IMA Deaccessioning Database

At some point, the Indianapolis Museum of Art are going to have to run out of ideas. They’ve got a far more interesting blog than most museums, a whole bunch of their employees are on twitter (I follow them all), a dashboard of all kinds of stats (I’m a sucker for stats) and the lusciously designed and fascinating ArtBabble social video network .

It must get to a point where they will have meetings blankly staring at each other with no more suggestions. It doesn’t look anytime soon.

The IMA have created a searchable database of all the deaccessioned items, opening up the whole process. Those already deaccessioned have information about where it went, how much it sold for and a Flickr-style tagging system. The objects planned for deaccessioning contain the date for auction, a valuation and the chance to add a comment.

All the deaccessioned objects are stated to be  under the AAMD’s policy of selling artwork for the sole use of buying more objects. The front page contain IMA’s own deaccessioning policy, something CultureGrrl’s Lee Rosenbaum applauds. I would like to point out that mostly every UK museum makes it policy documents available, although UK deaccessioning is far more strict.

This is a very simple method to opening up the whole system that seems too shrouded and prone to miscommunication (See: Rose Art Museum). Donn Zaretsky (the Yin to Rosenbaum’s Yang) makes a comment about these being a database of “works it held ‘in trust’ for the public . . . until it decided to sell them” that I think neglects the fact that the IMA are revealing to the public what most museum’s seem to hide as a secret shame. Surely this is establishing a better foundation of trust with the public? Especially with the lines of communication that the IMA have opened?

As Lee Rosenbaum said, it would be good to have a “why” on the object listings. I suppose the only reason needed is that they all go through the deaccessioning policy. As the objects are up for auction, it’s probably not wise to say “it’s broken”.