Freedman Gallery, Albright College: What happens when a college sells its art collection?

July 14, 2025

By Alexa Donovan

The Freedman Gallery (established nearly 50 years ago) at Albright College (founded in 1856 and located in Reading, Pennsylvania) was like many other campus museums and art spaces. Named after alumnae, Doris C. Freedman (Class of 1950),^{it was a gathering place for the artistically-minded at Albright, “presenting exhibitions ‘of consistent high quality,’” focusing primarily on contemporary artists.}

Freedman was the first director of New York’s Cultural Affairs and was the first director of New York’s Public Art Fund, in addition to other impressive accolades.^{The collection was built primarily through the generosity of Freedman (1928–1981), in addition to another major donor, New York gallerist and alumnus Alex J. Rosenberg (1919 – 2021).}

Every year, there was an exhibition highlighting student artists, and over the summer, local children and visitors had the opportunity to learn at the museum.^{Perhaps most noteworthy of all were the names that the permanent collection boasted: Louise Nevelson, Frank Stella,^{Romare Bearden, Salvador Dalí, Alexander Calder.^{The list goes on.}}}

Now, the Freedman Gallery is empty.

One day, a staffer of the campus gallery, which is located in the college’s Center for the Arts, showed up for work to find almost entirely empty storage shelves.^{He was told not to worry, but was then fired less than two weeks later.^{Now, when one visits the gallery’s webpage, instead of an address and hours, viewers are met with a lengthy statement, most importantly explaining that “Albright College has made the difficult but necessary decision to part with its institutional art collection. This decision, approved by the College’s Board of Trustees, reflects a commitment to aligning … resources with our core mission.”}}

So, what happened?

Albright College is a small liberal arts institution in Reading, Pennsylvania that was founded in 1856.^{The school has arts and science facilities, with typical liberal arts educational programs, offering B.A. and M.A. degrees.}

Despite its long-standing history, the college that graduated actor Kevin Bacon and United States Senator John Fetterman,^{is currently facing a financial crisis. Since the late 2010s, the enrollment of the school has been declining, with its 2023 enrollment of 1,652 students paling to only ⅓ of its 2010 enrollment numbers.^{This decline, in addition to other challenges, has the college in deep debt, facing a $20 million deficit.^{As a result, the school has been cutting academic programs, laid off staff, and filed an emergency petition to dip into its endowment for a loan. Although the Interim President Debra Townsley, in office since 2024, has since announced plans for new programs and athletic teams, the Freedman Gallery has unfortunately still gotten caught up in the institutional cuts.^{The collection has been offered for a public auction and the building will be used instead to showcase student and faculty art.}}}}

As soon as July 16, 2025, a large part of Albright’s collection is going to be auctioned online^{at Pook & Pook Inc.^{Imminently, 524 lots totaling 1,053 items are being sold, including works by Dalí, Calder and Lee Krasner, among many others. ^{The fate of the other part of the collection, according to an Albright statement, will be determined in collaboration with local museums to ensure that objects important to the area’s history will remain accessible to the public.}}}

On the decision to sell the artwork, the Vice President for Administration, James Gaddy, explained that the purpose of the sale was to “stop the bleeding” of money from the college.^{Stating that the art collection was “not core to [Albright’s] mission,” Gaddy said that the maintenance costs for the collection were too high to justify relative to the value of the art, and that the cost of running the gallery space itself, including staff, was high as well.^{Further, Interim President Townsley said “We are not a museum, that is not our business, and we don’t have the talent or the controlled environment for artwork.”}}

Unfortunately, the Albright College sale is not the first of its kind. Other universities such as Brandeis University in 2009 and Randolph College in 2014, among others, have sold their collections in order to raise operating funds.^{The closure of campus galleries and museums, in addition to subsequent sales of collections, according to Lynn Pasquerella, the president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, is not exactly new, but there has been an “escalation” of this pattern in the past few years.}

Despite the impressive names found in the Albright collection, the sale of the artworks is unlikely to generate a meaningful revenue for the college — likely only a few hundred thousands dollars, which is not much at all in the grand scheme of the college’s $20 million deficit.^{Especially in light of this fact, donors to the Freedman Gallery are extremely upset.^{Many in the Albright community, including faculty members, are also upset, though some members are more understanding.^{A joint statement to Artnet News by Freedman’s three daughters reads:}}}

We believe that Albright College’s decision to monetize the art collection of the Freedman Gallery is both shortsighted and counterproductive… When our parents donated funds to Albright to create the Doris C. Freedman Gallery, the donation had two purposes. The first was to honor our mother… the second was to create a space where the arts would flourish—a space for students and the Reading, Pennsylvania community to engage with the arts

Our family was never notified of the plan to sell key elements of the Freedman Gallery’s art collection to repay outstanding debt, and we are shocked that, absent notice provided by Artnet, we would not have any knowledge of the intention to gut the art collection, essentially alter the intent of the donation to Albright, and transform the Freedman Gallery from a thriving draw to the school into what will now become little more than a hallway.

