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As a professional with 25 years experience in the art world, I find Ms. Lee Rosenbaum's continual harping about how "controversial" deaccessioning is as something that promotes her blog-based credentials more than it enlightens the discussion about funding, collecting, and support for cultural institutions.

You can read the entire list of Montclair's controversial deaccessions on my CultureGrrl blog, here: http://www.artsjournal.com/culturegrrl/2009/04/updates_on_montclair_deaccessi.html

And here's a report and analysis of what's controversial about those sales: http://www.artsjournal.com/culturegrrl/2009/04/montclair_disposals_aamd_condo.html

Brian-

You should have asked about the salaries that the top administrators of these not-for-profit institutions receive. There have been no cuts in salary and bonus at the top while these institutions receive taxpayer dollars and have asked there workforce to make big sacrifices.

I really like that the American galleries are arranged and hung the way they are at the Brooklyn Museum - I find the Eakins portraits reinvigorated by its juxtaposition to a Sherman. If art is timeless then comparisons like this can only add meaning.

What is frustrating to me about the BMA is that the ta da of the installation (painted wall murals, overly designed cases, hard to read color contrast on labels) often overshadows the experience of the art.

The "dumbing down" argument is often used to broadly attack this institution so I don't ascribe to it (hello, Guggenheim and motorcycles - all NYC institutions do this type of thing in search of a buck and a new audience). But there is a more nuanced argument to made about curatorial vs. design vs. education vs. community efforts.

This was an informed conversation on an important topic. I only wish it could have been longer. Am very much looking forward to the "Cezanne and American Modernism" exhibition at the Montclair Art Museum.

So The Brooklyn Museum is struggling even though they have pandered to the lowest common denominator. Perhaps if they had stayed the course as a serious museum their members and loyal patrons might have stayed with them. Unfortunately under Mr Lehman it has been bread and circuses. Silly shows like comic books and Star Wars props and the awful displays-walls painted in royal blue and fire engine red with gold zigzgs- very 70s super graphics. Add to that, tossing out scholarship and tossing all sorts of missmatched stuff together- Cindy Sherman photos hanging next to Eakins portraits. Crude. Maybe to mis-paraphrase H.L. Menken's famous quote- "somebody is going broke underestimating the taste for the American people".

Montclair Museum
they buy contemporary junk by fashionable artists

Brandeis is embroiled in a huge controversy over plans to sell a part of the collection in the Rose Museum. The Rose family is enraged as are many faculty and students.

My girlfriend thought the splayed tape piece would have have been kind of nice as decoration for a corporate lobby.

In January I had to travel to Portland Maine to see the terrific collection of American and French Impressionism frm the Brooklyn Museum. The woman at the desk (at the Potland Museum) said that numerous people had complained that they too had to do the same thing. I live only minutes away from the museum but I avoid going there because it's too depressing. I had some favorites by LaFarge, Boudiin, Monet, Diebenkorn etc that I liked to drop in on. Now? In hiding. And the Brooklyn Museum had the foresight to buy numerous Sargeant watercolors from a show he had at Knoedler Gallery back before the turn of the last century. In hiding. And they were early in acquiring Ashcan School paintings. Yep you guessed it. You can kind of get a glimpse of some really good paintings in the cage in the back of the 5th floor where they store all the good stuff. But they do have one huge rotunda (where the Rodin sculptures used to be) that is empty except for some black tape splayed around the walls. Nice use of the space.