Can works of art in museums be sold?
MúzeumCafé 6.
Loránd Bereczky, Director of the Hungarian National Gallery
The question is rhetorical since legislation concerning state property clearly stipulates “barred from transaction”. Museums are special institutions, the joint property of a community collecting, keeping, processing and displaying works, which are able to reflect the given community’s past and present. In this sense, museum work postulates the possibility of ‘selection’. However, this would not be su≠icient to prohibit sales. Far more important is to define what, when and to whom to sell? It is a big mistake to think that the art market would like to choose from and trade in the so-called ‘unnecessary’ items of art ‘gathering dust in storage’. The market seems more likely to want to deal in the outstanding works of permanent exhibitions, or more or less in that category. Understandably, that would be really profitable. A museum’s duty as a buyer is to be consistent, transparent and professionally authentic on the contemporary art market, and it should not aim to capitalise by pirating someone else’s task. In the case of old masters, the starting point should be that Hungary has always been a rather ‘draughty’ place. Apart from some rare exceptions, works of art were rather taken out of the country than brought in. I don’t believe that museums possessed many valuable works of earlier times which, so to say, would be ‘unnecessary’ in their collections. The most important thing is to stick with the law.
Zsolt Petrányi, Director of Kunsthalle
In Hungary the issue of a museum selling works of art should be defined in relation to the local art trade possibilities. However, an institution collecting classic works is di≠erent from one exhibiting contemporary objects. The reason for raising the question in connection with sales of a museum possessing classic Hungarian and foreign works is that sources to develop the collections would be generated, which could be assigned to purchasing new works of quality. For instance, with a bequest an institution often acquires objects which do not reflect the nature of its collection. These cases may raise the issue of a sale. The situation of institutions handling contemporary art is di≠erent. In this case, non-profit and for-profit ideas are not the same, even if the roles of such institutions on the art market are closely connected. The contemporary art trade in Hungary is rather uncertain. Non-profit institutions, such as the Kunsthalle or the Ludwig Museum of Contemporary Art, increase the artists’ prestige and professional references with their exhibitions. They assign their budgets to exhibitions held for art historic and not market reasons.