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The Ames Library

Campus Art Deaccession Policy

A systematic, ongoing process of review and deselection is an integral part of managing any collection of materials. By critically examining our holdings we are safeguarding resources and providing opportunities for improving or enhancing the University’s collections.

The primary goal of this policy is to ensure that IWU honors donors’ wishes while retaining artworks that serve the needs of our community either through the curriculum or through exposure to different types of artistic expression. A secondary goal is to ensure that IWU is able to adequately care for the works it retains. Monitoring the risk of damage to individual items in large collections is time consuming. Establishing and maintaining environmental controls for more items than are needed by the campus is cost-prohibitive. Thoughtful curatorial practices reduce the risk of damage and lessen the cost of maintaining the collection over time.

Deaccessioning is a cooperative effort among relevant campus constituencies that ensures that works of artistic, historic or research significance are maintained or disposed of. The collection curator will convene a panel that consists of School of Art and Advancement personnel and use the rationale listed below as a guide. The panel may invite input from others as needed. 

The curator will submit written rationale for deaccessioning items along with disposition recommendations for review by the President’s Cabinet. The University President’s signature indicates approval. The document will be maintained with the Campus Art Collection’s records. 

Reasons for deaccession include:

  • Relevance – the work does not serve aesthetic, curricular, historical or research purposes
  • Risk of damage – the work is in a format that IWU cannot adequately preserve
  • Condition – the work poses the risk of damaging other objects in the collection, is in such poor condition that it can’t be stabilized, or is cost-prohibitive to have professionally conserved
  • Redundancy – the work duplicates others in the collection or is so widely held that cost of storage or care is not warranted

Disposition considerations:

  • The object must be free of all legal restrictions; no object will be deaccessioned when such action would be contrary to an agreement between the University and the donor. Reasonable efforts will be made to contact the donor, if living, when the donor’s wishes are not known.
  • No private sale or gift of an object will be made to University faculty, staff, board members, or members of their immediate families.
  • All proceeds from the sale of an object will be used for student support or to support the preservation and development of the University’s collections including, where appropriate, the purpose (e.g., artistic, reference, archival, etc.) served by the original donation. If applicable, any object acquired as a direct result of the deaccession of another object shall be noted as “provided by” the donor of the original object.

This policy was reviewed by Cabinet and approved by President S. Georgia Nugent on January 19, 2023.