The artwork, which depicts a posh young schoolboy spray-painting the phrase “Ghetto 4 Life” while a butler holds a tray of spray cans, was removed from the Melrose building at 651 Elton Avenue as part of the structure’s demolition to make space for a charter school.

The relocation of the mural, part of Banksy’s “Better Out Than In” residency in New York in October 2013, has stirred strong emotions among Bronx locals, with many lamenting the loss of a piece considered a source of community pride.

“Everybody was crying around here. This is art,” Steve Jacob told The New York Post. “The gentleman made it for us, the community. I’ve lived all my life in the Bronx, and this was made for the Bronx people. And now someone’s taken it away from us.”

Despite the efforts of the building’s owner, David Damaghi, to keep the mural within New York City, including offers to local schools and institutions like MoMA, it was ultimately decided to relocate it to 800 Union Avenue in Bridgeport, Connecticut, which the New York Daily News identified as owned by Kiumarz Geula of Pillar Property Management.

In a 2015 interview with The Guardian, Banksy said he didn’t think much about when his tags and murals are removed, “but for the art form as a whole it’s unhealthy. When you paint illegally you have so much to contend with—cameras, cops, Neighborhood Watch, drunk people throwing bottles at your head—so adding “predatory art speculators” to the mix just makes things even harder.”

A representative of Fine Art Shippers, who were hired to transport the work, told ARTnews the move to Bridgeport is temporary. “It is uncertain whether it will be sold or moved again in the future.”

Despite Banksy tagging buildings across the globe, some of which lead to million dollar sales of buildings and the removal of the murals, his true identity remains a mystery. A recently unearthed BBC interview from 2003 identified him as an artist named Robert Banks, however, there are other theories.

The recent absence of Kate Middleton, Princess of Wales, from the public eye following a reported abdominal surgery has led to a deluge of conspiracy theories. On February 27, X user @LMAsaysno posted “not a single banksy since kate middleton disappeared. coincidence?”

In the Hulu series, Paley lingers in the background while the spotlight focuses on the women author Truman Capote crafted into fictional subjects—Capote called them swans—among them Paley’s wife, Barbara “Babe” Cushing Mortimer.

Beneath the show’s glitz is a more subtle story, the Paley name’s key role in the nascent years of New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

“One of his associates told me, it was well known Mr. Paley always answered a call from the Museum of Modern Art, even when other matters required his immediate attention,” Richard E. Oldenburg, the museum’s director at the time, recalled in a 1992 catalog entry. In 1937 Paley joined the museum’s board as a trustee. By then, he’d grown a small radio network into the behemoth of Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) Inc. network, amassing enough wealth to make him valuable to the museum, which was only eight years old and still in need of financial support.

After rising through various high-level positions, Paley reached a position of immense influence: he deepened the museum’s pockets (which, by 2023, would boast $1.5 billion in assets), oversaw the committee that vetted art acquisitions, and helped build its permanent collection. Later, he assumed the museum presidency, and from 1982 to 1984, oversaw an expansion that effectively doubled the museum’s exhibition space.

Paley gave the museum large sums and valuable works, including Picasso’s Architect’s Table (1912) and, posthumously, Picasso’s Boy Leading a Horse (1905–06). The latter, which demonstrates Picasso’s shift from rose tones to a muted-blue palette, hung in Paley’s Manhattan apartment entrance, noted in a MoMA catalog as “the only room where people remained standing.”

His association with the museum helped bring prestige to Paley’s name, catapulting it near esteemed fellow New Yorkers, those in the Rockefeller and Whitney families. Upon the 1984 unveiling of the new building that Paley had overseen, the New York Times noted, “it is not, to say the least, an institution of outsiders and never has been.”

Among Paley’s other notable gifts were works such as Francis Bacon’s Study for Three Heads, from 1962, a triptych Bacon created after the death of his partner, Peter Lacy. In it, two images of Lacy’s face flank one of Bacon’s.

The works entered the museum’s holding following Paley’s death in 1990. In November 2022, Paley’s deep ties to the museum resurfaced again, when MoMA announced plans to part with $70 million worth of art from his collection at Sotheby’s, a bid to build an endowment for digital projects. It was a sign of changing times; the pandemic had forced even America’s oldest museums to attend to a growing viewership in online forums.

