Tuesday, December 4, 2007
Barbara Lord talks about the Bilbao Effect
A recent article from The Art Newspaper discussion new museum projects and their role in urban revitalisation. Lord is clearly a proponent, but she also makes her living planning these spaces. linky
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
the latest in the getty's international troubles
Greek Court Dismisses Case Against Ex-Curator
By ANTHEE CARASSAVA
Published: November 28, 2007
ATHENS, Nov. 27 — An appeals court here dismissed a criminal case on Tuesday against Marion True, a former curator for the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles who had been accused of conspiring to acquire an ancient gold wreath that Greece says was looted from its soil.
Related
Times Topics: Marion True
The unanimous decision by the three-member appeals court came eight months after the Getty formally handed over the disputed funerary wreath and a week after Ms. True’s lawyer filed a motion for dismissal.
In his motion the lawyer, Yannis Yannides, cited a California state law that sets a three-year statute of limitations for prosecutions once the whereabouts of a stolen artifact have been established. (The Getty bought the wreath in 1993 for $1.15 million.)
In dismissing the charges, the appeals court appeared to accept his argument that Greek law requires its courts to defer to the statute of limitations in the country where the acquisition was made known.
Mr. Yannides said: “The rule of law was applied. That’s all we wanted. That’s all we asked for. This may not be a legal triumph, but it brings significant closure to my client.”
Ms. True has been on trial since late 2005 in Italy on similar charges of conspiring to acquire illicitly excavated antiquities. She has denied the charges in both cases and did not attend Tuesday’s hearing here.
The threat of criminal prosecution has emerged as a crucial tool for archaeologically rich countries as they press American museums for the handover of artifacts acquired in recent decades.
Prosecutors in Italy and Greece have generally asserted that the criminal cases and the drive to reclaim objects are independent of each other. Still, they concede that their strategies are interrelated. Christos Koumbis, a state prosecutor, disclosed for the first time on Tuesday that he had recommended that the charges be dropped. If “the wreath had not been returned, then we may have decided differently,” he said in a brief interview. Greek Culture Ministry officials declined to comment on the outcome of the case.
In August the Getty agreed to return 40 ancient treasures to Italy after long and contentious negotiations. The criminal charges against Ms. True remain in effect there, although related civil charges were dropped in August.
The wreath is believed to have been unearthed about 15 years ago. Greece first laid claim to it in the mid-1990s, although its precise site of excavation was not yet known. Last year, however, its government sent the Getty a dossier of evidence, including documents and photographs, to support its claim that the wreath had been illegally removed from northern Greece and passed on to a market through Germany and Switzerland before being sold to the Getty in 1993 for $1.1 million.
The deal to return the wreath and a fourth-century B.C. kore, or statue of a young woman, was brokered last December. In July of last year, the Getty also acceded to Greece’s request that it return a large stele, or grave marker, it acquired in 1993 and a small marble relief bought by the museum’s founder, the oil magnate J. Paul Getty, in 1955.
Ms. True would have faced up to 10 years in prison if she had been tried and found guilty of receiving a stolen artifact. She still faces lesser charges related to at least 29 unregistered antiquities that were found in her summer villa on the Greek island of Paros during a police raid last year.
Her lawyers have said that the objects were there before she bought the property in 1996 and that the charges are a form of harassment.
Ms. True was the Getty’s chief antiquities curator from 1986 to 2005. She resigned the post in October 2005 over what the museum said was an impropriety related to the 1996 purchase of the villa on Paros.
The Los Angeles Times reported then that Ms. True had used a lawyer recommended by the London antiquities dealer Christo Michailidis to arrange a real estate loan for the house the previous year.
Under Getty policy, such a loan would have posed a conflict of interest, because he was a close associate of another dealer with whom the Getty did business.
Harry Stang, Ms. True’s lawyer in Los Angeles, said she was gratified by the appeals court’s decision on Tuesday. “She was pleased that the court ruled as it did on her Greek counselor’s motion,” he said. “She was fully prepared if necessary to defend the case on the merits.”
“While we’re all very pleased that the Greek law was properly applied with respect to the statute of limitations,” he added, “it also should be noted that at no time during these proceedings have the Greek prosecutors provided any evidence as to the existence of a crime.”
