Sale of Museum Paintings Helps Conclude Strong Auction Season The deaccessioning of 15 works by museums, including an important Thomas Cole painting, helped raise Sotheby’s total art sales over the last week to more than $715 million. Thomas Cole’s “The Arch of Nero” (1846) was auctioned at Sotheby’s for the Newark Museum of Art on Wednesday. Historians had campaigned against the museum’s deaccessioning.Credit...via Sotheby's By Zachary Small May 19, 2021, 2:37 p.m. ET Fifteen objects from cultural institutions passed through Sotheby’s at auction on Wednesday, showing that the debate among museum and industry leaders over deaccessioning hasn’t stopped these sales from occurring.