Fight at Berkshire Museum Does Not Look Like a Norman Rockwell Painting

The 115-year-old Berkshire Museum, whose curio-cabinet style of 40,000 objects includes also an Egyptian mummy, a live, octogenarian tortoise named Chuck, and the whole-body fur suit worn in an early 1900s expedition to the North Pole, is proposing to sell 40 paintings to fund a $60 million plan to boost its roughly $6 million endowment and renovate its building for a “heightened emphasis on science and history as well as the arts.”

Much of the largess would come from the sale of two paintings that Mr. Rockwell personally donated to the museum, “Shuffleton’s Barbershop” in 1958 and “Shaftsbury Blacksmith Shop” in 1966. “Shuffleton’s” alone could fetch as much as $30 million, according to estimates by

Sotheby’s
.

The museum, a prominent beaux-arts building in the county seat of Pittsfield, says it is broke and on a path toward oblivion. Museum leaders say the area, which has lost population and big manufacturers over the decades, can no longer support the museum. Too many nonprofits in the Berkshires, now a cultural hub, are vying for too few donor dollars, they say.

“I just have this sadness,” said museum trustee

Douglas Crane,

whose paper-magnate forefather

Zenas Crane

founded the Berkshire Museum in 1903. “Those who are so vocal against the museum don’t have an understanding of what the museum needs to do to stay alive.”

Opponents of the sale say the museum is overstating its predicament and could try harder to find other solutions. They say the paintings were meant to benefit Berkshire County residents—not to be possibly sold to wealthy investors for private collections.

The paintings weren’t meant to “end up in Dubai,” said

Michael B. Keating,

a lawyer who represents the Rockwell family and others opposed to the sale.

Tensions are rippling through the small towns that Mr. Rockwell celebrated in his artwork.

“It’s terrible what it’s done to this community,” said

Laurie Green,

a Pittsfield frame-company owner who has participated in six public demonstrations against the sale. “Friends don’t talk to friends anymore.”

A Massachusetts judge has put the proposed sale on hold until at least Jan. 29 at the request of Massachusetts Attorney General

Maura Healey,

who is reviewing the plan. In court documents, Ms. Healey, who oversees nonprofits for the state, has argued that the museum may be substantially changing its purpose so a sale may require court approval.

Similar battles over what is known as “deaccessioning” are happening more frequently, according to

Brian Frye,

who studies art policy as an associate professor at the University of Kentucky College of Law. Rural or urban museums that are struggling to maintain their buildings or draw new audiences are tempted to take advantage of the strong global art market, he said.

In Philadelphia, La Salle University has generated controversy with a plan to sell 46 pieces from its museum, while the Delaware Art Museum drew ire for a planned sale of a

Winslow Homer

painting. Similar fights have broken out from the Boston suburbs to rural Virginia to Detroit.

National museum groups—which publicly rebuked the Berkshire Museum’s proposal—take a hard line, saying museums should only sell art to buy more art or to preserve existing collections because art is part of the “public trust.”

Critics of strict rules on sales say, however, that it can make sense for museums to sell assets to better serve the community. And they say that some sales may actually give the pieces a wider audience.

“Over all it’s an extremely stuffy tradition-bound industry,” said Michael O’Hare, an art policy professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Originally from New York, Mr. Rockwell, who rose to fame as an illustrator for The Saturday Evening Post and his 1943 series, the “Four Freedoms,” moved to Stockbridge in 1953 where he tapped neighbors, school children and even a local state trooper to be models for his work. Among major Rockwell collectors are filmmakers

Steven Spielberg

and

George Lucas.

Working behind the counter at the 223-year-old Williams & Sons Country Store on Main Street in Stockbridge on a recent day,

Sally Underwood-Miller

recalled how she used to see Mr. Rockwell bicycle around town. She proudly showed off the store’s array of Rockwell refrigerator magnets, some featuring children she knew years ago.

“It’s a really stupid idea,” said Ms. Underwood-Miller, who takes her grandchildren to the Berkshire Museum and who believes the artist generously gave his work to the museum intending they stay there. “I’m offended for him.”

Pittsfield resident

Jackie Lhote

supports the museum’s plan and said it “definitely needs to change” to attract more people.

“I’m not so sure the people who are complaining about the art being sold are the ones who are coming to the museum,” she said as she left the museum with her four year-old.

What would Mr. Rockwell say? He wouldn’t want his paintings moved but he would also be upset to see the community torn over his work, said his grandson, Geoffrey Rockwell.

“He would be trying to figure out how to heal what is a sort of a painful split now,” he said.

Write to Jennifer Levitz at jennifer.levitz@wsj.com