A spokesman for the Getty, Ron Hartwig, said the museum was “pleased that the charges against Marion True have been dismissed.”
The wreath is now on view in an archaeological museum in Salonika, Greece.
Randy Kennedy contributed reporting from New York.
By ANTHEE CARASSAVA
Published: November 28, 2007
ATHENS, Nov. 27 — An appeals court here dismissed a criminal case on Tuesday against Marion True, a former curator for the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles who had been accused of conspiring to acquire an ancient gold wreath that Greece says was looted from its soil.
Related
Times Topics: Marion True
The unanimous decision by the three-member appeals court came eight months after the Getty formally handed over the disputed funerary wreath and a week after Ms. True’s lawyer filed a motion for dismissal.
In his motion the lawyer, Yannis Yannides, cited a California state law that sets a three-year statute of limitations for prosecutions once the whereabouts of a stolen artifact have been established. (The Getty bought the wreath in 1993 for $1.15 million.)
In dismissing the charges, the appeals court appeared to accept his argument that Greek law requires its courts to defer to the statute of limitations in the country where the acquisition was made known.
Mr. Yannides said: “The rule of law was applied. That’s all we wanted. That’s all we asked for. This may not be a legal triumph, but it brings significant closure to my client.”
Ms. True has been on trial since late 2005 in Italy on similar charges of conspiring to acquire illicitly excavated antiquities. She has denied the charges in both cases and did not attend Tuesday’s hearing here.
The threat of criminal prosecution has emerged as a crucial tool for archaeologically rich countries as they press American museums for the handover of artifacts acquired in recent decades.
Prosecutors in Italy and Greece have generally asserted that the criminal cases and the drive to reclaim objects are independent of each other. Still, they concede that their strategies are interrelated. Christos Koumbis, a state prosecutor, disclosed for the first time on Tuesday that he had recommended that the charges be dropped. If “the wreath had not been returned, then we may have decided differently,” he said in a brief interview. Greek Culture Ministry officials declined to comment on the outcome of the case.
In August the Getty agreed to return 40 ancient treasures to Italy after long and contentious negotiations. The criminal charges against Ms. True remain in effect there, although related civil charges were dropped in August.
The wreath is believed to have been unearthed about 15 years ago. Greece first laid claim to it in the mid-1990s, although its precise site of excavation was not yet known. Last year, however, its government sent the Getty a dossier of evidence, including documents and photographs, to support its claim that the wreath had been illegally removed from northern Greece and passed on to a market through Germany and Switzerland before being sold to the Getty in 1993 for $1.1 million.
The deal to return the wreath and a fourth-century B.C. kore, or statue of a young woman, was brokered last December. In July of last year, the Getty also acceded to Greece’s request that it return a large stele, or grave marker, it acquired in 1993 and a small marble relief bought by the museum’s founder, the oil magnate J. Paul Getty, in 1955.
Ms. True would have faced up to 10 years in prison if she had been tried and found guilty of receiving a stolen artifact. She still faces lesser charges related to at least 29 unregistered antiquities that were found in her summer villa on the Greek island of Paros during a police raid last year.
Her lawyers have said that the objects were there before she bought the property in 1996 and that the charges are a form of harassment.
Ms. True was the Getty’s chief antiquities curator from 1986 to 2005. She resigned the post in October 2005 over what the museum said was an impropriety related to the 1996 purchase of the villa on Paros.
The Los Angeles Times reported then that Ms. True had used a lawyer recommended by the London antiquities dealer Christo Michailidis to arrange a real estate loan for the house the previous year.
Under Getty policy, such a loan would have posed a conflict of interest, because he was a close associate of another dealer with whom the Getty did business.
Harry Stang, Ms. True’s lawyer in Los Angeles, said she was gratified by the appeals court’s decision on Tuesday. “She was pleased that the court ruled as it did on her Greek counselor’s motion,” he said. “She was fully prepared if necessary to defend the case on the merits.”
“While we’re all very pleased that the Greek law was properly applied with respect to the statute of limitations,” he added, “it also should be noted that at no time during these proceedings have the Greek prosecutors provided any evidence as to the existence of a crime.”
