Effects of the Great Recession on museums

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Art museums in the United States and the United Kingdom have been hit especially hard by the 2008–2012 global recession. Dwindling endowments from wealthy patrons forced some museums to make difficult and controversial decisions to deaccession artwork from their collections to gain funds, or in the case of the Rose Art Museum, to close the institution and sell the entire collection.

Such actions have prompted censure from Museum organizations such as the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council in the UK and the Association of Art Museum Directors in the US. These organizations charge that the actions of their members were in violation of not only their ethics code but also the core of their mission- to provide access to a fund of cultural heritage for future scholarship- by selling works to private buyers for purposes other than funding new acquisitions. Consideration of the dire financial state of these institutions, and the intensifying effect that any punitive action by an ethics organization will have on the finances of an individual museum, has fostered debate on the merits of deaccessioning.