There have been some thoughtful responses on the deaccessioning issue.  I
have a great interest in this area, although I claim no expertise.  But I'd
like to chime in with some of my ideas, which stem from experience, if not
actual expertise.

I believe museums have a continuing responsibility to donors to keep them
and/or their heirs informed about major changes in the status (and location)
of their gifts.  This might sound like it could represent a lot of trouble
and effort, but with computerized files and modern procedures, it is
certainly feasible if an institution makes a commitment to such
communication.  As someone who has fielded many walk-in requests from donors
and their families over the years about the whereabouts of "grandpa's gizmo",
I believe this is an important issue.  Donors and their descendants often
take great pride and interest in the continued well-being of their donations
and the knowledge that they have made a contribution to the heritage embodied
in a museum, and I think it is just good public relations to be able to
facilitate access to such information.  After I have cautioned inquirers that
there can never be any guarantee that a specific item will be on perpetual
exhibition--and explaining that in fact it may never be selected for
exhibition at all, because less than one per cent of our collections may be
on public display--they may be disappointed, but are reassured if someone can
truthfully state that the item can be identified and located and is still
being preserved for access and study.

Part of a museum's responsibility, it seems to me, is to continue to give
credit to donors (unless the donor specifically requested anonymity as a
condition of the gift) when their objects are in fact placed on either
temporary or long-term exhibition.  I have been chagrined occasionally to
discover that such credit lines were omitted, which I think constitutes
breaking faith with a donor--although admittedly many museums do not normally
make specific promises about credits in exhibit labels.  Nevertheless, I
think it is such a standard museum practice to give donor credits that either
a deliberate or inadvertent failure in this regard is a questionable practice.

But I digress.  It follows that donors or heirs should be informed when a
museum deaccessions their gifts.  It's probably true that many donors would
not object if a deaccessioned object were donated, transferred, traded, or
sold to another museum or public collection.  But some might!  Donors often
carefully select a recipient of their largesse and make a deliberate and
conscious choice of one institution over another.  It may well be that they
have chosen your institution precisely because they approve of your programs,
your publicly articulated mission statement, and your reputation.  Imagine
how a donor might feel if such a carefully planned gift turned up in the
collection of another institution which he happens to loathe!  While museum
people should never be put in the position of having donors dictate terms and
conditions after the fact, it seems to me that it would constitute good
public relations to at least contact and inform donors about proposed
deaccessions and give them a chance to weigh in with their opinions,
reactions, and possible counter-arguments.  It's just a question of full
disclosure and recognition of the vital role which donors play in the life of
museums.  I would not want to be the one to have to inform a donor on our
doorstep that his grandfather's cherished gizmo was deemed to be no longer of
any value to our museum and was exiled to, let's say, a less prestigious
museum in another state.  It would be far better to be up front about a
proposed deaccession before it happens.  Why risk antagonizing donors with
unpleasant surprises?

It is clear that you should not simply return a deaccessioned item to a donor
or heirs if a tax deduction was taken at the time of the gift, and there is
good rationale for a policy stating that under no circumstances should you do
so.  A case could be made for extending such a policy to all gifts,
regardless of tax consequences.  Nevertheless, each case should probably be
treated on its own merits.  If grandpa's gizmo has true sentimental or family
value to a donor or the donor's heirs, the door should probably be left open
for a return--especially because this value might well have figured in the
original decision to donate it to your specific institution.  Perhaps Grandpa
proposed to Grandma in one of your galleries, for example, so they decided to
memorialize their fond memories of your institution by giving you their
gizmo.  If your institution no longer thinks this is sufficient reason to
hang onto the gizmo, perhaps it wouldn't be such a hot idea to give it or
sell it to another institution.  Well, that might be far-fetched, but you get
the idea.

On the other hand, many donors, while they might appreciate being informed
about a pending deaccession, may not care about the final disposition.  Fine.
 No problem.  At least you've touched the appropriate bases and have given
full disclosure of your intentions.  Where some museums got into trouble in
the past was by trying to sell off accessions which really did have strings
attached.  (There were also some famous instances of art museums selling
paintings, which actually had no encumbrances, to raise acquisiton funds, and
press hysteria made these procedures appear unethical; the public got the
unpleasant feeling that museums were irresponsibly, greedily, and callously
selling off precious objects to satisfy whims or raise big bucks.)  By
contrast, I used to solicit letters of intent from donors which specifically
agreed that we could use their donations for sale or trade.  The items
involved usually were duplicates of other objects already in the collection.
This turned out to be a poor strategy because the mechanisms to use duplicate
or otherwise marginal items in this way were too cumbersome at the time, and
I didn't have the opportunity to follow through with my scheme.  In any
event, the appropriate way to handle such transactions is to continue to
recognize the original donations by crediting new objects acquired via the
sale or trade of older accessions as "through a gift from" (or similar
language) the original donor.  Thus the donor's gift continues to be
acknowledged, even if it was used to acquire something else.

David Haberstich

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