In a catalog note for a 1992 exhibition showcasing Paley’s collection two years after his death, MoMA director emeritus William Rubin recalled that Paley’s acquisitions were personal, guided by “private taste rather than broader public considerations.” Rubin, whom Artforum cast in 2006 as “arguably one of the most important postwar curators of twentieth-century art,” underscored how Paley was following these artists when “there was nothing chic about possessing [them].”

In the complaint, John Bonafede, a New York–based painter and performance artist, said that he experienced repeated sexual assault by museum-goers and alleges that MoMA “had actual knowledge of ongoing sexual assaults against many of its worker-performers … yet it intentionally and negligently failed to take corrective action to prevent the assaults from recurring.”

The New York Post reported on incidents at the 2010 exhibition at the time, with female performers telling the newspaper that they’d experienced groping and others saying they’d been “pushed, prodded and poked.” The museum told the Post at the time that it was “well aware of the challenges” faced by nude performers in the exhibition and that violators were escorted out by MoMA security. The New York Times and other outlets also covered the incidents at the time.

The exhibition marked MoMA’s first performance art retrospective and featured 38 performers in rotating two-hour shifts of eight who either lay beneath a skeleton, faced each other at a doorway, or stood in other performance pieces in the exhibition.

Bonafede’s lawsuit specifically concerns Imponderabilia, the work that sets nude performers at either side of portal. First performed in 1977 by Abramović herself and her then-partner Ulay, the performance requires gallery visitors to squeeze between its performers, rubbing against their nude bodies in the process. It has since been restaged at many venues, including the Royal Academy of Arts in London.

The lawsuit has been brought now due to New York’s Adult Survivors Act, which created a “one-year lookback window for survivors of sexual assault that occurred when they were over the age of 18 to sue their abusers regardless of when the abuse occurred.” Late last year, as the lookback window was set to expire, numerous lawsuits were filed accusing high-profile celebrities of sexual assault or misconduct, including Sean “Diddy” Combs, Russell Brand, and others.

In the complaint, Bonafede claimed that the sexual assaults he experienced have caused “years of emotional distress and substantially harmed [his] mental health, body, image, and career.”

Bonafede said he is seeking compensatory damages, punitive damages, reimbursement of attorney fees, and other relief as to be determined in court.

A MoMA spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

The complaint, filed last week, alleges that several of the museum’s employees failed to accommodate a coworker’s medical condition after the museum instated a pandemic-related policy that barred the employee from working onsite. The complaint was filed on behalf of Philip Parente, until recently the museum’s library collection coordinator and a 17-year employee in the museum’s photography department. In the filing, Parente said he suffered retaliation after requesting a medical accommodation for a heart condition. According to the lawsuit, Parente managed symptoms related to supraventricular tachycardia, a condition that causes heart palpitations, while working at the museum.

According to court documents reviewed bv ARTnews, Parente claims that senior MoMA staffers overseeing his medical accommodation request failed to respond to it adequately, ultimately leading to them withdrawing approval for him to work remotely that had previously been granted. In the filing, Parente also alleges that the museum’s employees leveled baseless accusations of theft against him that lead to his abrupt termination, describing the actions taken against him as “unlawful, discriminatory, and retaliatory conduct.”

According to the complaint, Parente submitted a medication exemption request in September 2021 to work remotely. The following month, Matsubura, who serves as head of the museum’s human resources department, denied the request, stating, “In order for you to perform the essential functions of your job, you must be physically present on the premises of the Museum.” Parente claims this discounted a previous approval in March 2020 from his manager that allowed him to work remotely for a portion of the week in response to the pandemic.

In the filing, Parente claims that Elligott did not respond to his attempts to discuss the exemption request. The complaint also alleges that Matsubura retaliated against Parente’s attempts to reach a resolution with human resources, describing his role at the museum as “insignificant” and accusing him of stealing photographic materials from his department. The filing further claims that MoMA employees violated state law that protects employees with disabilities.

In a statement to ARTnews, a New York-based attorney for the plaintiff, Christopher Berlingieri, said the lawsuit demonstrates an ethical issue at MoMA, presenting evidence that the museum mishandles employees “with legitimate disabilities.” It also claims that the museum is at odds with it’s stated workplace inclusivity policies and practices.

