Remuseum’s mission is to help American museums matter to more people and thrive. A think tank focused on relevance, financial sustainability and governance, Remuseum periodically gathers museum leaders (directors and trustees) and others to discuss specific themes. 

In January 2025 Remuseum hosted such a convening in Austin, Texas, built around a simple question:

There is limited data on the total number of collection objects held by U.S. art museums. A 2018 survey by the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) reported that their (roughly) 200 member museums (representing most of the country’s largest art museums) held over 16 million objects at that time.^[1]

A consistent annual growth rate of 2% (which may be a conservative estimate ^[2]) implies that a number will double every 36 years. Applying that growth rate forward we estimate the collections of these same museums today to be at least 18 million objects in 2025, and we can infer that they would have held approximately 9 million objects in 1988. ^[3]

Museum Collections Growth

1988-2025

While there is little information on the size of collections, there has been even less research conducted on the costs of maintaining them. A 2002 report applied research from 1988 ^[4] to estimates of space devoted to art storage, with a formula supporting a rough estimate of the cost of storing 9 million objects in 1988 (based only on the cost of the square footage estimated to hold them) at just over $200 million. Based on a standard adjustment for 37 years of inflation, the equivalent cost in 2025 of maintaining those same museums’ collections would be about $1.1 billion.

Collection Growth = Cost Growth

Alternate Methods to Estimate Costs of Maintaining Collections
Museum Collection Cost Projections, 1988–2025

In 2016, SFMOMA opened its newly expanded building, adding over 100,000 square feet of gallery space. Combined with existing galleries, this brought the museum’s total exhibition space to 170,000 square feet for the display of artwork. Yet like most museums SFMOMA does not display more than 3% of the 52,000 works in its collection at any one time. The museum’s 12,000 square feet of storage at its downtown location and its 87,000 square feet of storage at its Collections Center in neighboring South San Franciso are largely at capacity, which has led the museum to lease supplemental off-site art storage which increases annually at a controlled rate. As a result, the percentage of SFMOMA’s annual budget devoted to storage and access costs is rising materially as more space is required for its growing collection.

To help address these issues, SFMOMA turned to its board-level Collections Committee, which advises on “the sustainability … development, refinement, use and relevancy of the collections in support of the museum’s mission and programmatic goals.” For the past ten years, the museum’s staff has partnered with the Collections Committee to develop priorities and policies related to collections care and access. This role has increasingly shifted toward addressing the museum’s limited storage capacity and advising on decisions around managing collection growth. The Collections Committee’s role complements, yet remains distinct from, the museum’s Accessions Committees, which are focused on reviewing and recommending new acquisitions. Together, this structure has uniquely positioned SFMOMA as a leader in confronting these issues head on. 

Museum staff and the Collections Committee have been evaluating the number of works acquired annually, and the amount of cubic feet required to store and access those works. Over the last 11 years, SFMOMA’s new accessions have required on average more than 8,000 cubic feet of new storage space each year. Recognizing that the space required to store and access new accessions is increasing – in part because the museum is acquiring a growing number of very large works – SFMOMA analyzes storage needs by tracking artwork sizes, from XXXS (needing less than 0.2 cubic feet of storage) all the way to XXXL (requiring more than 512 cubic feet of storage). As the museum continues to acquire very large works (XL and above), the average storage and access needs have increased from 5 cubic feet per work in 2018 to over 25 cubic feet per work during the 2023-2024 period. Although these XL-XXXL works represent a relatively small number of acquisitions, they now account for more than half of the storage requirements for new acquisitions, underscoring that object count alone does not represent the full measure of collections care costs for works entering the collection.

Because the challenges of responsibly displaying and growing a collection of contemporary art cannot be met only by increasing storage and gallery space, SFMOMA, under its Helen and Charles Schwab Director Christopher Bedford, is now developing strategies that will emphasize uses that do not require storage such as expanding loan networks, long term loans, and co-owning works.

Because there remain important reasons for museums to continue adding to their collections; and to store them responsibly; and to avoid selling them to fill budget gaps, Remuseum’s January 2025 gathering was structured not to oppose existing practices and standards but to explore creative ways to address them in new ways. 

It is good that museums around the country are tackling some of these questions and finding success, and this report serves as a digest of examples shared at Remuseum’s convening. We hope they will be useful to other museums and inspire others to find and share their own solutions that help more art matter to more people in more places.

