deaccession

present singular third person deaccessions · participle present deaccessioning · participle past deaccessioned · past deaccessioned

1. To officially remove an object from a ledger of a museum, art gallery or library so that it may be sold or disposed.

   The second is an unwritten rule that when a museum deaccessions a picture, the money should be used to purchase art only of the same period.

   2010, Don Thompson, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark, Aurum Press Limited, →ISBN

   2 more examples

   Perhaps he forgets that museums, too, have basements full of stored art, and not every piece is equally adored. The temptation must be great to “deaccession” some of it, and museums often do succumb.

   2000 December, Jeanne Schinto, “Obscure Objects of Lapsed Desire”, in The Atlantic

   Over the past few years, the museum has quietly begun deaccessioning—the genteel art-world euphemism for “getting rid of”—large numbers of its city artifacts.

   2010 June, John Freeman Gill, “Ghosts of New York”, in The Atlantic

   Synonyms: deacquisition

plural deaccessions

1. countableuncountableThe disposal of objects in this way, or the disposed object itself.

   At the last board meeting, trustee Edmund Carpenter moved to clamp down on private trades. All deaccessions, he proposed, should go to other museums, or failing that, to public sale with full disclosure of records and documentation. The motion failed to get a second and there the matter died.

   1974 March 31, Leah Gordon, “Trading a Museum's Treasure—a Very Hazardous Business”, in The New York Times, →ISSN

   Antonyms: accession