ABOVE: Detail from Marc Chagall’s The Juggler (1943), which is to be sold by the Chicago Art Institute to raise needed cash.

A rash of museum sales in the U.S. are coming in the next few months, as institutions with depleted endowments and cashflow problems sell off some of of their collections. The New York Public Library touched off this little wave earlier in the year when it sold almost 20 works in order to raise money for their primary mission of collecting books. Now, the Met, the MoMA, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art all have dates at the auction block to help clean out their closets.

Art experts, the New York Times notes, are unhappy with the development, since museums have in the past gambled and lost when they reckoned which works in their collection would be important in the future. It’s also a problem for donor relations: Aunt Flo might be pissed that you re-gifted that basket of bath salts she gave you, but imagine if she’d given you a Modigliani and a few years down the road you sell it for cash. One word: Tacky! And yet, we’re not against these sales, when it comes down to it; The NYPL decided, quite sensibly, that their business is books, not paintings, and are selling their collection to people who will care for them properly. And the first director of the Museum of Modern Art, Conger Goodyear, claimed from the beginning that the museum’s collection “would have the same permanence as a river,” perpetually reflecting the changing mores of modern art, instead of a tomb for paintings. Also, the art market is totally peaking right now, so sell while the selling’s good, we say.

LINK: New York Times > Museums Set to Sell Art, and Some Experts Cringe