A representative for the museum did not immediately respond to an ARTnews request for comment.

The Anadol piece, Unsupervised – Machine Hallucinations – MoMA (2022), is a generative artwork that uses the museum’s visual archive to produce a machine-learning model that interprets and reimagines images of artworks in MoMA’s collection. The work went on view late last year and was recently extended through October 29.

Since going on view, the piece has drawn sizable crowds. Critics have eyed the work with suspicion, with New York’s Jerry Saltz comparing it to a lava lamp. But Lloyd Wise, in Artforum, defended the work for the way it dialogued with modernism.

The piece, which includes a companion NFT, was donated to the museum by tech entrepreneur Ryan Zurrer, one of the most prolific collectors of digital art, through his 1OF1 Collection, along with the RFC Collection, led by Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile and Desiree Casoni.

In a recent roundtable interview with ARTnews for its annual Top 200 Collectors issue, Zurrer said, “I tip my hat to the folks at MoMA for understanding the cultural zeitgeist of the moment. Unsupervised went up two weeks before ChatGPT went public. AI is the defining topic of the moment, and MoMA captured that. I’m excited to donate this work to MoMA. But I need to acknowledge that this isn’t just a donation from me and [collector] Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile, but from Refik. He is bringing the servers and screens and the other components. The NFT is one part of this conceptual artwork that belongs to MoMA now.”

In a statement, Rodriguez-Fraile said, “We wish to express our sincere gratitude to MoMA for their collaboration in showcasing Refik Anadol’s groundbreaking work to a global audience. We are thrilled that Unsupervised now has a permanent home with MoMA, an institution that is always at the cutting edge of visual culture. This moment holds historical importance: it will undoubtedly leave an indelible mark on the history of art, resonating for generations to come. This endeavor has served as a magnificent bridge between traditional and digital mediums, greatly impacting the broader art community, igniting invaluable discussions, and inspiring artists around the world.”

Anadol is a Turkish American artist who uses primarily data and machine learning algorithms to produce site-specific immersive installations and live audiovisual performances. After doing public art commissions at venues like the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, he became Google’s first artist-in-residence in 2016. He has become known for creating installations that visualize environmental research data documenting climate change around coral reefs, glaciers, and rainforests.

The new work by Cheng that MoMA acquired, 3FACE (2022), is a generative artwork that analyzes the blockchain wallet data of its owner to “generate a visual portrait of the forces that compose the owner’s personality,” according to the museum. The work was donated by Outland Art, a new platform and publisher dedicated to digital art, and is now one of four works by the artist owned by MoMA, whose sister institution, MoMA PS1, staged a solo show for him in 2017.

Cheng, a New York–based artist, has become well known over the last decade for creating screen-based artworks that he calls “live simulations.” The works, typically coded using the video game engineer Unity, often address evolution, artificial intelligence and change over time.

The change is slated to take effect October 16. The new prices will be $30 for adults, $22 for senior citizens 65 and older, $22 for visitors with disabilities, and $17 for students, with children 16 and under remaining free. Visitors who purchase tickets in advance on the museum’s website will see a $2 decrease on those fees. Film tickets will now be $14 for adults, $12 for seniors, $12 for visitors with disabilities, and $10 for students.

This is the first time MoMA has raised admission prices since 2011, citing a continued increase in “the cost of operating the Museum,” according to a release. This increase makes MoMA the latest among a wave of institutions hiking up admission owing to financial strain.

“As we carefully prioritize every possible measure to deliver innovative exhibitions, public programs
and strengthen our attendance, revenue, and staffing, these changes in admission prices will help
the Museum maintain financial stability,” MoMA director Glenn D. Lowry said in a statement. “Our goal is to ensure that MoMA continues to offer an extraordinary experience to the nearly three million visitors we welcome each year to connect with the art of our time.”

This news comes after a major expansion in fall 2019, followed shortly thereafter by pandemic-related closure in spring 2020, from which many institutions have still not recovered.