Finally, a few thanks are in order. First to Jorrit Britschgi, Executive Director of the Rubin Museum of Himalayan Art, for the report’s title. In a conversation preparing for Remuseum’s convening, Jorrit distilled the idea underlying all of these case studies (including his own) into a universal goal of sharing “more art for more people in more places.” This report would not have been possible without the contributions of Robbie Stennet and her consulting practice, The Margin Release Group. Passionate about innovation, museum missions and art, Robbie helped organize and manage our convening and then helped me compile this report from the work shared in Austin. Neither this report nor any of Remuseum’s work would be possible without its Project Manager, Evan McMahon. Remuseum was launched as a project of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and its Executive Director, Rod Bigelow, is a constant source of support and wise counsel. Our hosts in Austin were Remuseum patron David Booth and Heather Pesanti; a more formal recognition of their hospitality (in an inspiring setting) makes up the final section of this report.

The planned Las Vegas Museum of Art – another institution, like the Frist, sprouting in a fast-growing city without a traditional museum – is following a similar model. Rather than build or acquire a collection, the Las Vegas museum has entered into a long-term partnership with the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) to borrow works (and curatorial expertise) from LACMA for the foreseeable future.

When museums began in the U.S., they had good reason to believe that acquiring objects was the only way to secure public access to great art. That is no longer the case, since museum collections have grown well beyond their ability to share it with the public. A greater need for many museums today is to find innovative ways to address unsustainable aspects of their own operations. In that context, being a museum without a collection is a model worth watching. It also reminds us that any museum’s success is defined more by the people it impacts than by the number of works in its basement.

For art museums historically focused on the acquisition and preservation of objects, owning objects has often represented their highest value. Museums continue to reflect this emphasis in many ways. They build bigger buildings to exhibit more of their “permanent” collections. Their annual reports are dominated by a list of that year’s acquisitions and gifts of art. The process that accredits them focuses largely on the diligence with which they care for their collections. Individual museums have long worked to build and maintain prestige collections, expanding buildings, professional resources and funding to support bigger and more valuable stores of stuff over time.

The emphasis on the museum-as-its-collection comes (as the Introduction to this report documents) at a cost. From storage space, climate control technology and curatorial expertise to conservation skill, packing and tracking logistics, insurance and security, the complexity and financial expense of taking care of material culture is on the rise and threatening to deprive other mission-related work. These resource issues are heightened by unprecedented levels of environmental uncertainty and natural disaster risk as museums around the country are being forced to consider whether their collections are prepared to withstand flood, fire and other existential threats.

As museums consider how to keep up with the pace of their growing collections, the traditional answer of expanding funding and staff to cover increasing costs may simply not be enough. Some forward-thinking leaders are taking a different tack: questioning whether individualistic growth and permanence should remain the goal of any single museum.

“There is pride and power to be found in sharing,” says LA County Museum of Art’s (LACMA) Executive Director Michael Govan. A collaborative spirit that challenges the legacy ideal of the isolationist collecting museum is finding traction in the field as diverse sets of organizations embark on innovative models of acquisition, ownership and care . Not only can cross-museum partnership reduce costs and balance the impact of resource burdens but it can also open avenues to new audiences, programs and interpretative perspectives, maximizing mission impact for all organizations.

Under Govan’s leadership, LACMA has forged a series of partnerships with regional museums. In 2011 it co-acquired artwork and archives from the estate of Robert Mapplethorpe together with the Getty Museum, and in 2018 it launched a partnership with The Autry Museum of the American West to share collections and curatorial resources.

2011 co-acquired artwork and archives from the Robert Mapplethorpe estate with the Getty Museum

Launched a collections- and curatorial-sharing partnership with The Autry Museum of the American West

In 2024, Los Angeles collectors Jarl and Pamela Mohn announced The Mohn Art Collective, a partnership under which nearly 300 works from their “Made in L.A.” collection of emerging regional artists would be co-owned by LACMA, the Hammer Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art (LA MOCA)—a collective known as MAC3. The Mohns are funding and staff a building where the collection can be stored and seen (when it is not on display in one of the partner museums or on loan to others), and they have created an endowment that curators from all three museums will collectively use to continue adding to this shared collection.

MAC3 is unprecedented by combining shared ownership on such scale together with ongoing purchases, binding the three institutions into an ongoing partnership and ensuring that more of this work will be seen by more people, in perpetuity.

Changing models of ownership changes the ways that museums work together, with results we are only just beginning to understand. In the LA Arts Community Fire Relief Fund (created by a coalition of major arts organizations and launched by the Getty Foundation to support artists and art workers impacted by the Los Angeles fires of January 2025), MAC3 was a lead donor. The three museums took their next collective step in February 2024 at Frieze Los Angeles, where they jointly selected two works (by artists Edgard Arceneaux and Shaniqwa Jarvis) as the first new additions to the MAC3 collection. Collaboration has its own magnetism, and MAC3 is now attracting interest from artists and donors who want to add work to this model partnership.

