WHITE ELEPHANT PARADE

By Richard Woodbury/Denver

The museum was suffocating from generosity. Benefactors had given so many objects to the Denver Art Museum over the decades that it had to close off an entire floor of its seven-story building just to store the relics--everything from paintings, sculptures, furniture and jewelry to clocks, ceramics and borderline junk. At the same time that most of this largesse was pouring in, the museum's annual endowment for strategic art purchases was a miserly $40,000. It was famine amid fat. And so museum director Lewis Sharp came to a decision not just to cut the fat but to sell it. Says he: "If we display one or two Chippendale chairs, why do we need to keep all six?"

As other museums watched with interest, on Sept. 16 Denver auctioned off 1,500 items--to the glee of bargain hunters and the dismay of some descendants of the museum's benefactors. Says George Neubert, director of the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery in Lincoln, Nebraska: "What Denver has done is quite new and very bold." And lucrative. The auction raised $866,739.

"Deaccessioning," as museums call their periodic disposals of unwanted art, is a touchy and politically sensitive process that is traditionally done quietly and piecemeal so as not to offend donors of the jettisoned works or scare off potential benefactors. "There's a worry about agitating the public," says Neubert. The crowd that gathered at Denver's auction, however, seemed excited only about bidding up the prices. From the opening gavel of what amounted to a nine-hour garage sale, buyers in the museum's main hall sought to outbid one another on 630 lots that ranged from ivory figurines and a Flemish tapestry to a rococo revival cabinet and an 1873 Steinway. "I always wanted the thrill of owning a museum piece," said Denver Realtor Midge Wallace after acquiring an 18th century grandfather clock for $5,175.

The Denver Archdiocese bid on a terra-cotta relief of the Annunciation. It was unsuccessful, but picked up two early oils for the seminary library. "Everybody can walk away with something. If you keep your wits and don't get carried away, you can do well," observed Robert Delaney, an antiques dealer, on his way to pick up a bronze sculpture by Denver artist Edgar Britton, for which he successfully bid $1,700. Art dealer Charles Angelucci, on his cellular phone to clients as he bid, exulted over a Thomas Sully family portrait that he bought for $3,000. That was $2,000 under the estimate by Christie's, which conducted the auction and took a 15% commission off the gross.

Though the objects auctioned amounted to only 3.7% of Denver's total inventory, they ate up one-fifth of museum space and consumed one-fifth of its budget. Sharp's goal is to shrink the entire inventory a total of 20% in the next five years. "We're trying to bring the collection down to manageable proportions," he explains. "This has forced us to look in every corner. There are some things we had just forgotten that we had." It is a situation that most museums face. "Too many of them wanted to be mini-Mets," says Jay Cantor, Christie's director of museum services, referring to New York City's vast Metropolitan Museum of Art. "They took in everything they could get. Now they're being forced to rethink their missions."

The Santa Barbara Museum of Art and the Minnesota Museum of American Art are both looking at the idea. Santa Barbara, with everything from dolls and toys to pre-Columbian artifacts in its collection, has grown for 50 years without a major vetting. "Museums can no longer survive without weeding out," says its curator, Robert Henning. Explains Jay Gates, director of the Dallas Museum of Art: "Acquisition dollars are harder to come by, and art prices remain high. It's one thing to be given the endowment dollars, but it's another to have to go get them. [Deaccessioning] is one way to get the money."

However, certain sensitivities still must be catered to. Denver sent letters to every original donor it could locate, advising them or their relatives of the impending sale. A handful were furious at the low prices attached to family heirlooms. Denver art historian Ursula Works discovered that a sculpture by her father, donated in 1929, was being sold. Aghast that it was valued at a mere $300 to $500, she and her husband went to the auction and bought it back--not before fighting off others to the tune of $1,400. "We didn't want to see it used as a doorstop or sold as scrap," she said.

Most buyers, however, were happy. John Woodward and Karen Hall so admired the huge wooden sculpture that used to sit on the lawn of the museum that they bought it for $1,400. "You can't find such a monumental sculpture for that price," Woodward said. Now, however, the couple must assemble the 10-ft.-high, fan-shaped contraption and worry about what the neighbors will think when they erect it on their own lawn. "At least it is not obscene," said Woodward. Merely a white elephant with a new life.