When the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY announced the de-accession of more than 200 objects last November, it's a safe bet that they didn't know what would follow.

Given what their mission statement declares - "A clear and compelling mission to acquire, exhibit and preserve both modern and contemporary art." - the board decided to auction 207 items. With more than 6,500 items in their possession, the museum decided it would be in its best interest to auction what amounts to about 3% of the collection to raise money for the express purpose of acquiring contemporary and modern artwork. Not everyone agreed.

Robert Buck, a former Albright-Knox Director, told the Buffalo News, "When this stuff goes out of the public view, it's not necessarily ever going to be seen by anyone. It is definitely a public loss and I think beyond the institution much of it portends to be a loss for public access."

This past February, roughly a month-and-a-half before the first auction was to be held by Sotheby's in New York City, a small group of board members calling themselves the Buffalo Art Keepers - led by University at Buffalo Professor and Pulitzer winning poet Carl Dennis - decided to take action. The parent organization of the museum, the Buffalo Fine Arts Council, requires at least 5% of its 6,200 board members to be in agreement in order to call a meeting. With that in mind, the Buffalo Art Keepers began circulating a petition and before long they were able to reach the mark. More than 600 people showed up for the closed door meeting in Kleinhan's Music Hall on March 8 of this year. In a letter made available to the media, Albright-Knox Director Louis Grachos stated, "The loss of much loved objects from the collection is regrettable; however, I strongly feel the results of this de-accessioning project will be the single most important positive step we can make to insure our museum's growth and stability for future generations."

What exactly was said in the meeting is not known. Several days after the meeting, the museum announced the results of an advisory vote by members of the Buffalo Fine Arts Council-1,224 in favor and 428 against.

The need to be competitive While the Albright-Knox museum is internationally considered to be a first tier modern art museum, their endowment could hardly compete. Exact figures are not made public but, according to the blog Modern Art Notes and the Buffalo News, the San Francisco Museum of Modern art has an estimated $111 to $170 million endowment, while the Museum of Modern Art in New York City is working with an endowment estimated between $495 and $650 million. The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles is thought to have a whopping $5.8 billion endowment. The Albright-Knox museum had a $59 million endowment, only $22 million of which is earmarked for new acquisitions. The museum publicly stated it expected at least $15 million from the de-accession, which would go directly into the fund for new acquisitions.

"The de-accessioning project will mean we'll still be in the position in the future to move quickly to acquire important work by artists that we feel are really key to the collection," argued Grachos.

The Buffalo Art Keepers didn't agree. They met with the Buffalo Common Council and the Erie County Legislature to express their concerns. Just before the Buffalo Fine Arts Council meeting they filed a request for a preliminary injunction to attempt to prevent the sale. Richard Stanton, an attorney representing the Buffalo Art Keepers, told the Buffalo News that the group intended, "to protect the membership interest in the collection." With the first auction scheduled for March 20, the case quickly made its way to State Supreme Court Justice Diane Y. Devlin. The Buffalo Art Keepers argued that the sale was an illegal misappropriation of the museum's assets and that it also violated the wills of those who had donated some of the items being sold. The museum argued that the Buffalo Art Keepers didn't have legal standing. Attorney's for Sotheby's were present and argued that both Sotheby's and Albright-Knox would stand to lose hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in advertising and publicity costs that had already been spent.

On March 16, Justice Devlin threw out the legal challenge, finding that the sale would not cause irreparable harm to the museum's collection. She further stated that the Buffalo Art Keepers had failed to, "at least show a reasonable probability of success on the merits." She also criticized the suit for being filed so close to the first auction date.

"So many beautiful things are being lost to us and lost to children and others who won't have options," Dennis said, expressing his disappointment. "The whole point of this was to allow some discussion. Send this to a mediator in order to delay the sale of some of the strongest items."

The Sale

The first auction, consisting of Asian art, was held on March 20 and netted the museum $16.1 million. The $4.85 million selling price for a large ancient Chinese sculpture of a chimera was the most anyone has ever paid on record for a Chinese stone sculpture.

Having beaten the estimate for the entire de-accession on the first day, the museum released a statement in which Grachos stated, "We are glad to know that the future just got brighter for our institution and for the arts in Buffalo." The entire de-accession, which took place in a series of auctions from March 20 to June 8, and included Indian, Southwest Asian, African, Oceanic, Pre-Colombian, Chinese and American Indian items, netted the museum a total of $67.2 million. This includes the highly talked about 'Artemis and the Stag,' a late Hellenistic/Early Roman bronze depicting the goddess Artemis on a hunt with a stag. The bronze netted the Albright-Knox $25.5 million and set the record for the most expensive sculpture and antiquity ever sold at an auction. This brought the museum's total fund for acquiring new art to $90 million. Under the museum's bylaws, this special fund can be drawn from at a rate of 5% per year. Due to investing, the endowment is expected to double about every 10 years. "Over the next 20 to 30 years, the odds are that it will be significantly larger than it is today," Buffalo Fine Arts President Charles Banta told the Buffalo News. "That is why we've said all along that the sale was not being done for the benefit of Louis Grachos or the current board or curatorial staff as much as for future generations."