Better an egg today than a hen tomorrow. On the implications of deaccess policies for donations to museums

Severe budget cuts in the cultural sectors of many countries havespurred disparate suggestions for alternative sources available to public institutions.Deaccessioning may be an option, although controversial, to guarantee the survivalof cultural institutions. This paper addresses the consequences that deaccessioningmay have on donations of artworks to museums, by developing a sequential gamewith incomplete information. We investigate the interactions between donors andmuseums, when the former is uncertain about the commitment of a museum not todeaccess part of its endowment in the future. Our analysis shows that deaccessioningmay reduce art donations to museums. Interestingly, public grants tomuseums cause a negative externality to a committed museum, which experiences areduction in donations. Results provide intuitions for the widespread resistance todeaccessioning of museum associations, for their efforts to enforce common regulationrestricting the use of proceeds to the acquisition of art, and also for theproliferation of private art museums.