The Paintings Nobody Sees

The Corvale Museum of Art owns roughly 14,000 objects. On any given day, about 600 of them are on display. The rest wait in a climate-controlled building near the airport, wrapped, numbered, and seen mainly by insurance assessors and the two conservatorsconservators×Specialists who protect, clean, and repair works of art or historical objects.Useful chunks: museum conservator · a team of conservators responsible for all of them. Last spring, the museum’s board proposed selling eleven paintings from that building to replace the leaking roof over the main galleries, and the city reacted as though someone had suggested selling city hall.

I understand the outrage, and for a long time I shared it. Before arguing that the board was right in principle, I want to state the case against it as fairly as I can, because it is a serious case.

The first objection is about trust. Many of the works in storage were donated by families who believed they were giving them to the public permanently. Selling them, critics say, breaks a promise that cannot be renegotiated with people who are no longer alive. The second is about irreversibilityirreversibility×The quality of being impossible to undo or change back.Useful chunks: the irreversibility of the decision · concerns about irreversibility. A roof can be rebuilt; a painting that disappears into a private collection may never be publicly visible again. The third, and to my mind the strongest, is about incentivesincentives×Things that encourage people or organizations to act in a particular way.Useful chunks: create incentives · a strong incentive. Once a museum is allowed to sell art to cover its expenses, its collection becomes a reserve that boards will be tempted to spend whenever budgets tighten. Not only would that put individual works at risk; it would quietly change what a museum is.

None of these arguments is weak. Only after taking them seriously did I begin to notice what they assume.

Each objection treats the collection as though it were already serving the public. Yet what the public currently receives from those eleven paintings is nothing at all. Two of them have not been exhibited since 1987. One has not left its crate since the museum acquired it. What protects a painting in storage is not public ownership in any meaningful sense; it is simply a lock. It is the roof, not those paintings, that currently stands between the works people actually visit and the next heavy rain.

The trust argument also deserves a closer look. Donors give for many reasons, and some agreements do forbid sale. Where they do, those terms should be honored without exception. Where no such restrictionrestriction×A rule or condition that limits what someone is allowed to do.Useful chunks: a legal restriction · impose a restriction exists, however, it is fair to ask which outcome a donor would really prefer: a painting kept unseen indefinitelyindefinitely×For a period of time with no fixed end.Useful chunks: postponed indefinitely · kept indefinitely, or a painting sold to a collection that will show it, with the proceedsproceeds×The money received from selling something.Useful chunks: the proceeds of the sale · use the proceeds protecting the works that remain.

The incentive problem is harder to dismiss, and I do not think good intentions can solve it. Rules can, however, limit it. The museum should be permitted to sell a work only if it has not been exhibited for at least twenty years, only if the money is used for the physical care of the collection rather than salaries or events, and only after a public review period in which other public institutions may buy the work first. Under no circumstances should a sale be used to close an ordinary budget gap. Under these conditions, a sale would be difficult, slow, and visible. That is exactly what it should be.

Some critics will argue that any exception, however narrow, weakens the principle. That risk is real. What I find less convincing is the idea that the current arrangement has no costs. A leaking roof, a storage building at full capacity, and two conservators responsible for 14,000 objects are also choices. They are simply choices that nobody has to defend at a public meeting.

The board’s proposal was nevertheless flawed: it named the paintings before publishing any rules for selecting them. It should be withdrawnwithdrawn×Officially taken back or removed so that it is no longer being considered.Useful chunks: withdraw a proposal · be withdrawn and resubmitted and resubmitted with conditions like those above. But the answer to a careless proposal is a careful one, not a permanent refusal to discuss the question. A collection exists to be seen, studied, and cared for. When a painting can do none of those things where it is, keeping it there is not preservation. It is only storage.