The New York Public Library has announced that it will sell nineteen pieces of art from its collection so that it can better compete in acquiring important books and research collections, the New York Times reports.

Art experts said that divestiture of the works, which includes a landscape by Hudson River School painter Asher B. Durand and two portraits of George Washington by Gilbert Stuart, could raise between $50 million and $75 million for the library. According to library president Paul LeClerc, the soaring cost of books and research materials, coupled with city and state cutbacks and the tepid post-9/11 returns generated by the library's endowment, left the library with little choice but to sell some of the valuable artworks in its possession if it wanted to continue to expand its holdings.

"We're not a museum," said LeClerc. "We don't have a staff devoted to paintings and sculptures. One of the thrills of running a great library is keeping up with the explosion of information. If we don't grow, we cannot maintain the claim that we are one of the greatest libraries in the world."

In 2000, the library's endowment hit a high of $530 million, but it subsequently dropped to $426 million by the end of 2002. Since then, it has grown to roughly what it was four years ago. "But during those four years we lost a huge amount of purchasing power," LeClerc told the Times. "There was not sufficient revenue to support growth."