---
title: "Relocation"
description: "Moving an artwork to a new site while it stays in the collection, permanently or temporarily during construction, conservation, or redevelopment."
glossary: "https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary"
source: "https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/relocation"
---

# Relocation

> Moving an artwork to a new site while it stays in the collection, permanently or temporarily during construction, conservation, or redevelopment.

Glossary: https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary  
Source: https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/relocation

Relocation is routinely confused with deaccession, and the difference
matters: a relocated work is still the program's responsibility, keeps its
accession number, and carries its record with it. Nothing leaves the
collection. What changes is a single field, which is exactly why relocations
go undocumented so often. A work that moved without its record being updated
is functionally lost, even though nobody removed it from anything.

Site-specific work is where relocation gets contentious, because moving it
can amount to destroying it. That was Richard Serra's argument about *Tilted
Arc*, and it is why commissioning contracts now routinely spell out
relocation terms in advance: who decides, what consultation the artist is
owed, and whether moral rights have been waived for this scenario.
Temporary relocations during construction need the same paperwork as
permanent ones, since works put into storage "for a few months" are the ones
most likely to never come back.

Related terms: [Deaccession](https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/deaccession), [Site-specific art](https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/site-specific-art), [Moral rights](https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/moral-rights), [Conservation](https://www.civiccollection.com/glossary/conservation)

## Mentioned in

- [What Happens When Public Art Goes Away](https://www.civiccollection.com/blog/what-happens-when-public-art-goes-away)
- [Introducing Civic Collection](https://www.civiccollection.com/blog/introducing-civic-collection)
- [Condition report form](https://www.civiccollection.com/toolkit/condition-report-form)
- [Public art inventory field checklist](https://www.civiccollection.com/toolkit/public-art-inventory-field-checklist)