A spokesman for the Getty, Ron Hartwig, said the museum was “pleased that the charges against Marion True have been dismissed.”
The wreath is now on view in an archaeological museum in Salonika, Greece.
Randy Kennedy contributed reporting from New York.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
disaster preparedness resources
Northern States Conservation Center
Stanford's Conservation Online
NPS Primer for Disasters
NTHP disaster preparedness resources
Also:
Stanford's Conservation Online
NPS Primer for Disasters
NTHP disaster preparedness resources
Also:
New Group Announcement
Posted by: "Graham Stapleton" manaeus2000@googlemail.com manaeus2000
Mon Nov 26, 2007 3:58 am (PST)
I've created a new Yahoo Group for people interested (and in some
cases, worried) about Emergency Preparedness for museums, galleries,
libraries and archives.
This subject goes under several names: counter-disaster planning,
incident response, collections salvage; but with some honourable
exceptions, institutions keep it at the bottom of their agenda - until
it happens to them. Business Continuity is a newer, but established
field, whose methodologies can be applied to the needs of museums. It
probably won't unlock any more funds, but those of us with concerns can
talk, swap ideas and resources.
To find it, use the Yahoo Groups search and enter: Business Continuity
Museums. Directions for subscribing are at the bottom of the page. It
is presently empty; contributions from people with real matters will
meaningfully fill it.
Thank you
Graham Stapleton
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Project Abstract
Egyptian Faience Cartouche Rings and Pendants from the 18th Dynasty
My project focuses on the research of museum artifacts, one of the traditional tasks of the curator. I have chosen a group of similar Egyptian objects dating from the 18th Dynasty, consisting of three Egyptian faience ring bezels and two Egyptian faience cartouche-shaped beads. Each has the name of a royal person of the 18th dynasty on it, placed within a cartouche (Smenkhare, Queen Tiy, Amenhotep III, Tutankhamun and Akhenaten). The goal of this project is to develop a framework of knowledge about these fairly common objects, including information about their production, dispersal and function in Ancient Egyptian society. A study of the writing of each of the names and frequencies of the writings from known excavation contexts is also to be included. This information will then be summarized in readable and understandable labels for each of the pieces. These labels will be used in an exhibition of New Kingdom artifacts owned by the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology which will be created next semester. The labels will follow the standard guidelines of the Egyptian section of the museum in format and provide a concise identification of each piece as well as a short introduction to this class of artifacts. The main corpus of information collected will be added to the Egyptian collection database to aid further research. The scope of the project, although focusing on research, also incorporates a number of other museum activities including exhibition planning and design, label writing and education.
Bibliography
1) Brunton, Guy and Reginald Engelbach. Gurab. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1927.
2) Frankfort, H. and J. D. S. Pendlebury. The City of Akhenaten, Part II: The North Suburb and the Desert Altars, the Excavations at Tell el Amarna During the Seasons 1926-1932. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1933.
3) Friedman, Florence Dunn, ed. Gifts of the Nile: Ancient Egyptian Faience. London: Thames and Hudson, 1998.
4) Kemp, Barry J. Amarna Reports VI. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1986.
5) Peet, T. Eric and C. Leonard Woolley. The City of Akhenaten, Part I: Excavations of 1921 and 1922 at El-‘Amarneh. Boston: Egypt Exploration Society, 1923.
6) Pendlebury, J. D. S. The City of Akhenaten, Part III: The Central City and the Official Quarters, the Excavations at Tell el Amarna During the Seasons 1926-1927 and 1931-1936. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1951.
7) Petrie, W. M. Flinders. Scarabs and Cylinders with Names. London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1917.
8) Reisner, George Andrew. Unpublished Object Register of Harvard University- Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition at Giza, 1905-1937 from Giza Archives Project. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, www.gizapyramids.org, accessed 11/6/2007.