Today, we have entered a new epoch: the age of data. Like coal before it, data is the resource—mined, synthesized, and sometimes stolen— that fuels our industries and grounds economic and military might. For all its importance, however, it is a source of tremendous ambiguity. It is invisible, yet real; something that both represents the world, while shaping it in the very act of apprehension. While some see it as the height of human ingenuity, others see it as little more than a mechanism of surveillance and exploitation.

It is precisely this equivocation that has made data such an enticing subject for contemporary artists making sense of our emergent cybernetic reality. Nowhere is this exploration more evident than at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, where a series of exhibitions have showcased how artists are approaching data and understanding the ubiquity, complex dynamics, and tensions that define it.

For nearly a year, Refik Anadol’s Unsupervised, which was extended recently to October 29, has loomed imperiously over the museum’s Gund Lobby. Eminently “crowd-pleasing,” Anadol’s work has achieved a level of viral fame that few artworks ever attain— becoming what is now probably one of the best known pieces of AI art in the world. Trained on publicly available data from the museum’s vast collection and responding to site-specific variables like weather, light, and sound, Unsupervised attempts to actualize the “mind” of a machine intelligence in visual and sonic form. “What would a machine dream about after seeing the collection of The Museum of Modern Art,” the museum asks; Anadol responds with a dramatic field of color and sound that constantly writhes and undulates in the presence of the viewer— flowing from one image to the next in a seemingly never-ending stream of mechanic consciousness.

The piece’s popularity is, in many ways, unsurprising. Unsupervised seems almost tailor-made for our current technological milieu. Last year, programs like DALL-E, ChatGPT, and Midjourney ignited a host of anxieties and hopes around the possibilities of big data. As these machines perform feats that were once thought to be the sole purview of humankind, tech boosters have begun to crow about their near limitless possibilities. According to some technophiles, we are witnessing nothing short of the arrival of God—or the Devil.

Anadol plays precisely into this mix of wonder and fear by articulating a dramatic vision of a machine intelligence that exceeds our comprehension. Its grandiose scale and abstracted visual form positions this intelligence as nothing short of a technological sublime looming over us, a deistic mind defying our understanding. There is, as Ben Davis wrote in a January review for Artnet, a “generalized awe at the machine’s superhuman capacity of visual analysis” that drives the piece, a vision of AI as an unfathomable transcendent Other. 

Yet this fetishization of AI proves misguided in the long run. Unsupervised’s abstract aesthetic ends up divorcing this technology from the intelligible domain of human affairs— obscuring the complex and real ways in which these machines are shaped by, and in turn shape, the world around us. As R.H. Lossin critically observed in e-flux in March, the “spectacular” mode of Unsupervised turns a heavily militarized, “environmentally devastating” surveillance technology “into something pleasing and even soothing.” Even its most radical inputs (which involve art that reckons with concrete subjects like race, protest, and death) are flattened in the process of incorporation— reduced to streaks of color, pure form devoid of history or politics.

Ultimately, this “generalized awe” lets Anadol elide the real stakes of data—which is deployed in everything from our judicial system to medical care— in favor of a hyper-formalist abstraction that seems content to simply have us stare in open-mouthed admiration at the power of these tools. In doing so, he engenders a noxious kind of spectatorial passivity, precluding us from engaging in deeper dialogue with this wholly alien machine. Rather than equip us with a new way of relating to or understanding these technologies, Unsupervised reinforces the false separation between their world and ours, shrouding this technology in a veil of mystery.

The MoMA, however, has several overlooked pieces in its collections that, similar to Unsupervised, engage these modern technological abstractions, but do so by grounding themselves to a tangible reality. 

As part of the ongoing “Systems” exhibit, for example, Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler’s Anatomy of an AI System unpacks the expansive networks of information and capital that goes into a single Amazon Echo. Where Unsupervised presents machine intelligence as an impenetrable Other, Anatomy pierces through this veil to lay bare its concrete, material basis— covering everything from the elemental composition of this technology, to the smelters and assemblers that bring it into being, to its integration within the digital ecosystem. Rather than show AI as something that sits outside and above our reality, Anatomy reveals the complex web of economic, environmental, and social dependences upon which its existence is predicated.

