Philadelphia History Museum

What's better - to have many many collections poorly archived, displayed, etc, or to have fewer collections properly displayed?  The Philadelphia Museum at Atwater Kent, must have favored the later when they decided to sell $3 million worth of collections to help fund major building renovations.   

This sticky situation made me think back to my first internship at the Monroe County Historical Association where much cataloguing was via handwritten 1950s notecards and I had to climb over dusty boxes in 3rd floor storage rooms of a 300 year old home to find a specific photograph.  The MCHA was always fundraising for better storage capacity, but I don't know if they every considered getting rid of some of their "dusty boxes" to help fund better air conditioning.

In a city known for its elite cultural institutions, the Philadelphia History Museum at Atwater Kent stirred up quite the controversy by deaccessioning a significant amount of collections to help fund a major capital project. With the "public trust" still fresh in my mind from last week's discussion, it is easy to see why the public may balk at such a practice - a potential in-kind donor will now have to ask themselves, "How can my gift be guaranteed to serve the public, if it might be sold to pay for air conditioning in a few years?"  If funds for renovations are in need, then a capital campaign should be in place, not a garage sale.  


I understand that this is not a perfect world, but selling objects should be the absolute last resort for a museum...one that should not be taken.  Mark Gould is even more blunt to say,  “Those museums deserve to die” in his American Association of Museums article Death by Ethics.  I have to agree with Gould, because as a fundraiser, what is the good of my job asking for money, if someone else at the museum can just sell an entire exhibit for money?  Stephen Weil brings to light the large disparity between a museum's operational funding and the market value of their collections.  However, the value on a museum's collections is not a price tag, and certainly not one with a desperate "everything must go" kind of message.


Although the Philadelphia History Museum claims that they were within the professional standards, by only selling objects that fell outside of their mission and that proceeds would go towards "caring for the collection."  According to the American Association for State and Local History's president Terry Davis,  "As long as deaccessioning is done according to institutional policies that have been set ahead of time, for the long-term goal of taking care of collections, it's a perfectly fine practice to do."


I also have to wonder what the follow up was to any known donors of the PHM's sold items.  Were they notified of the sale of the donations?  From grants administration experience, when a funded project changes its focus, the grantee MUST notify the fundor and may likely be asked to return award money if the project no longer complies with the reason the proposal was funded.  Selling donated objects could be a breach of contract of sorts.  


So many more questions swirled in my head while reading the museum ethics codes and news stories surrounding the PHM/Atwater Kent deaccessioning stories:

• If an organization can't fund support a capital campaign, what are the implications that they could fund future longterm projects?
• Will the revenue generated from modern renovations make up for lost revenue in losing objects?
• What is the opportunity costs of not doing a traditional fundraiser or capital campaign to fund the renovations?

I foresee a running theme of financial crises in our workshops....