My project focuses on the research of museum artifacts, one of the traditional tasks of the curator. I have chosen a group of similar Egyptian objects dating from the 18th Dynasty, consisting of three Egyptian faience ring bezels and two Egyptian faience cartouche-shaped beads. Each has the name of a royal person of the 18th dynasty on it, placed within a cartouche (Smenkhare, Queen Tiy, Amenhotep III, Tutankhamun and Akhenaten). The goal of this project is to develop a framework of knowledge about these fairly common objects, including information about their production, dispersal and function in Ancient Egyptian society. A study of the writing of each of the names and frequencies of the writings from known excavation contexts is also to be included. This information will then be summarized in readable and understandable labels for each of the pieces. These labels will be used in an exhibition of New Kingdom artifacts owned by the Institute of Egyptian Art and Archaeology which will be created next semester. The labels will follow the standard guidelines of the Egyptian section of the museum in format and provide a concise identification of each piece as well as a short introduction to this class of artifacts. The main corpus of information collected will be added to the Egyptian collection database to aid further research. The scope of the project, although focusing on research, also incorporates a number of other museum activities including exhibition planning and design, label writing and education.
Bibliography
1) Brunton, Guy and Reginald Engelbach. Gurab. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1927.
2) Frankfort, H. and J. D. S. Pendlebury. The City of Akhenaten, Part II: The North Suburb and the Desert Altars, the Excavations at Tell el Amarna During the Seasons 1926-1932. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1933.
3) Friedman, Florence Dunn, ed. Gifts of the Nile: Ancient Egyptian Faience. London: Thames and Hudson, 1998.
4) Kemp, Barry J. Amarna Reports VI. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1986.
5) Peet, T. Eric and C. Leonard Woolley. The City of Akhenaten, Part I: Excavations of 1921 and 1922 at El-‘Amarneh. Boston: Egypt Exploration Society, 1923.
6) Pendlebury, J. D. S. The City of Akhenaten, Part III: The Central City and the Official Quarters, the Excavations at Tell el Amarna During the Seasons 1926-1927 and 1931-1936. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1951.
7) Petrie, W. M. Flinders. Scarabs and Cylinders with Names. London: Constable and Co. Ltd., 1917.
8) Reisner, George Andrew. Unpublished Object Register of Harvard University- Boston Museum of Fine Arts Expedition at Giza, 1905-1937 from Giza Archives Project. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, www.gizapyramids.org, accessed 11/6/2007.
Exit Condition Report on the Neil Nokes Collection of African Art
Condition reports are employed to protect and guide museums by documenting the state of preservation of any loaned property. By recording the physical condition of loaned objects, the examiner is offering protection to both the loaner and borrower. A careful condition report is one of the museums preeminent methods of managing the liability that may arise after the loaned collection is returned to its original owner. These reports are an imperative component of the monitoring process and should be conducted on a regular basis. Upon obtaining the collection from the lender, the condition of the objects should be checked against the lender’s original report. Prior to the return of the collection to the lender, the objects should be re-examined once more by the borrower.
For my final project, I will perform an exit condition report on the 198 items on loan from the Neil Nokes Collection of African Art. In this project, I will review the incoming condition reports and assess a new one based on three considerations: insecurity (such as weakness of materials), damage (such as advanced deterioration) and disfigurement (such as physical violence or chemical change). The methods I will employ in the condition report will take into account the three attributes of defects: nature, location and extent. In this project, I will handle sculptures, ceramics and textiles where, according to the object material, I will use the correct methodology necessary for its proper examination and recording. Within this methodology, I will familiarize myself with a working knowledge of common terms that are utilized by collections managers and registrars. This will give me the ability to link the reports together in a coherent and manageable form. Upon completion of a physical inspection of each object, I will do a physical inventory and finalize my project by including the original condition report with the revised version.
Bibliography
Buck, Richard D. “Describing the Condition or Art Objects.” Museum News 56
(July/August, 1978): 29-33.
Burke, Robert and Sam Adeloye. A Manuel of Basic Museum Security.
Leicester: International Council of Museums, 1986.
Dudley, Dorothy and Irma Bezold Wilkinson. Museum Registration Methods.
Washington D.C.: American Association of Museums, 1979.
Keene, Suzanne. “Audits of care: a framework for collection condition surveys”. Care of
Collections. Ed. Simon Knell. New York: Routledge, 2006.
O’Reily, Priscilla and Allyn Lord. Basic Condition Reporting: A Handbook.
New York: Southeastern Registrars Association, 1988.