These physical imbrications are expanded upon by Wangechi Mutu’s “Eve” series, featured in the museum’s “Search Engines” exhibit. The work, according to the museum, realizes the “surreal results of an internet search” for the name of this (in)famous figure. In addition to cold steel and cybernetic networks, Mutu’s pieces heavily feature organic elements and fleshy forms that defy the distinction between the technological and the natural. Her works reject the idea that data lives in a cold, sterile, transcendent domain; instead she reveals it to be fleshy, embodied, and warm-blooded—something that both emerges from our bodies and fundamentally shapes our understanding of them. To this extent, Mutu’s chimeric works echo the writings of feminist theorists like Donna Haraway, who have long argued that questions of technology are inextricably bound up with questions of “who and what are in the world”—of how we relate to others and how we think of which identities and existences get to be considered valid.

The relational potential of data becomes a central focus in the Dear Data series by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec, featured recently in “Search Engines.” Where most works on data tend to be grand in scale or scope, the Dear Data pieces are small and personal—taking the form of weekly postcards sent between the two artists over the course of a year. On each postcard is a handmade “data drawing” which aggregates and visualizes one aspect of their lives (ranging from the drinks that they had, to the times that they smiled at strangers) throughout a given week. In contrast to the impersonal mode of a piece like Unsupervised, these data portraits are deeply intimate, rich with history— each one carefully drawn by hand and mailed via postal service. Lupi and Posavec subvert our expectations for what data can be, transforming it from a mechanism of surveillance into a tool for nurturing a relationship.

Though they might not have received the same scale of attention as Unsupervised, these pieces (as well as many others in the museum) offer an alternative way of relating to data that steers us away from blind faith or passive awe. By revealing the heavy material basis of these seemingly airy technologies, showing the ways in which data can shape our understanding of our bodies, and articulating the intimate possibilities of “small” data, these contemporary artists remind us that data is not some abstract truth that floats above the messy realm of human affairs— it is something that is birthed from it, that shapes it, and is ultimately shaped by it.

It’s only by appreciating and recognizing its deep entanglements within the world that we will learn how to successfully leverage data to its greatest potential, while avoiding its most calamitous risks. As data continues to become increasingly central to our economic, social, and political lives, we’ll need to follow in these artists’ footsteps by transforming this technological apparition into something solid and real if we’re to have any hope of grappling with it— of finally taming the ghost in the machine.

In November, the Virgin Islands reached a $105 million deal with Epstein’s estate. The territory then sued JPMorgan Chase in federal court for its 15-year relationship with Epstein in December.

Black’s settlement, which he agreed to pay in cash, came after a two-day private mediation to settle the claims.

As revealed in the dealings, Black paid $158 million to Epstein for tax and estate planning services before his death in 2019.

Epstein died by suicide while being held in federal custody on sex trafficking charges in Manhattan in 2019. Epstein allegedly sexually abused at least 200 women at his private residences in the Virgin Islands, New York, and Florida.

In 2021, Black stepped down from his position as chairman and chief executive of the private equity firm Apollo Global Management that he cofounded in 1990. An ARTnews Top 200 Collector, Black famously purchased a version of Edvard Munch’s The Scream. He also stepped down as chairman of New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 2021.

Black’s settlement with the Virgin Islands does not cover claims by anyone else against Black, and the settlement can not be used as “evidence of wrongdoing by Black,” according to the document.

Some of the money from the settlement will be used to fund mental health programs and to combat sex trafficking in the Virgin Islands, the Attorney General’s office told the New York Times.

Protesters with groups like Climate Organizing Hub, New York Communities for Change, and Reclaim Our Tomorrow came to call on MoMA to drop its board chair, Marie-Josée Kravis.

Kravis is married to Henry Kravis, cofounder and co-executive chairman of KKR, one of the largest private equity firms in the world, and a major stakeholder in the Coastal GasLink Pipeline. Henry and Marie-Josée Kravis are major MoMA donors whose names appear on the walls of the Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis Studio, where performance- and time-based art is shown.

The protesters handed out fliers with a QR code leading to an open letter that demands that the museum sever all ties with the Kravises. MoMA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“MoMA can’t claim to be a sustainable organization that wants to fight climate change but at the same time have a fossil fuel investor as the chair of the board, with their names on the walls,” said Jonathan Westin, an activist with the Climate Organizing Hub, as nervous looking partygoers passed by the small crowd of protesters stationed outside the MoMA entrance. “This is directly inspired by what Nan Goldin and other activists did to get to get rid of the Sackler name at the Met.”

