Opinion: Delaware Museum’s Art Sale Sets Dangerous Precedent

The Delaware Art Museum’s planned sale of works to pay down millions of dollars in debt and bolster its endowment will ultimately weaken rather than strengthen the institution, a leading museum executive writes in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece.

The Wilmington institution’s trustees “seem not to have understood their broader responsibility to care for all of the museum’s assets—most significantly, its collection,” says Timothy Rub, head of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and a former president of the Association of Art Museum Directors.

The Delaware museum announced in March that it would auction four works expected to raise $30-million. Board members said the institution, struggling with nearly $20-million in construction debt, faced closure without the cash infusion. The first of the four pieces, a painting by the English artist William Holman Hunt, goes on sale Tuesday.

With many museums still feeling the effects of the recession and the art-market now booming, “we have good reason to be concerned that others will follow the same path,” Mr. Rub writes.