From left: Michael Govan, Director, LACMA; Zoë Ryan, Director, The Hammer Museum; Chelsea Hadley, Director, MAC3; Jarl Mohn; Erin Cristovale, curator, The Hammer Museum; Clara Kim, Chief Curator & Director of Curatorial Affairs, MOCA; Johanna Burton, former Director, MOCA; and Rita Gonzalez, curator and Department Head of Contemporary Art, LACMA

It has created a deeper degree of partnership between the two museums as well, including support for Fisk student internships at Crystal Bridges and current work on a joint publication about their shared collection, something that would not have been possible by Fisk without Crystal Bridges’ investment, or by Crystal Bridges without Fisk’s art.  Fisk has also gained capacity to focus on other components of its collections, including important work by Black artists like the university’s murals by modernist Aaron Douglas.

Rather than individual museums working to fund new acquisitions that they will store but rarely exhibit, partnered museums are able to plan collectively, borrowing not just art but complementary strengths; collectors and donors, in turn, can expand the impact of their gifts by knowing more curators are thinking about more ways to exhibit their art. Creating networks of museum partnerships can be especially powerful in regional geographies, allowing organizations, donors and artists to fuse resources for maximum public impact (and minimal environmental impact). Not only examples of collective ownership, such partnerships remind us that collaboration must be one of the next waves of innovation in a field that has often defined itself by individualism.

Image courtesy of Safdie Architects

The most valuable asset many museums hold is 
their permanent collection.

There are important reasons why museums do not treat their art as a financial asset, which collectively earned them an exception to general accounting rules (perhaps the only such exception for any American industry) that allows them to exclude the value of art from their balance sheets^[14]. This exception took hold in 1993^[15] and was grounded in the complications of updating art appraisals annually and in the fact that museums hold art for the public’s benefit and not for financial gain.

As we have seen, the growth of collections, and the not-very flexible norms and policies with which museums treat them, now generate a set of growing costs along with their many benefits. For several decades, policies that govern most American art museums have restricted the reasons for which museums may sell art and the ways in which they can use the proceeds: namely, only to buy more art, which ensures that funds invested in art will always remain invested in art, offering little or no relief to the growing costs of growing collections.

Those costs, and the lack of easily available options, has exerted pressure on museum operations and resulted in many of the innovations described above: innovations in the ways that museums acquire, own, and share art. It should not be a surprise that it has also increased attention on other ways to release the pressure from ever-growing collections by releasing some of the value in them: seeking innovations in the ways that museums tap the value of their collections for other mission-related expenses.

Because policies governing deaccessioning by the largest American art museums is primarily overseen by the AAMD, the first and most important such change was a 2022 modification of that policy by the AAMD itself, which now allows the proceeds from deaccessioning art to be used for both purchasing art and for providing “direct care of collections,” conforming AAMD’s policies to the policy changes made by the AAM in 1994 and FASB in 2019. The result is that proceeds from the sale of art are now supplementing many art museum operating budgets in ways that they did not before.

The AAMD’s definition of “direct care”^[16] was carefully negotiated while remaining broad enough for different museums to interpret and apply it in different ways. One respected art museum acknowledges in its tax filings that it is now funding 10-15% of its operating costs under its definition of “direct care.” Others express concern that allocating more than a very small amount of their budgets to direct care would violate the amended policy and/or subject them to severe penalties. This may represent a result that the AAMD sought, allowing individual museums and boards to adopt policies within its guidelines (and consistent with donor restrictions, if any). Perhaps because they are accustomed to more specific rules regarding deaccessioning (and very strict enforcement combined with negative public attention), some museums express concern that the lack of clearer guidance may advantage those that are willing to push the limits of the new rule and disadvantage those that are trying to comply strictly with the policy.

Before addressing proposed exceptions to the rule, it is worth noting that museums choose to adhere to these policies, which are not imposed by law. As for the FASB policy, it provides a safe harbor that allows museums to avoid an annual valuation of their collections for audit purposes. Since the rule’s creation, however, valuation techniques for every kind of asset have grown in sophistication and decreased in expense (and the number of other entities that regularly update the value of collections, for purposes of insuring them or lending against them, have grown greatly), and museums could always choose to place the value of their collections on their balance sheets (even without changing any other policies regarding regarding the use of proceeds from deaccessioning), thus avoiding FASB oversight over their deaccessioning policies.^[17] That would still leave them under the accrediting standards of the AAM and/or the policies of the AAMD, both of which are voluntary member organizations. Aside from professional standards, museums are ultimately limited by their own policies; the binding intent of donors who gave them artworks or other assets; and the laws of their states and the U.S.