While the Freedman Family’s anger and sadness is understandable, there is likely little that can be done about this decision from a legal standpoint. Deaccessioning, in this context, is to be understood as the process of removing an object from a collection.^{Deaccessioning is permissible — there is no prohibition to the activity, and, moreover, “courts appear to be reluctant to inhibit the discretion of trustees… regardless of whether the museum is a charitable trust or charitable organization.” ^{This is to say that the law generally does not get involved when those in charge of a museum’s collection — like the trustees of Albright — are getting rid of its objects. The exception to this rule is when an object is donated with legally binding restrictions, in which case a court may alter the deaccessioning plans.^{According to a statement released by Albright, there are no restrictions in place that would prevent the deaccessioning from taking place in this instance.}}}

Still, deaccessioning is not widely accepted, especially without appropriate reasoning. The deaccessioning of an object often leads to much public scrutiny.^{For this reason and ethical ones, there are widely-accepted best practices within the profession. The guidelines set by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), and the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG), prohibit accredited museums from “selling artworks to raise funds for purposes other than purchasing more artworks.”^{Failure to comply with these guidelines can lead to penalties, such as loss of membership, suspension, and condemnations from these professional governing bodies, which can gravely impact a museum’s standing and reputation within the art world, and more generally, to the public.^{This is because accreditation from these groups often signal an institution’s credibility.}}}

The Freedman Gallery is not a member of the AAM, so these best practice rules are followed on voluntary bases, if at all. In fact, in 2013, Albright, under its former leadership, developed a collections management policy, which stated that “Deaccessioning will be conducted according to the rules and regulations of the American Alliance of Museums’ standards. The Gallery may, as a courtesy, but is not required to (unless as a condition of the gift), notify donors, descendants, relatives, etc. of the College’s intent to de-accession the object.”^{But then, in 2024, Gaddy sent out an email to the Freedman staff explaining that the board had rescinded the Albright collection policy, and that the artworks would be sold. No such notice was apparently given to the past donors and benefactors.}

Since the self-imposed policy was rescinded ahead of the sale of the artworks, Albright did not break any rules, though certainly some of its choices and actions are breaking with conventions of courtesy. At the very minimum, it is clear that the Freedman and Rosenberg descendents should have been notified and a more palatable solution may have followed, which even Townsley conceded was “something we probably should have done up front.”

It could have been a nicer compromise for the Freedmans and Rosenbergs to have the opportunity to decide the fate of the art work. After all, it has been made clear that the sale is less about earning money, and more about taking an expensive-to-upkeep asset off of the struggling college’s hands.

About: The Freedman Gallery, Albright College — https://www.albright.edu/about-albright/buildings-facilities/center-for-the-arts/freedman-gallery/

Whether Albright notified its other alums with interest in the arts is unknown and unlikely. The scope of the auction house chosen to conduct the sale is also limited. Unlike one of the leading auction houses that can bring more and higher caliber collectors, the reach of Pook & Pook is certainly regional.

Finally, careless and wholesale deaccessioning can have serious and unfortunate market implications for specific artists. Introducing large quantities of works by the same artist onto the art market can shift the supply and demand of an artist’s available works.^{For example, Albright had a very sizable collection of works by Leonid Sokov (1941-2018), a Russian nonconformist artist, by way of Rosenberg’s coordination of donations from five individuals.^{Sokov immigrated to the United States in 1980 and had a few revivals in the early 2000, including a major retrospective at the Zimmerly Museum in NJ in 2013. Rosenberg, an adamant supporter of Soviet nonconformist works and messaging, made Albright a prominent collector of Sokov.^{Now, there are over 100 Sokov works on sale at Pook & Pook, making Sokov’s prices likely to go down.^{Whether Albright availed itself of services by an independent art advisor, or shopped around for public auction houses remains unknown. Typically museums that embark on a deaccessioning path consider how the sale of an artist’s work may potentially hinder their legacy and valuation.}}}}

It is a shame that Albright’s financial situation has come to this — for the students who are losing a valuable study collection, for the artists whose markets may be disrupted, for the heirs of donors who feel slighted, and for the art world at large, losing another great collection. On the bright side, some good affordable art is hitting the auction block, and it’s a buyer’s market. Pook & Pook invites all to “join us for hundreds of lots of posters, paintings, prints, sculpture, and more from an East Coast Educational Institution.”

Those interested in art law may be privileged to see how the auction plays out, and how the rest of the artworks are distributed.

Table of Contents

About the Author

Alexa Donovan is a senior at NYU studying Art History and Journalism. She is a recipient of the H.W. Janson Scholarship Award for her studies, which include extensive research on museum ethics, deaccessioning, and female representation in contemporary painting. Additionally, she served as the Arts Editor for NYU’s student newspaper, where she wrote about art censorship issues. Alexa is particularly interested in intellectual property law, artists’ rights, and museum collections management.