from The Artful Manager -
Allocating that complex asset, the museum collection
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A thought-provoking argument that since most museums' collections do not see the day-light of things, the conventional wisdom that museums must be predicated upon an ever-expanding collection and acquisition policy has to be considered as suspect. Alternative models of shared acquisitions and loans must be seriously explored for museums to be sustainable and viable institutions.

In a related article in the Art Newspaper, the (inevitable) trend towards private museums, at least in the US context, will eventually entail the need for reassessment and rethinking on the museum front:

"As the scale and number of private art museums increases, their influence on museum practice will too, and codes of practice and policies around such issues as de-accessioning, conflict of interest policy and reciprocity in loans will come under pressure as these new institutions explore and test received wisdom and standard practices."

Which may be contentious but not necessarily entirely bad.

And the re-thinking might already be underway in the UK, or not. See:

BBC News
Museums to offload unwanted items

The New York Times
British Museums Told to Clean House

The Guardian Art & Architecture Blog
What happened to civic duty?

sp!ked
Why museums should dump the ‘Disposal Toolkit’