Even when museums sell art to other museums, current policies require that the proceeds be used to purchase other art (or support its direct care) even though the artwork that has been sold remains in a public collection and available to public view. If the funds used to purchase the art were unrestricted in their use, this effectively doubles the burden (or benefit, depending on how you look at it) of the existing policies by restricting twice as much money in art as was restricted before.^[18] From an economic perspective, it is not clear how such a transaction – in effect, an exchange of assets between two similar public institutions – constitutes a “deaccessioning” if it is also consistent with donor intent and applicable law.

A leading arts consultant, Adrian Ellis, has in fact advocated for an exception to the current policies in the case of a sale between museums.^[19] As he states it: 

Museums have radically changed their missions from the time when policies on deaccessioning were created. Once centered on object-preservation, museum missions are now almost uniformly centered on public engagement.^[22] These changes were made and approved by the people ultimately responsible for the museum’s legal and fiduciary obligations: their boards. 

It is perfectly understandable that a field would develop and enforce policies grounded in the field’s missions at the time they were created. Museums now operate under policies that were developed when they were object-centered. As the bodies that directly govern museums (their boards) modify their missions (and modify them quite dramatically), it would be also be reasonable to propose that the policies governing their institutions be modified to reflect their new missions and the ways that they are choosing to measure their success.

One version of this argument is made by Daniel Weiss, former President & CEO of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in his book, Why the Museum Matters.^[23] Weiss writes that critics of revising policies on deaccessioning

“miss an essential point: respect for the processes of institutional governance, a bedrock requirement for all museum leaders. Deaccessioning decisions at The Met and most everywhere else – including smaller regional institutions as well as university museums – must be made within a multilayered review process, including curators, conservators, the director’s office, and the board, that is subject to considerable internal discussion, public transparency, and leadership accountability. The idea that deaccessioning decision must be subject to rigid regulation in order to reduce the risk of a slippery slope into ‘dependency’ ^[24] is disrespectful to museum boards and their governance processes.^[25]

“The AAMD deaccessioning policy would be most useful if it were to outline best practices with regard to collection preservation and to set broad parameters for institutional decision-making that can serve as guidelines for boards and museum leaders.”^[26]

Museum leaders and boards are trusted with the widest range of decisions regarding their institutions, within limits set by federal and state law and (often) under guidelines proposed by the policies and accreditation standards of the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and AAMD. It may be that the only policy that is fully removed from control by board governance is the policy on deaccessioning. As museums face increasing financial challenges and balance a devotion to objects with a devotion to public engagement, Weiss asks the not-unreasonable question why museums should not (constrained by many legal and procedural limitations) be allowed to determine the fate of their own collections.

Viewing accessioned artwork as a form of long-term capital serving the museum’s mission, others have suggested a way to loosen current policies consistent with that perspective, one that sees many objects in storage (but certainly not all) as assets that do not serve the museum’s mission. In the words of Glenn Lowry, longtime director of the Museum of Modern Art, “an object in public space or even in private space is better than an object in storage space.” Lowry described a modification of the policy that would allow the proceeds from deaccessioning – one long-term asset – to be exchanged for another long-term asset in a recent interview with fellow museum director Heidi Zuckerman: 

“Deaccessioning serves many purposes; it’s not just about money. . . .  [I]f you sell a work of art and you put the proceeds . . . into an endowment that generates income, I have no issue with that income supporting care of collections or beyond that, convert[ing] it into long term capital. . . . The future of American museums lies in their ability to have deep and substantial endowments that permit them to operate . . . and there are many different ways to build those endowments.

“A group of objects that are not used by the institution, that are not accessible to the public, [measured] against programs that serve thousands of school children or adults with learning problems or general audiences: I’ll take the program. ^[27]

“The current deaccessioning guidelines that American museums adhere to is grounded in an idea that the mission of the museum was to preserve and collect, interpret, and display. And I think museum missions have evolved dramatically in the last 50 years. . . . They are far more based on bringing art and people together, and in creating a public engagement around art and we have not adjusted our guidelines yet to what I think of as the new mission of the American art museum.” ^{[28] [29]}

Lowry takes the view that art has more life when it is seen, whether in a public institution or in a house. And museum assets are best used in service of museum missions.

A principal reason for rules governing deaccessioning is to protect donor intent, the stated or presumed desire of collectors who donate works of art to a museum that those works remain in the museum’s collection. As elsewhere, museums have great flexibility in this area, and can solicit gifts of art on terms that give the museum (on the donor’s terms) control over the object’s future. Donors could explicitly grant the museum permission to sell the work and use the proceeds for any purpose consistent with their mission, and some museums are beginning to ask their donors to do so. Even donors who want to see their art utilized by a museum they love (and to enjoy the generous tax deductions available for such gifts) may prefer granting the museum freedom to use its assets as it thinks best in the future.

