The New Forest (1939)
Over recent months we been contacting all the public galleries that hold Richard's works to clarify the answers to various administrative questions before the catalogue's public launch. When reviewing the entry for the Museum of Modern Art, New York, we discovered that their Eurich, The New Forest (1939), has been taken out of their collection.
We enquired further and have now been given more details. MoMA have always had a "deaccession" policy, whereby they sell on works that no longer fit into their primary goals as a museum. The income can only be used to help pay for new works. Sales of paintings from their collections helped MoMA acquire Piccasso's 'Demoiselles d’Avignon' and van Gogh's 'The Starry Night' for example.
It appears that "deaccession" is used more in the USA than in Europe as a means of funding new acquistions. The practical and ethical considerations around this way of raising funds are sometimes controversial, especially when there is pressure to sell works to help pay for running costs of a museum or gallery, which is not the case at MoMA.
Although no longer part of the collection 'The New Forest' is still with the gallery (June 2022) while a sales location and date are arranged.
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Richard's famous painting Withdrawal from Dunkirk, June 1940 headed the Britain at War exhibition at MOMA in 1940.
