The Museum of Modern Art has sold more than $100 million of artwork from its collection “during the past five years, more than eight times the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s proceeds of $9.23 million in the past five years. Unlike the Met, which typically sells second-tier works, MoMA, throughout its history, has unloaded important objects that would have been treasured icons at almost any other museum, and that collectors have eagerly acquired. Alfred Barr Jr., the founding director, believed that the collection should “metabolically” shed older works as it acquired new ones.”