Batimore museum selling major works to buy cutting edge contemporary art

Artnet - Lots of museum leaders talk about wanting to diversify their collections. Christopher Bedford, the director of the Baltimore Museum of Art, is actually doing it—though not everyone may agree with his tactics.

Next month, the museum is due to sell off seven works from its collection by Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and other 20th-century titans. The proceeds from the sale of these works by white men—a sum that could exceed $12 million—will be used to create a “war chest” to fund future acquisitions of cutting-edge contemporary art, specifically by women and artists of color.

Bedford says the move will be “absolutely transformative” for a collection that has woefully underrepresented artists of color, and African American artists in particular. It also comes at a “historically significant moment,” he says, “in that the most important artists working today, in my view, are black Americans.”