Activist Roni Zahavi-Brunner explained that unlike publicly traded investment groups such as BlackRock, KKR is a private equity group, meaning it is not always beholden to public pressure or regulations. “There’s no one to keep them accountable,” Zahavi-Brunner said.

KKR’s involvement in the controversial Coastal GasLink Pipeline is another reason. Amnesty International reported that the Coastal GasLink Pipeline is in danger of violating human rights laws as they intimidate and harass peaceful protesters on and near the construction site of the pipeline, which has not yet been completed. Indigenous land defenders with the Wet’suwet’en tribe have attempted to block construction of the pipeline for years, claiming that the project violates their sovereign rights and threatens to pollute the land they live on.

One of the protesters rallied his fellow activists, making a connection between the state of the sky and the cause of their protest, saying, “we literally can’t breathe our air because people like Kravis are keeping the fossil fuel industry alive.”

Little more than a dozen protesters eventually marched around the block, where they set up outside the MoMA garden’s gate. MoMA security and police followed them, and by the end of the protest, nearly outnumbered them.

Once the protesters reached the garden gate, through which they could see the partygoers and hear the music, they began their chants again, shouting, “KKR, we see you, we deserve a future too,” “We need clean air, not another billionaire,” and “Henry Kravis you can’t hide, we charge you with ecocide.” Guests milled around, ignoring the protesters until MoMA staffers set up a screen on the other side of the gate.

Police asked protesters to stop using microphones and told them to move their DIY oil rig. They advised that “if you flip that over the gate, that’s attempted murder.” Westin responded, “We weren’t planning on doing that,” before shifting the rig over a few feet. Eventually, police told protesters they had one more warning before arrests would begin, which prompted them to quiet down and begin dispersing.

Activist Alice Hu noted that while police have been more aggressive in attempting to curb protests in the past few weeks, protesting at the museum felt safer than doing so in the lobby of KKR, where activists were quickly arrested.

According to the activists, Marie-Josée and Henry Kravis were at the party, which this year honored artists Barbara Chase-Riboud, Marlene Hess, Ed Ruscha, and Darren Walker, and featured a performance by the band MUNA.

“Look, I personally love the MoMA, but with the climate crisis threatening the future of our planet, this important institution shouldn’t be giving them the license to operate socially,” said Hu. “If I was at a party with friends and a bunch of people I was trying to impress, and people outside started heckling me, I’d leave!”

At the Sotheby’s Modern Evening sale next month, an oil painting by Edward Hopper, Cobb’s Barns, South Truro (1930–33), will hit the block with an estimate of $8 million–$12 million. That work is one of eight on the auction docket in May owned by the Whitney Museum of American Art, which is also selling pieces of lesser value by Hopper, Maurice Prendergast, and John Marin.

Yes, the Whitney is dabbling in deaccessioning, the institutional art world’s perennial bogeyman. Sell-offs have a tendency to evoke spite and bile among the art world’s old guard. But, for many, it is now just part of a natural progression. 

“We want to grow the collection,” Jane Panetta, curator and director of the collection at the Whitney, told me over the phone last week. “This is part of hitting that goal, and it’s a goal we’ve had for a while, really since the museum moved to its current location in 2015.” 

“The permanent-collection hang held following the Whitney’s move to the Meatpacking District in 2015, “America Is Hard to See,” was a catalyst that initiated the curators to look at the holdings anew, Panetta said.”

Panetta also framed deaccession as within Whitney’s founding principles, in particular its mission to show work by living American artists. Changing the collection is about acknowledging that the America of today is starkly different from what it was decades ago, much less a century ago.

“We’re always thinking about how one defines ‘the museum of American art,’ being mindful of wanting the collection to accurately represent the United States,” Panetta said. “We think that means the collection has to evolve. We have to try and close critical gaps, and having endowment funds for acquisitions is a key means to doing that.”

This is not the first time the museum has grappled with what it means to be an American artist. During Thomas N. Armstrong III‘s run as museum director in the 1970s and ’80s, an artist without a US passport or a green card was not considered a true American, and the museum even considered deaccessioning works by artists without proper paperwork. One near casualty of that rule: Japanese-born artist Yayoi Kusama’s 1962 Air Mail Stickers. Luckily, the rule was ousted in 1990. 

