deaccession

English

Etymology

de- +‎ accession

Pronunciation

• (UK) IPA^(key): /ˌdiːækˈsɛʃən/

Verb

deaccession (third-person singular simple present deaccessions, present participle deaccessioning, simple past and past participle deaccessioned)

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

   Synonym: deacquisition

   • 2000 December, Jeanne Schinto, “Obscure Objects of Lapsed Desire”, in The Atlantic‎^[1]:

     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.

   • 2010 June, John Freeman Gill, “Ghosts of New York”, in The Atlantic‎^[2]:

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

     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.

Noun

deaccession (countable and uncountable, plural deaccessions)

1. The disposal of objects in this way, or the disposed object itself.
   • 1974 March 31, Leah Gordon, “Trading a Museum's Treasure—a Very Hazardous Business”, in The New York Times‎^[3], →ISSN:

     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.

Antonyms

• accession

Anagrams

• accessioned