, as well as the art museum at Philadelphia’s La Salle University.

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    ​The Museum Trustee Association views its mission of enhancing the effectiveness of museum trustees as educational and collaborative. As a group of past and current museum board members, we do not see ourselves as a policy-setting organization but rather as a source of information to equip Museum Trustees as they implement field-wide best practices in all of their governance affairs. The sharing of articles and opinion pieces on MTA social media and the News page of our website does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation by MTA, its employees, or its board members. 

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  • Home
  • About us
    • Mission
    • Board of Directors
    • Current Members >
      • Institutional Members
      • Individual Members
    • Contact
  • Membership
    • Benefits
    • Types >
      • Institutions
      • Patrons
      • Friends
    • Member Spotlights >
      • San Angelo Museum of Fine Arts
      • Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
      • Greensboro History Museum
      • Mingei International Museum
      • Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
      • Heard Museum
      • Maryland Center for History & Culture
      • Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens
      • Lehigh University Art Galleries
  • News
  • Events
    • Denver 2023 >
      • Details >
        • Register for Denver 2023
        • Patron Weekend
        • Scholarships
  • Resources
    • MTA On-Demand
    • Templates for Trustees
    • Tips for Trustees
    • Blackbaud Webinar Series
    • Member Resource Library
    • IDEA Resources & Information
  • Donate
  • Patron Weekend