Phillimore, Elizabeth C. A Glossary of Terms Useful in Conservation with a
Supplement on Reporting on the Condition of Antiquities. Ottawa:
Canadian Museums Association, 1976.
Condition reports are employed to protect and guide museums by documenting the state of preservation of any loaned property. By recording the physical condition of loaned objects, the examiner is offering protection to both the loaner and borrower. A careful condition report is one of the museums preeminent methods of managing the liability that may arise after the loaned collection is returned to its original owner. These reports are an imperative component of the monitoring process and should be conducted on a regular basis. Upon obtaining the collection from the lender, the condition of the objects should be checked against the lender’s original report. Prior to the return of the collection to the lender, the objects should be re-examined once more by the borrower.
For my final project, I will perform an exit condition report on the 198 items on loan from the Neil Nokes Collection of African Art. In this project, I will review the incoming condition reports and assess a new one based on three considerations: insecurity (such as weakness of materials), damage (such as advanced deterioration) and disfigurement (such as physical violence or chemical change). The methods I will employ in the condition report will take into account the three attributes of defects: nature, location and extent. In this project, I will handle sculptures, ceramics and textiles where, according to the object material, I will use the correct methodology necessary for its proper examination and recording. Within this methodology, I will familiarize myself with a working knowledge of common terms that are utilized by collections managers and registrars. This will give me the ability to link the reports together in a coherent and manageable form. Upon completion of a physical inspection of each object, I will do a physical inventory and finalize my project by including the original condition report with the revised version.
Bibliography
Buck, Richard D. “Describing the Condition or Art Objects.” Museum News 56
(July/August, 1978): 29-33.
Burke, Robert and Sam Adeloye. A Manuel of Basic Museum Security.
Leicester: International Council of Museums, 1986.
Dudley, Dorothy and Irma Bezold Wilkinson. Museum Registration Methods.
Washington D.C.: American Association of Museums, 1979.
Keene, Suzanne. “Audits of care: a framework for collection condition surveys”. Care of
Collections. Ed. Simon Knell. New York: Routledge, 2006.
O’Reily, Priscilla and Allyn Lord. Basic Condition Reporting: A Handbook.
New York: Southeastern Registrars Association, 1988.
Phillimore, Elizabeth C. A Glossary of Terms Useful in Conservation with a
Supplement on Reporting on the Condition of Antiquities. Ottawa:
Canadian Museums Association, 1976.
Final Project: Chucalissa Welcome Video
As my final project for this course, I am editing archived still photography and video into a completed welcome video that will be shown to visitors to Chucalissa. The purpose of the video will be to provide the visitor with a general orientation to the museum and site, as well as provide an introduction to the history of the site and the people who inhabited it. It is my goal that the video will not only provide background information, but will also engender a deeper feeling of respect for the site and the people who once lived there.
This project is a practical application of the readings in new media, and the discussions that we have had on the topic, throughout the semester. With the advent of non-linear digital video editing and digital camera equipment, providing a welcome video for the visitors of a museum may be one of the most economic and effective ways for a museum to utilize new media. Also, of all the new media technologies, a video may be the most effective in terms of the visitor’s response. People of all ages are familiar with video through the medium of television and movies, and therefore will be more likely to be receptive to it, compared to more interactive medium.
There are a few problems that have arisen in the preliminary work that I have done on the video that will need to be addressed. First, there is the technical aspect of the work. In order to make the video I must sort through over a thousand photos and arrange in them in a way that not only gives the visitor information about Chucalissa, but that is appealing visually as well. Audio narration must also be recorded then edited to fit with the existing visual materials. These aesthetic and technical aspects of the project give rise to my second concern, which is that as a non-archeologist I may somehow misrepresent information unintentionally through juxtapositions of sound and video of which I might not understand. I will attempt to avoid this type of mistake by discussing the project with Dr. Connelly as I work on the editing phase.
This project is a practical application of the readings in new media, and the discussions that we have had on the topic, throughout the semester. With the advent of non-linear digital video editing and digital camera equipment, providing a welcome video for the visitors of a museum may be one of the most economic and effective ways for a museum to utilize new media. Also, of all the new media technologies, a video may be the most effective in terms of the visitor’s response. People of all ages are familiar with video through the medium of television and movies, and therefore will be more likely to be receptive to it, compared to more interactive medium.