Among the most vocal critics of deaccessioning has always been the prominent industry group Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD). While the AAMD has no legal power, it can and has sanctioned museums that deaccession works for any reason other than bolstering their collection. An AAMD sanction essentially bans offending museums from loaning artworks, sharing resources, or engaging in other collaborative efforts with the association’s member institutions. 

Meanwhile, those in favor of deaccessioning, like San Francisco Museum of Modern Art director Christopher Bedford, are often considered radical. In Bedford’s previous position at the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA), he came under fire in 2020 for attempting to sell works, primarily those by white male artists like Andy Warhol and Brice Marden, for up to $65 million. That money was to be earmarked for “collection care” and to acquire contemporary works by women and people of color, thus freeing up other money for salary increases. The effort was abandoned after severe pushback from BMA board members, staff, and art critics. Los Angeles Times critic Christopher Knight famously wrote that the proposed sell-off made the museum “the leading poster child for art collection carelessness.”

(Bedford’s predecessor at SFMOMA, Neal Benezra, was also a deaccessioner, selling off a cherished $50 million Rothko from the museum’s collection in 2019.) 

One can’t help but wonder what Knight might have said to Alfred H. Barr Jr., the first director of MoMA in New York, who mandated that works in the collection that were more than 50 years old be sold to other institutions, so that MoMA could acquire works by living artists and stay, well, modern.

The writer Ben Lerner, whose most recent piece of fiction published in the New Yorker, “The Ferry,” touches on matters related to museum collections, has a theory similar to Barr’s. “A work of art or a library or museum collection or any significant form requires subtraction as much as addition, right? It requires omission, deaccession, etc., not just hoarding,” he said in an interview with the New Yorker.

Oddly, the 2020 Sotheby’s sale in which the Baltimore Museum was to sell those works also included works from the Brooklyn Museum by Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, and Claude Monet. And, while the BMA pulled its works two hours before the sale, the Brooklyn Museum did not. It wound up making around $20 million.

Both sales were possible because the AAMD relaxed its rules in April 2020 around the use of “restricted funds held by some institutions” in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. While the association’s rules didn’t actually change, the group placed a “moratorium on punitive actions”  and granted leeway for using “proceeds from deaccessioned art to pay for expenses associated with the direct care of collections.” 

The AAMD codified that policy last year, permanently allowing museums to use funds generated by deaccessioned art for “direct care” of objects in a museum’s collection, with specific criteria for what constitutes “direct care.” Selling work to offset operating costs or salaries is still taboo. On the task force that wrote the policy: Bedford, along with Glenn Lowry, director of the Museum of Modern Art.

For those keeping track: Lowry and MoMA kicked off the last major news cycle about deaccessioning this past September, when Sotheby’s announced it was selling 80 works worth approximately $70 million that had been on loan to MoMA since 1990.

Not everyone was happy with AAMD’s decision. In 2021 Erik Neil of the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk, Virginia, said to the New York Timesof the policy, “if you want to flip paintings, there are many other types of institutions where you can do that, and they are called commercial galleries.”

The Whitney’s deaccession plan may be in lockstep with AAMD guidelines, but then so was Bedford’s BMA plan, and we know how that turned out. The Whitney artworks, according to Panetta, are only from areas where the museum has “deep holdings, where we have stronger and similar examples by the very same artists—Prendergast, Marin, Hartley, and, of course Hopper.” The BMA argued the same thing about its Warhol holdings. 

Still, Panetta understands why the idea of deaccessioning works is considered verboten. “I think people get anxious with the deaccession because it seems to kind of undo that goal” of the museum being a “permanent steward of the objects that it collects,” she said.

While the Whitney plan doesn’t include a monumental work analogous to the Warhol that the BMA attempted to sell in 2020, Hopper’s name is all but synonymous with the museum. And while the painting going up for auction didn’t make it into the museum’s recent Hopper show, it did hang in the Oval Office during President Barack Obama’s tenure, which should at least keep the bid cards waving come May. 

As to whether the sale will generate a backlash, we’ll just have to wait and see.