2. The Museum Will Not Sell Any Works By Living Artists

Photograph by Ben Gancsos ©2016 via Whitney Museum

The Whitney Museum has a policy not to sell artwork by a living artist in case it would negatively impact the artist’s career, but it has a policy in which works can be acquired through exchanges. This policy states that exchanges “may take the form of trading with a living artist or with the estate of an artist gallery or other source.”

Any works from the Permanent Collection that are to be acquired need to go through an intense deliberation with the Curatorial Committee. To add to that, the object being exchanged needs to be deaccessioned, or removed in an official capacity. The object coming in to replace the deaccessioned work needs to go through a heavy screening process by the Curatorial Committee, the Committee on Collection, and then ratified by the Board of Trustees in order to be approved.