Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts is selling a Renoir and two Degas pastels, hoping to raise $12-17 million so the museum can buy an [unnamed] 19th Century painting it wants to acquire. “It will be by far the most money raised through a sale in the MFA’s history. It will also mark the museum’s highest profile deaccession since 1984. That’s when the MFA traded two Renoir pastels and a Monet painting – plus $600,000 – to a New York dealer for a Jackson Pollock painting. It was a controversial move, and an assistant curator resigned in protest. But this week, MFA officials stressed that support for the deaccession was unanimous from the five curators in the art of Europe department, the 27-person collections committee, and the 70-member board of trustees.”