There are a few problems that have arisen in the preliminary work that I have done on the video that will need to be addressed. First, there is the technical aspect of the work. In order to make the video I must sort through over a thousand photos and arrange in them in a way that not only gives the visitor information about Chucalissa, but that is appealing visually as well. Audio narration must also be recorded then edited to fit with the existing visual materials. These aesthetic and technical aspects of the project give rise to my second concern, which is that as a non-archeologist I may somehow misrepresent information unintentionally through juxtapositions of sound and video of which I might not understand. I will attempt to avoid this type of mistake by discussing the project with Dr. Connelly as I work on the editing phase.
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Response to Chapter 18-New Media
New media is a term that applies to a wide range of technical medium including installation art, information kiosks, hand held information devices, museum archiving systems, blogs, websites, and podcasts. New media can be useful to museums in helping to create new ways of accessing and exhibiting collections, but it can also present new sets of problems. Of primary concern to the author of Chapter 18 is the issue of how museums can reconcile new media with traditional ways of organizing knowledge. Rather than thinking of new media as something that requires new modes of thinking, and new organizational structures, it would be helpful to think of new media as a supplement or analogue to traditional museum ideas. To do this effectively a museum must carefully consider how new media can be used to further the museum’s mission, and the resulting benefits and problems that are a consequence of implementing new media strategies.
A museum should first consider new media that is easier to implement and could give measurable results concerning their success or failure. For example, a website is relatively easy to implement and could provide several benefits to a museum such as informing the public about current exhibits, and giving directions and hours to the museum. A website could also be used to create a virtual museum that would give access to objects to people who might not otherwise be able to physically visit the museum. The website could further be expanded to include blogs and downloadable audio or video podcasts that could give information on exhibits, as well as lectures on related topics. A blogging feature could help create a dialogue between museum goers and museum professionals and may help the museum develop further ideas and better serve its audience.
New media also includes technologies that can be used within the museum as an adjunct to traditional exhibits. These technologies include hand held informational devices and informational kiosks. However, these types of new media may or may not be useful depending on both the ways in which museums implement them, and the degree to which museum goers actually use the devices. A major disadvantage to kiosks and hand held devices are the high cost. Finding corporate sponsors can reduce some of this cost, but a museum may prefer not to do this. An advantage to using kiosks and held devices is that they may allow the user to delve further into the collections than is possible through exhibitions, and thus be able to more fully exploit the resources of the museum.
When dealing with digital information museums are faced with two problems: storage space for the information and changes in file type in the future. The author discusses the problem of storage space in Chapter 18, however, I do not believe that it is as much of a problem as it would lead one to believe. Although the amount of digital information that a museum has to deal with is increasing, the storage capacity of computers and servers are increasing as well and storage space is probably not the biggest issue that museum should be concerned about with digital information. A much bigger problem, and one that is not discussed in the text, is possible changes to file types in the future. For example, while the jpeg may be the standard photo file type presently, this is bound to change sometime in the future. To prevent a museum’s collection of digital information from becoming obsolete the museum will have to be active in preserving and updating its digital collection. This pragmatic concern should underlie decisions that a museum makes in how it stores and handles digital information.
A museum should first consider new media that is easier to implement and could give measurable results concerning their success or failure. For example, a website is relatively easy to implement and could provide several benefits to a museum such as informing the public about current exhibits, and giving directions and hours to the museum. A website could also be used to create a virtual museum that would give access to objects to people who might not otherwise be able to physically visit the museum. The website could further be expanded to include blogs and downloadable audio or video podcasts that could give information on exhibits, as well as lectures on related topics. A blogging feature could help create a dialogue between museum goers and museum professionals and may help the museum develop further ideas and better serve its audience.
New media also includes technologies that can be used within the museum as an adjunct to traditional exhibits. These technologies include hand held informational devices and informational kiosks. However, these types of new media may or may not be useful depending on both the ways in which museums implement them, and the degree to which museum goers actually use the devices. A major disadvantage to kiosks and hand held devices are the high cost. Finding corporate sponsors can reduce some of this cost, but a museum may prefer not to do this. An advantage to using kiosks and held devices is that they may allow the user to delve further into the collections than is possible through exhibitions, and thus be able to more fully exploit the resources of the museum.