Sometimes policies developed and enforced by trade associations implicate legal issues. A forthcoming article in the Yale Law Journal presents the possibility that federal antitrust law might apply to existing policies on deaccessioning. Against the assumption that antitrust violations always enrich monopolists, New York University Professor Daniel Francis (in “Post-Profit Antitrust”) argues that unprofitable trade practices may also represent restraints on trade subject to federal law. Francis argues that the AAMD’s policy on deaccessioning may represent a ”mission-motivated, but harmful” policy of horizontal combination that can be found to violate the Sherman Act. In Francis’ words, “The AAMD’s policy does not appear to be profit-driven, but it is a collective restraint on sales instituted by a significant group of market participants, likely to reduce output and increase prices. Its stated justification – protection of ‘relationships between museums, donors and the public’ ^[30] – would not be cognizable in antitrust analysis.” ^[31]

“The AAMD’s policy does not appear to be profit-driven, but it is a collective restraint on sales instituted by a significant group of market participants, likely to reduce output and increase prices. Its stated justification – protection of ‘relationships between museums, donors and the public’ – would not be cognizable in antitrust analysis.”

One way of looking at the AAMD policy shift and proposals described above is to recognize that requiring museums to preserve their ever-growing collections in perpetuity, without being able to access the value of the collections themselves, may be too great a cost for museums to bear. Other examples shared in this report, representing innovations in acquiring, owning and sharing art, represent one way to alleviate these burdens on museum missions. Releasing sales proceeds for other uses, or treating a sale of art to another museum as something other than a deaccessioning; or allowing institutional boards (regulated by law) to determine how to use such proceeds, may represent others. If museums and museums associations do not explore ways to balance policies favoring objects with policies favoring both public engagement and institutional sustainability, they will likely continue facing encouragement (as in the positions described above, and otherwise) to modify the policies themselves.

While art museums have articulated a clear line between their work and the commercialism of for-profit art galleries, this distinction was less clear in the early decades of American art museums, and it is becoming less clear today. In the past, many major museums made money by selling art by artists that might be in museum collections and even by leasing art from their own collections. Respected museums like the Museum of Modern Art and others ran sale/lease galleries, supporting their mission (and a growing base of collectors) by monetizing their curatorial expertise and collections.^[32]

As museum associations developed professional standards frowning on such commercial activity, the art market itself exploded, together with the role that for-profit art galleries play in the life of the museum. A field that articulates many norms disfavoring commercialism now allows art galleries and their own profit motive to permeate the field.^[33] Art galleries increasingly help organize and fund museum exhibitions ^[34], and they often offer for sale artworks exhibited on museum walls. Galleries also play an increasingly important role in shaping the development of museum collections, including by requiring collectors to give work by in-demand artists to museums in exchange for acquiring such work for their own collections. 

For their part, commercial galleries now act more like museums themselves, and a member of the public might find it difficult to distinguish between visiting a global mega-gallery like Pace, Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth and David Zwirner (which offer free admission and use their profits to subsidize exhibitions, restaurants, publications, libraries, and gift shops) and visiting a non-profit museum. 

Museums themselves have also found ways to promote market economics within their current standards. Curators regularly advise donors on their own acquisitions, without any promise that their collections will ever benefit the museum. Trustees can use early information on museum exhibitions and acquisitions as a guide for their own collecting, knowing that museum investment in an artist’s career is a reliable sign that the value of the artist’s work will later increase.

In this context, are there opportunities for museum to capture (and recapture) some of the value they have ceded to the for-profit marketplace without threatening their integrity and public trust? 

Museums have long charged fees to organize and share exhibitions with other museums, but such work almost never generates a profit. In the early 2000s, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art in Las Vegas (itself a partnership of the Bellagio resort and casino with a division of the Pace Gallery, then known as PaceWildenstein), was criticized by many for threatening museum standards while exposing hundreds of thousands of casino visitors to great art and earning the museum millions of dollars.^[35]
Museums have always engaged in mission-related businesses with the goal of earning a profit, including restaurants, gift shops and facility rentals, and they are increasingly looking for ways to leverage their assets in mission-related ways. If the division between “church” (the museum) and “state” (the market) is greater in articulation than in reality, and the biggest asset of most museums now lies in their collections, should museums consider borrowing lessons from for-profit businesses to share and even trade in art?

“If the division between ‘church’ and ‘state’ is greater in articulation than in reality…should museums consider borrowing lessons from for-profit businesses to share and even trade in art?”

