Buffalo's Albright-Knox Art Gallery faces a revolt over the planned sale of pieces from its collection of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance art. (Sotheby's image via NYT)

The museum needs money to buy the contemporary art that has come to define its mission -- at least its mission as understood by the professional staff and governing board. People in the community, including members of the museum, want to keep the pieces, and have filed suit to stop the sale.

The good news is that people are so impassioned about the art, and the institution, and the place of both in the city. I don't know the details, and sometimes there is no going back when a fight goes public, but maybe there is a way to leverage this sense of ownership and investment by the community in a way that satisfies everyone. (Doug Dreishpoon, a former curator at the Weatherspoon Museum, is a senior curator at the Albright-Knox, but I haven't spoken to him about this situation.)

The Weatherspoon also has a couple of popular collections that don't jibe with a strict reading of its mission, although their relationship to contemporary art makes them a good fit for a university museum, and I don't see any intent whatsover to (as the delicate art-world terminology has it) deaccession them.  Missions do shift over time: the 'spoon has added pieces by non-U.S. artists in recent years. Disclosure: I am a boardmember and past president of the Weatherspoon Arts Foundation, which owns the collection; my comments on collection policy are mine alone and not made on behalf of the Foundation or the Museum.

Semi-related: the Weatherspoon (and UNCG) get a nice gift.