deaccession

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

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.

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.

The disposal of objects in this way, or the disposed object itself.

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.