Academy of the Fine Arts discloses sales of artworks

In a highly unusual effort to shed light on the reality of its own art dealing, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts has reported the sale of five works, the prospective sale of five others, and the purchases made from sales proceeds.

"We wanted to be as open as possible," said David R. Brigham, president and chief executive of the academy.

"It's a positive story, and we want to tell it," he added, discussing the sales - deaccessioning, in museum parlance - and the areas of acquisition.

The works sold, and the galleries that handled the sales, are Autumn Still Life by William Merritt Chaseand Looking Over Frenchman's Bay at Green Mountain (1896) by Childe Hassam (Avery Galleries); and Flowers (1893) by John H. Twachtman, Bathers in a Cove (1916) by Maurice Prendergast, and Great White Herons (1933) by Frank Weston Benson (Menconi & Schoelkopf).

The sales brought about $5 million into a fund designated exclusively for acquisitions, Brigham said. Works chosen for sale passed through a multi-part review process involving institutional and independent curators, academy board members, and top officials. The process followed the guidelines laid out by the institution's strategic plan.

Janet Landay, executive director of the Association of Art Museum Directors, a professional organization, said she was "pleased to hear this story because this is the direction we are encouraging our institutions to go."

Landay said she knew of no other museum that has made such a specific public announcement of sales, and said it could be an important step toward providing "more transparency" for such normally murky transactions.

The academy's sales were done in accordance with the association's ethical guidelines, which allow such sales only for the purpose of acquiring other works of art. The art museum directors' guidelines are more rigorous than those issued by the American Association of Museums and the American Association for State and Local History Museums, which allow proceeds from deaccessioning to be used for care of collections, in addition to acquisitions.