GMOA in the News

We would be remiss if we failed to mention the fact that, in a recent Wall Street Journal article titled "How to Sell a Museum Masterpiece," our director, William U. Eiland, was quoted. The article, by Daniel Grant, focuses on the criticism directed at the Orange County Museum of Art's recent sale of 18 California Impressionist paintings to a private collector in Laguna Beach, not, in this case, because of their being deaccessioned at all (procedures were followed there), but because of the way in which they were sold. The guidelines set forth by the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), for which Eiland chairs the professional issues committee, do not require sale at public auction, and every situation is different, but, as Eiland put it, "At auction, there is no gerrymandering the price, no hocus pocus." We recommend you read the article, which is useful in the way it explains one of the many thorny issues of museum ethics, and we extend a high five to our fearless leader.