As noted above, many museums sold or leased art directly to individuals and businesses until the recent past. Several museums already operate art fairs, earning a commission from leasing space and the sale of art by local, regional and national artists. Is it possible to imagine a museum establishing a separate, for-profit entity to trade in the value of art, including art from its collection? The museum could deaccession works to this subsidiary, which could rely on museum expertise to manage the sale of works in the secondary market, which often operates through partnerships between galleries, auction houses, and art advisors.

If museums can find new ways to generate net income by sharing more art with more people in more places, they will also have found more ways for their collections to support the museum’s mission.

Auction houses seek guarantors to offset their own risk in attracting consignors and to share the risk of uncertain results. Given that the TMA is already using its own expertise to establish the price it would be willing to pay for a given artwork, it has begun offering guarantees at that level for works it wants to acquire for its own collection. If the work sells below or at that level, the TMA acquires an artwork it wants at a price it has concluded is a fair use of its resources. If the works sells above that price, the TMA shares in the benefits through a guarantee fee paid by the auction house. In the strong art market of the last few years, without having offered the guarantee, the TMA would have lost out on several acquisitions and had nothing to show for it. In the same market, but with guarantees in place, the TMA still loses out on the acquisitions it wanted but can nevertheless generate fees from the outcome. When market conditions align, the museum’s cost center built around collection management and expertise becomes a profit center subsidizing those same mission-critical functions.

As other museums now explore their own capacity to follow the TMA by making auction guarantees, Levine is currently exploring other ways that a museum can responsibly engage in collection-related transactions more recently viewed as the domain of the market.

A place where art and nature inspire new ways of thinking, Paradox Cove is the Austin home of David Booth and Heather Pesanti. David Booth, a renowned entrepreneur, founded Dimensional Fund Advisors in 1981 and remains its Executive Chairman. A great benefactor of the two universities that shaped him (the University of Kansas and the University of Chicago), he is an art collector and patron who serves on the Board of the Museum of Modern Art and inspired and funded the development of Remuseum. Heather Pesanti is a curator with a distinguished record of creating exhibitions and publications at both the Albright-Knox Gallery (now the Buffalo AKG Art Museum) and The Contemporary Austin. She now serves as the Curator and a Vice President at Dimensional Fund Advisors, where she oversees a global art collection across 15 offices worldwide. She is a Trustee of the Chinati Foundation and serves on advisory committees at the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Harry Ransom Center.

About Paradox Cove, David Booth has said, “I want the property to be welcoming. . . . A desire to create joy and a sense of openness work together. [And] the art in my collection ties into my business philosophy: simple ideas, well executed.”^[36]

Remuseum has joined David Booth and Heather Pesanti in hosting two convenings at Paradox Cove for museum leaders. The case studies in this report were shared and discussed at a convening in January 2025.

Warmed by their hospitality and inspired by art in this extraordinary setting, museum directors and trustees have found time and connections to embrace uncertainty and possibility together, seeking new answers and ways to support each other and the field.

Photo by Casey Dunn

Footnotes

[1]  “Art Museums By the Numbers 2018.” Association of Art Museum Directors. https://aamd.org/our-members/from-the-field/art-museums-by-the-numbers-2018  

[2] Robin Pogrebin. “Clean House to Survive? Museums Confront Their Crowded Basements.” The New York Times, March 12, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/03/10/arts/museum-art-quiz.html 

[3] An estimate of 9 million objects in 1988 is also consistent with one of the few studies on museum collections, which placed the number of objects in all American art museums at 13 million in 1988. Since the roughly 200 museums in the AAMD include museums (like the Metropolitan Museum of Art) with some of the largest collections in the U.S., it seems possible that they represent a majority of that number (9/13 is 70%). If these 200 museums represented a smaller percentage, it would mean only that the growth rate in museum collections has been greater than 2%, which would pose even more serious concerns about the future.

[4] Ann Stone. “Treasures in the Basement An Analysis of Collection Utilization in Art Museums” Rand Corporation. 2002. https://www.rand.org/pubs/rgs_dissertations/RGSD160.html

[5]  Gretchen G. Bank, “Determining the Cost: Architect George Hartman’s Formula,” Museum News, Vol. 66(5), 1988, p. 74.

[6] Any estimate of the costs of maintaining collections needs to take into account the great variation in cost between types of objects, including the fact that works on paper can be stacked and stored at far less expense than paintings or sculpture. Some leaders in fact contend that the important role of works on paper in major museum collections means that the growing costs of collecting do not impose an unsustainable cost. For that reason, we have assigned a zero cost to 50% of the collections under this formula. Other evidence suggests that the role of very large objects, and those that impose highly specific maintenance costs, would imply that this framework is conservative, especially for museums that collect contemporary art. 

