… strapped administrators to look at their collections as potential revenue.”

But not without some serious questions being raised about what has come to be called “de-accessioning,” or more simply, “decessioning.” To dispose of collections or even parts of collections, in the eyes of many, is an act that contradicts the very meaning of a museum—and donors or potential donors are wont to view it as an act of downright treachery. The controversy has been spinning along for some time, now; a few years back, for example, it generated feverish publicity when it was revealed that for nearly forty years the Museum of the American Indian in New York had been selling or trading off (“looting,” as one critic put it) pieces of its collections (some of which went to television personality Dick Cavett, who gave them back when the ethics of the transaction were questioned).

More recently, the controversy welled up again—this time in the prestigious, and troubled, Peabody Museum of Harvard University. In the summer of 1978, news seeped out that its director, C. C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, was planning the sale of hundreds of paintings from the Peabody’s Bushnell and Inman collections to alleviate museum conditions which he described as “shocking.”

This would be no mere rummage sale: the Bushnell Collection contained 387 paintings and drawings of Indians, many of them done by such famous nineteenth-century artists as Peter Rindisbacher, W. H. Holmes, Paul Kane, Alfred Jacob Miller, Seth Eastman, and Carl Wimar: and the Inman Collection consisted of 106 painstaking oil copies by Henry Inman of a series of Indian portraits done by Charles Bird King in the 1830’s (the originals were lost in the Smithsonian’s 1865 fire). Both collections had been described as being of inestimable anthropological value, and were assessed at more than $7,000,000. Nevertheless, Harvard University president Derek C. Bok defended the decision, saying the sale was necessary to protect and preserve the museum’s other collections, and emphasizing that the paintings, “if possible,” would be sold to institutions accessible to the public. There was, however, no guarantee that at least some of the material would not disappear into the hands of art dealers and private collectors.

Reaction within and without the university community was immediate and largely critical. Perhaps the most vigorous opposition came from the Smithsonian’s Sturtevant, who in a November 6,1978, letter to Lamberg-Karlovsky put forth his objections with lucidity: “I continue to be shocked that the richest university in the country … should succumb to a crass market mentality. It is difficult to understand how there can be any justification for treating a fine museum’s catalogued holdings as though they were part of its financial capital, turning them into cash in order to pay for improvement… of the institution whose basic rationale is precisely the accumulation and preservation of these very objects.”

Over the next few months, the glare of adverse publicity was constant and fierce. Whether in response to this or not,

on February 9,1979, LambergKarlovsky announced that “we will not sell anything out of the Bushnell Collection whatsoever for the foreseeable future,” and that the Inman Collection would be sold as a unit and only to a museum or comparable institution accessible to the public. For critics of decessioning, the decision was at least a partial victory, and was applauded —not only because it helped protect the integrity of the Bushnell and Inman collections, but, given the prestige and influence of the Peabody, because it might inspire others in the museum business to reflect on the possibility that, in spite of financial problems, it is better to receive and to keep than it is to give away.