When dealing with digital information museums are faced with two problems: storage space for the information and changes in file type in the future. The author discusses the problem of storage space in Chapter 18, however, I do not believe that it is as much of a problem as it would lead one to believe. Although the amount of digital information that a museum has to deal with is increasing, the storage capacity of computers and servers are increasing as well and storage space is probably not the biggest issue that museum should be concerned about with digital information. A much bigger problem, and one that is not discussed in the text, is possible changes to file types in the future. For example, while the jpeg may be the standard photo file type presently, this is bound to change sometime in the future. To prevent a museum’s collection of digital information from becoming obsolete the museum will have to be active in preserving and updating its digital collection. This pragmatic concern should underlie decisions that a museum makes in how it stores and handles digital information.
Chapter 19 – Museums and Free-Choice Learning
John H. Falk, Lynn D. Dierking and Marianna Adams of the
Western societies are changing from a goods-based economy to a knowledge-based economy and these changes have affected museums of all types. Knowledge and information, which is fueled by learning, is rapidly becoming a major economic product of society.
In order to develop new ideas in this knowledge economy, Western societies must evolve into a ‘learned society’. The 21st century has produced many outlets which give people free-choice to learn whatever they want. This ‘free-choice learning’, which includes watching the news, reading magazines, surfing the net or visiting a museum, is motivated by the need to expand knowledge and augment information. This shift in educational theory can be perceived in the changing conception of the role of museums. Before, museums were mainly seen as a source of authoritative knowledge. Now this new knowledge economy is reflected in how museums take on the role of institutions that are able to provide opportunity for individuals to engage in ‘free-choice’ learning.
People have always learned, but what has been altered with this new knowledge-based economy is what they are learning and how and why they are doing it. The original behaviorist approach in which the museum visitor is believed to arrive with a blank slate of knowledge and whose previous experiences, interests and motivations are irrelevant in their visit seems to be flawed. The new constructivist approach seems to better understand that learning is a highly contextual process. This approach is based on perspectives that emphasize the input of the learner in the meaning-making process and recognizes the variable ways in which this learning takes place. It considers that a learner’s prior knowledge, experiences and interests all encompass a personal context that will affect the visitor’s experience.
Next, the authors propose the contextual model of learning that portrays the process and product of the interactions between the visitor’s personal, socio-economic and physical contexts. Personal context is the sum of the personal history that an individual has. Their learning will be influenced by the individual’s past knowledge, experiences and beliefs. Since humans are products of their socialized relationships, a visitor’s socio-cultural context is influenced by their upbringing and interactions. These interactions will clearly influence their museum experience. Learning always arises within the physical environment and one would expect the visitor’s reactions to be influenced by a multitude of architectural and design factors such as lighting, crowding, presentation, context and quality of the information presented.
It is very hard to incorporate the above factors into an analytical approach to public learning in museums. The Institute for Learning Innovation has focused on investigating free-choice learning. They discuss a five step approach that one should incorporate in order to yield more significant evidence of the complexity of free-choice learning experiences. The five steps are as follows:
- Allow for the individuals own unique learning agenda to emerge.
- Address the effect of time on learning.
- Respect that learning is always situated and contextualized.
- Be open to a broad range of learning outcomes.
- (in research-speak) Emphasize validity over reliability
Because of the five criteria above, Falk developed the approach of ‘personal meaning mapping’ (PMM). It is designed to measure how specific learning experiences will influence the visitor’s interpretation or meaning-making process. This is based on the assumption that not all visitors will arrive with comparable knowledge and it does not require that the visitor emit a ‘right’ answer in order to exhibit that they learned something.
Another challenge that researchers face is recognizing the rapidly changing world that is observed through three interconnected social-economic trends. These trends are the change in the nature of goods and services, the rise of free-choice learning and the need for accountability. In order to accommodate these various trends, museums must adopt a new business model and redefine what comprises success. They need to maximize the quality of the learning experience available. Free-choice learning will help to transform individuals and maximize this quality. In this new learning society, the greatest experience an individual can have is one that supports knowledge that they decide to learn, and not just at the moment, but across their entire life-time. Museum’s focuses needs to be directed in bolstering the individual’s ability to control what they want to learn, instead of providing knowledge to the masses.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
"Studying Visitors", Eilean Hooper-Greenhill Response
Within the necessary functions of today’s museum is included research, not just of the objects in the museum’s possession, but also of the people visiting and not visiting the museum, the “audience”. This type of study helps to fulfill the needs of this audience and allows the museum to reach its fullest educational potential.
