To Keep the Industry Alive, the AAMD Should Permanently Give Museums Freer Rein to Sell Work

Donn Zaretsky practices art law in New York and is the author of the Art Law Blog.
When the news broke earlier this month that the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) was relaxing its rules regarding deaccessioning, I half-jokingly emailed a friend: “It took a pandemic, but we finally won this argument.”
I had been arguing for years, on my blog and elsewhere, that the AAMD’s position that there could only ever be one acceptable use of deaccessioning proceeds (i.e., for t