Bonus Episode: Berkshire Museum Deaccessioning Begins by The Art Law Podcast

Katie and Steve give an update on the first round of auction sales as part of the Berkshire Museum’s court sanctioned deaccessioning plan.  They discuss the results of the sales, the museum’s current stance, and where that leaves us (hint: dissatisfied). Resources – https://berkshiremuseum.org/newvision/the-road-ahead/ https://berkshiremuseum.org/2015site/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/pr.Berkshire-Museum-to-offer-13-works-at-auction.pdf https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/27/arts/design/berkshire-museum-sanctions-aamd.html https://aamd.org/for-the-media/press-release/aamd-statement-on-sanction-of-berkshire-museum-and-la-salle-university Bonus Episode Transcription Katie Wilson-Milne:  So, Steve, here we are again talking about the Berkshire Museum. Steve:  This is our second update of the Berkshire Museum controversy. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Yes.  And we did a full length episode on the Berkshire Museum’s decision to deaccession 40 of its most valuable objects, which were all very expensive pieces of art, some of which had been with the museum since its beginnings and had significance to the Berkshire area and to the history of American art that the Berkshire Museum, at one point at least, captured.  The museum justified the need for these sales by saying it needed to build its endowment so that the museum could stay open for the public and also to change the focus of the museum with the times to be more of a science and natural history museum than an art museum.  So just to give our listeners a brief recap, there was public outrage after this decision was announced in July of 2017 and part of the criticism, right Steve, was that people felt the museum had not been transparent about its plans to sort of change its mission and renovate its building through the proceeds of selling off these works of art. Steve:  The first that the public really heard about this was the leaking of the consignment agreement to Sotheby’s. Katie Wilson-Milne:  That’s right, which already had been signed. Steve:  Which had been signed and the works were scheduled to be auctioned at the November auction of 2017 which then precipitated a number of court actions, which we reviewed in our first episode. Katie Wilson-Milne:  Right.  And those court actions are pretty much moot given what happened afterwards.  So there were two lawsuits both of them had multiple plaintiffs and they basically seeked to enjoin the sale of these art works by the museum.  The Attorney General of Massachusetts, which has jurisdiction over charitable institutions in Massachusetts, as is the case in most states, did their own investigation, seemingly very concerned originally over the museum’s actions and it’s not illegal in Massachusetts to sell a museum’s collection, but it is ethically questionable in museum practice and it’s actually regulated in New York.  So the Attorney General was doing their own investigation originally quite critical of the Berkshire Museum and then had an about face. Steve:  The Attorney General who had who had stepped into the lawsuits and asked the court in Massachusetts to enjoin the Sotheby’s auction for last November and was successful in doing that on a temporary basis.  The next thing we heard was that the Massachusetts’s Attorney  General and the museum had reached an agreement which was then presented to the highest court in Massachusetts and that agreement allowed the auction of 40 works in three tranches which we discussed in the last update for up to 55 million dollars.  And now on May 14th the first tranche, so to speak, was put up for auction and was sold for the most part. Katie Wilson-Milne:  We know before the auction in May that one of the works, when we did our prior update on this, the most valuable work Shuffleton’s Barbershop, arguably Norman Rockwell’s greatest masterpiece, iconic to American art...