[7] This major American museum undertook a thorough internal analysis that identified all activities related to its permanent collection (under categories that included acquisition, deaccessioning, direct care, conservation, lending, and display) and all departments supporting those activities, and then evaluated all direct and indirect collection-related costs from each department. 

[8]  See Footnote #2.

[9] “Objects in museum storage in more danger than you think.” International Centre for the Study of the Preservation and Restoration of Cultural Property. https://www.iccrom.org/news/objects-museum-storage-more-danger-you-think 

[10]  The majority of art museum acquisitions come from donations. “Art Museums By the Numbers 2018.” Association of Art Museum Directors. https://cms.aamd.org/sites/default/files/document/Art%20Museums%20by%20the%20Numbers%202018.pdf 

[11]  The actual cost-sharing formulas is not identical to each partnership, but in general: the art sponsor  funds 75% of the cost to design and construct a new pavilion, and Art Omi Pavilions covers 25% of the cost of design and construction and all costs of land, shared facilities, and infrastructure (roads, utilities, etc.).  The art sponsor commits to rotating 25% of the art on display annually and Art Omi Pavilions provides some storage space to help the sponsor meet that commitment.

[12]  Private museums have increased in the 21st Century as collectors seek alternative (and tax-advantaged ways to ensure their art will be seen by the public. “Increasing Number of Private Museums Stir Debate in Art World.” Philanthropy News Digest, April 8, 2008.  https://philanthropynewsdigest.org/news/increasing-number-of-private-museums-stir-debate-in-art-world

[13] The Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA) has long offered other model of non-ownership partnerships, including the long-term loan of 105 wall drawings from the Sol Lewitt Estate and the partnership between the Hall Art Foundation and artist Anselm Kiefer to renovate a building for the “quasi-permanent” display of Kiefer works from the Hall’s collection.

[14] The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) allows museums to exclude the value of their collections from their audited balance sheet if they are held for the benefit of the public, preserved, and subject to a policy that restricts the use of proceeds from their sale to acquisition of new artwork and/or the direct care of existing collections. The policy requires that museums disclose their policy for the use of deaccessioned funds. FASB’s policy was modified in 2019 to include “direct care,” aligning it with the longstanding policies of the accrediting body of American art museums, the Association of American Museums (AAM).  FASB Topic 958: https://www.fasb.org/page/document?pdf=ASU_2019-03.pdf&title=ACCOUNTING%20STANDARDS%20UPDATE%202019-03%E2%80%94NOT-FOR-PROFIT%20ENTITIES%20(TOPIC%20958):%20UPDATING%20THE%20DEFINITION%20OF%20COLLECTIONS

[15] Paragraph 11 of FASB Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 116: https://storage.fasb.org/aop_FAS116.pdf 

[16] The new rule, number 25 in Professional Practices, reads as follows:

Funds received from the disposal of a deaccessioned work of art including any earnings and appreciation thereon, may be used only for the acquisition of works of art in a manner consistent with the museum’s policy on the use of restricted acquisition funds or for direct care of works of art. Direct care for purposes of this section means the direct costs associated with the storage or preservation of works of art. Such direct costs include for example those for (i) conservation and restoration treatments (including packing and transportation for such conservation or restoration) and (ii) materials required for storage of all classifications of works of art, such as, acid-free paper, folders, matboard, frames, mounts, and digital media migration. Funds received from the disposal of a deaccessioned work of art shall not be used for operations or capital expenses except as provided above. Direct care does not include (a) salaries of staff or (b) costs incurred for the sole purpose of temporary exhibition display.

“Membership of AAMD Approves Change to Deaccessioning Rule, Bringing Policy in Line with American Alliance of Museums (AAM) and Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB).” Association of Art Museum Directors. September 30, 2022. https://aamd.org/for-the-media/press-release/membership-of-aamd-approves-change-to-deaccessioning-rule-bringing 

[17] The J. Paul Getty Trust and the Broad Art Foundation, for example, both include the value of their collections on their financial statements.

[18]  The source of the funds used to purchase artwork should not otherwise change the logic of this argument. If this rule replaced existing AAMD and FASB rules regarding deaccessioning, what would matter most is whether the artwork remains in public ownership and available for public viewing. If funds restricted to purchasing art were used to purchase art, the restriction would be honored by the purchase; if the funds were unrestricted, they should not impose a restriction on the selling museum just because the art it sold had restrictions, assuming those restrictions would be honored by the buying museum. 

[19] Aside from the modifications in AAM and AAMD policy this rule would require, it might also require a modification of FASB policies, unless FASB agreed that the restrictions imposed by the “Ellis Rule” satisfied its rationale for leaving the art off the museum’s balance sheet to begin with.

