A number of museums-including MoMA, Harvard and the Hirshhorn-are currently selling art from their collections. Expect more! Because of the whattaya-call-it. The recession thing. As a bonus, this is where art people get crazy.

The art world has been in a catty go-round about this for some time now. It is pretty high-pitched. In the New Financial Reality, as the magazines call it, ethics are going to be seriously tested-and there will be lots of shrieking and arm-flapping!

For laymen, the Association of Art Museum Directors maintains guidelines regarding in what situations museums can sell off art. Currently, their opinion is that "Proceeds from a deaccessioned work are used only to acquire other works of art" and may never be "used as operating funds, to build a general endowment, or for any other expenses."

Also, the deaccessioning must be intended to improve the quality, scope and general all-around goodness of the collection.

Thing is: the second is easy to prove; the first is easy to fake.

Sure, so you stuff the auction proceeds of whatever you sell off into the fund for buying new art. That's particularly easy if you stop shoving new donor or endowment money into the acquisitions fund, and use that money instead for operations. (Which isn't doable in all situations-restricted funds, etc.-but.)

So what's going to happen in the next year is that cash-strapped museums are going to have to choose between the high road and the "keep the lights on" road. In today's Wall Street Journal, the Montclair Art Museum writes that "Deaccessioning for acquisition funds, linked with the pressures put on our endowment by the market, has certainly created a complicated combination of circumstances."

One of those complicated circumstances is that when museums start selling off art, donors stop donating. Oops.

But only if they haven't stopped already, since Bernie Madoff already prompted the liquidation of many people's home furnishings. I'm reminded of the Kenneth Noland that was in a booth at the Armory Art Fair a few months ago, a gorgeous long thin stripe painting that was going for not very much money at all, somewhere around the mid-high five figures. (There's another for sale next month.) That one had been in someone's Long Island den since the 70s, and in impeccable shape; also the seller was extremely motivated. "Not exactly a Madoff situation but pretty close," said the dealer. So, bargains-for anyone who can actually buy them.