De-accession time in Delaware
April 22 2014
Picture: Delawareonline
Cash-strapped Delaware Art Museum (DAM) in the US has been drawing fire for a while now over its declaration that it must sell $30m worth of art to keep the show on the road. In March, the US Association of Art Museum Directors sharply criticised the DAM for announcing the sell off, and urging it to look again at fundraising options.
Sharp-eyed observers have now seen that the above painting by Winslow Homer, called Milking Time, has disappeared from the DAM's online collection. Given recent prices for Homers at auction, I wouldn't be surprised if the DAM solved in one sale their current cash crisis.
Incidentally, all this comes on top of the recent announcement that the Corcoran Gallery in Washington is so broke that it's giving up altogether. Suddenly, the much-lauded (at least, here in the UK) US model of wholly philanthropically funded museums is looking a lot less lustrous.