[20] Donn Zaratesky. “Where were we (again)? (UPDATED).” The Art Law Blog, January 4, 2010. https://theartlawblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/where-were-we-again.html 

[21]  Nina Simon. “Instead of Selling Objects, Build Public Trust.” Museum 2.0, January 8, 2018. https://museumtwo.blogspot.com/2018/01/instead-of-selling-objects-build-public.html. In some ways, the “Ellis Rule” does put the object first, or at least prioritizes the object and its public ownership over the institution that owns it.

[22] “Museum Missions and Transparency.” Remuseum. https://remuseum.org/research-report-1-museum-missions-and-transparency/ 

[23] Daniel Weiss. Why The Museum Matters, Yale University Press. 2022, pp. 115, 116.

[24] Robin Pogrebin. “Facing Deficit, Met Considers Selling Art to Help Pay the Bills.” The New York Times, February 5, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/05/arts/design/met-museum-considers-selling-art.html 

[25] Some might question whether university boards, which have fiduciary obligations over an entire institution and not just its museum, might feel the same responsibility as a museum board to the sanctity of its collection and mission. There is widespread concern about (and a few examples of) universities forcing their museums to sell art in order to pay the university’s bills. 

[26]  If the AAMD did as Weiss proposes, the Metropolitan would still face the accounting rules imposed by the FASB. Interestingly, the change in the FASB’s policy was influenced by then-Chairman of the Metropolitan, C. Douglas Dillon, who contended that it was not practicable for the Met to account for its entire collection. As noted above, the decades since, innovation in valuation techniques (now enhanced by artificial intelligence) make it far easier to generate accurate and real-time valuations of almost any combination of assets, and the Met could choose to avoid the terms of the FASB’s safe harbor by including the value of its permanent collection (of approximately 1.5 million objects) on its audited balance sheet.

[27] University of California Professor Michael O’Hare uses the following example in a 2015 article: After using estimates of actual valuations of other museum collection to extrapolate a value of the Art Institute of Chicago’s art collection between $26 and $43 billion, he notes that selling objects constituting even 1% of that value (at least $260 million) could easily endow free admission to the museum, forever. The current admission fee at the Art Institute of Chicago ranges from $26 (for students, teens, and seniors) to $32 (for adults). Michael O’Hare. “Museums Can Change – Will They?.” Democracy No. 36 (Spring 2015). https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/36/museums-can-changewill-they/ 

[28] Heidi Zuckerman, host, About Art, episode 169, “Glenn Lowry”, June 3, 2025. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/169-glenn-lowry/id1493074491?i=1000710977822 

[29] Lowry’s argument, reinforced by Remuseum’s own research indicating that 90% of America’s 200 largest art museums now center the public (rather than the object) in their mission statements, reflects on that reality without taking a position on whether one mission is better than another. For most museums it simply represents a balance between missions, and many museums do still focus singularly on important missions of object preservation and research. Policies on the use of proceeds from deaccessioning long predated the AAM’s accreditation process and the change in FASB policies, and it can be assumed that most boards would continue to leave them in place. 

[30]  “AAMD Statement on Sanction of Berkshire Museum and La Salle University Art Museum” Association of Art Museum Directors. May 25, 2018. https://aamd.org/for-the-media/press-release/aamd-statement-on-sanction-of-berkshire-museum-and-la-salle-university  

[31] Daniel Francis. “Post-Profit Antitrust,” NYU Law and Economics Research Paper No. 25-11. Yale Law Journal volume 135 (forthcoming), pp. 22-23. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=5278760

[32] MoMA’s long history with commercial art activities, including art advisory services, is well documented in Prof. Natasha Degen’s article in Artnet “Museums Must Adapt to Survive. There’s a Right Way and a Wrong Way.” https://news.artnet.com/art-world/new-museum-models-op-ed-2498208. Degen contrasts commercialism in service to the museum’s core mission with commercialism that erodes it.

[33] Sebastian Smee. “First the megadealers conquered the artworld. Next up, museums.” The Washington Post, September 22, 2023. https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/interactive/2023/art-galleries-dealers-museums-power/

[34] Zachary Small and Julia Halperin. “This Spring, One Mega-Dealer Dominates N.Y.C. Museums.” The New York Times, April 27, 2025. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/arts/design/hauser-and-wirth-nyc-museum-shows.html

[35] Dan Glaister. “Boston museum under fire for ‘renting’ Monets to Las Vegas casino gallery.” The Guardian, February 16, 2004. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/feb/16/usa.highereducation. The Phillips Collection and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego also partnered with the Bellagio Gallery.

[36] David Booth and Heather Pesanti. Paradox Cove, self-published. 2022, pp. 24-26.