Developments on two fronts in recent days.
First off, just a week after announcing that it had spent $10 million to purchase The Milliners, a circa 1898 oil painting by Degas, the St. Louis Art Museum has dropped the other shoe — it’s putting up for auction at Christie’s ten works from its collection. Blogger Tyler Green had the story first two days ago.
I have no problem with the general idea that museums must sometimes deaccession lesser works in order to acquire important new ones. It’s a case by case question of balance between what’s lost and what’s gained. In this instance, though it owns pastels and sculpture by Degas, the St. Louis Museum owns no other Degas oil. And while a relatively late canvas like The Milliners may not be as ground breaking as some of Degas’s earlier reconfigurations of form, his later canvases, with their increasingly abstracted figures, are a bridge of sorts between Post-Impressionism and Matisse.
What remains to be seen is how important are the works that the Museum will now be selling. It’s a list with some notable names, including Renoir, Braque, Cassatt and Matisse. Hmmm.
In other news, there’s this — the Washington Post has run its long-in-the-works piece on the possible sale of art from the Maier Museum at Randolph College. The story doesn’t break any new ground, but it’s useful for its details on the school’s cash flow.