Baltimore Museum to Sell 3 Blue-Chip Paintings to Advance Equity

THE NEW YORK TIMES 

By Hilarie M. Sheets

Andy Warhol’s “The Last Supper” (1986) is being offered by Sotheby’s through private sale.Credit...The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Licensed by Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

As museums face increasing financial pressures and industrywide demands from staff to create more equitable workplaces, a second institution is taking advantage of the Association of Art Museum Directors’ temporary pandemic-era loosening of its deaccessing guidelines: They now allow the selling of art from museum collections to fund the direct care of collections — not just the acquisition of other artworks. The Baltimore Museum of Art is deaccessioning three paintings, by Brice Marden, Clyfford Still and Andy Warhol, and expects to receive approximately $65 million from a combination of an auction and a private sale at Sotheby’s in the next several weeks. [More]