When the Denver Art Museum reopens the seventh floor of the Ponti building on Feb. 21 as galleries for historic Western art, paintings at the heart of a national discussion will be on view publicly for the first time in months.

And while it's great that the museum is putting more art on view, officials have learned that being innovative can have a downside.

Last April, the museum announced it had bought, with businessman Phil Anschutz's Anschutz Collection, Thomas Eakins' Cowboy Singing, from the Philadelphia Museum of Art. In turn, the museum agreed to share ownership of its noted Charles Deas painting Long Jakes with the Anschutz Collection.

With that came the agreement to shuttle the pieces between the Denver museum and the Navarre, the very private home of the Anschutz Collection. They are to stay on the Denver museum's seventh floor through 2009.

The DAM referred to a portion of the horse trade as a deaccession - the dreaded D-word - and that, among other things, raised eyebrows across the country. That included those of the American Association of Museum Directors, which represents 180 museum directors in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

It is common wisdom and ethical practice that when a museum sheds a piece of art, called deaccession, proceeds are to go toward an acquisition or a fund for that purpose - not to pay the light bill or cover payroll. In this case, the deal was a split with a private collector, a fractional situation not included in the association's guidelines.

On Feb. 5, the association issued a statement on what it called "this unusual transaction." On one hand, the association noted "that all parties carried out this transaction in good faith and all sought to deal effectively with the complexities such a transaction entails."

On the other hand, the association warned members away from the practice, for now: The group's board "strongly encourages member museums not to employ fractional deaccessions as a method of collections development" because of the "very complex issues and considerations."

Are they ever. And to deal with them, the association will review and revise its guidelines to address "the issue of partial deaccessioning to private parties."

Apparently, this type of transaction is a first.

Denver Art Museum director Lewis Sharp says he and his staff carefully considered giving up half ownership of the Deas painting to a private collector in order to acquire half of the Eakins with Anschutz's help. The Philadelphia Museum was selling Cowboy Singing to keep Eakins' masterly Gross Clinic in that city, and now co-owns it with the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Sharp says he wouldn't do it again, mainly because he doesn't expect this type of situation - the possibility of acquiring a much-desired and pricey (think a range of $8 million to $15 million) painting - to come his way again. The museum has no acquisition budget per se.

"The chances of this happening (again) in my lifetime are rare."

Besides: "They're not saying don't do it, but they discourage it until they have guidelines," Sharp said this week. "(But) I would not in the future use an accessioned object to acquire a future object."

There was ambivalence in his voice, and concern. "I would never do anything to the collection to compromise it. This has not been a happy situation for me."

How could it be? Yet it has forced the museum and the association to talk about this new breed of fractional transactions, and for the association to decide where it stands on this approach to collecting.

Because the collection is key.

"Art in North American museums literally belongs to the public," says Dan Monroe, executive director of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. He is on the AAMD board and chairman of its art issues committee.

"To look at art owned by the public as a bank full of fungible assets is wrong," he said. "It's a principle upon which there can be no latitude."

Monroe said that discussions with Sharp had been thoughtful. But he called Denver's approach "a path that is extremely tricky, a new path fraught with complexity."

After all, stewardship is at issue. "Art is durable. It lasts. It's one of the primary ways we know of human history. It is critical to preserve it once it comes into public hands."

The Deas and Eakins paintings are all about beauty and historical reference. But they've taken on another life, too, in two homes.

Chandlerm@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-2677

Deaccession decoded

* The Rose Art Museum: Brandeis University president Jehuda Reinharz announced Jan. 26 the school was facing a budget crisis. Without telling the museum director, the university board voted to close the self-supporting museum in Waltham, Mass., and sell a 6,000-piece collection heavy on contemporary work and reportedly valued at $350 million. Support for the Rose has grown, as the uproar continues.

* National Academy Museum: In December the 183- year-old institution in New York announced it had sold two paintings (Sanford Robinson Gifford's Mount Mansfield, Vermont, and Frederic Edwin Church's Scene on the Magdalene) for more than $13 million in order to stave off what its director called "dire financial straits" (that is, closure). The institution had alerted the American Association of Museums and the Association of Museum Directors of the planned sale. The AAMD responded with sanctions: Other museums are not allowed to lend works to the academy or collaborate on shows, a real blow.

* The University of Iowa: Last August, it surfaced that the school in Iowa City had asked a major auction house to put a value on Mural, the 1943 Jackson Pollock painting given to the school's Museum of Art in 1959 by Peggy Guggenheim. That raised immediate questions about whether the school was eyeing a sale of the piece (worth some $150 million) to help pay for repairs caused by severe flooding. Apparently, for now, the university has backed off.

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