"The initial stories were all saying that museums could start selling and use their art for operating expenses. That is not true at all."

The Maine Antique Digest has a story on the expiration of the "emergency" deaccessioning regulations in New York. You have to slog through lots of sky-is-falling spin, until, finally, in the next to last paragraph, there is this, from Clifford Siegfried, deputy chancellor at the board of regents:

"[Much of what has been written is] just absolutely wrong. The initial stories were all saying that museums could start selling and use their art for operating expenses. That is not true at all. What happened was that the emergency regulations which we had for two years are no longer in effect. But all they did was try to clarify some of the rationale, the reasons, for deaccessioning. The prohibition of deaccessioning for using funds for operating expenses is still in place. That didn't change" (emphasis added).

As I've said before, that is exactly right. There is no ambiguity about this.