The study of visitors involves a number of different disciplines, and has a long history, following the progression not only of museums, but also of these other disciplines. Early studies followed the behaviorist model from psychology and focused on studying only the behavior of visitors within the museum space. Within this model, based on somewhat elitist attitudes, was the idea of the transfer of knowledge from the expert to the commoner. Many of these studies, however, merely focused on the “attracting” or “holding” power of exhibits, and not on the sociological reasons behind this attraction. Also, these studies were done in order to measure the success of the exhibit and used preconceived ideas of what should be attained by visiting the museum.
Some research included questioning the visitors after their visit, and by the 1960’s, visitor surveys were very prominent among museums. Although possibly helpful from a business standpoint, these observations and surveys only provide basic demographic information on visitors. It cannot measure the experience of the visitor, or why people do not visit the museum.
In the 1980’s, some surveys were revised to be more efficient. Other surveys were expanded to include people not visiting museums. Also, a number of museums began participating in market research with focus groups including both visitors and non-visitors. These actions were able to gather more social data on people’s ideas about museums from a larger demographic.
Out of these earlier studies, grew a large research program based out of the Natural History Museum in
In today’s research on visitors, many of the methods used are again borrowed from psychology. However, changes in the field of psychology, from a focus on behavior to interpretation and ethnography, have influenced the methods and conclusions of more recent research. These studies now take into account the reasons for a person’s visit, and varying levels of willingness to learn. Instead of surveying visitors after their museum experience, visitors are now studied before, during and after their visit to measure changing attitudes and a fuller experience. With this broadening of factors, has also come an extended reach for these studies. Early visitor studies mainly took place in science museums, however, visitor studies are now employed in almost all types of museums.
Although ethnographic study of visitors is the ideal method of research, the costliness and time-consuming nature of these more thorough methods can be prohibitive to many museums. It is also noted that the results do not lead directly to museum policy, although I would argue that when analyzed properly, much like market research, ideal policies can be realized from these results. Therefore, many museums still focus on the demographic studies to measure “success” of exhibitions and the museum itself. What is needed is an integration of the demographic study with ethnographic data, analyzed in a way that can be useful to the museum in better catering to the fullest available audience.
Friday, October 19, 2007
Museum Education by George E. Hein review
Chapter 20, Museum Education by George E. Hein
Below is a summary of the chapter, very closely paraphrased with direct quotes form the original text. In other words, the formulations are those of Hein, and not me unless noted in text:
The eighteenth Century enlightenment brought private collections to the public sphere. The first “children’s museum” was formed in 1899 and was explicitly educational. During the nineteenth century, the unevenness in museum education was comparable to the unevenness in attention to public education. The chapter notes the increased but uneven role of specialized education in museums over the past 50 years.
The 2005 ICOMS mission statement stresses museum education while the earlier 1946 statement does not even mention museum education.
Three possible museum philosophies are elaborated: educational, aesthetic, and social.
The educational philosophy is seen in the very notion of moving from guards to docents. The earliest mention of a “museum educator” is from a 1927 publication. A 2002 survey showed that museum educators operated in seven areas of programming with more than 45 task in these programs - the point being that museum educators are highly flexible in their responsibilities.
Several pages discuss the learning theories along a passive to active continuum, leading to a discussion of the advantages and challenges of a “Constructivist Museum” that seems to me to counter a modernist to a post-modernist paradigm. For example the “meaningful experience” is countered to the “defined content outcome.” Of interest is a mentioning that that mandatory testing programs in school systems have tended to force an overshadowing of addressing curriculum standards in museum education.
The chapter concludes with a very interesting discussion of the social responsibility in museums citing the contributions of John Dewey from the early twentieth century. Four aspects of Dewey’s contribution are highlighted: Constant questioning of dualisms; the goal of education is further education; applying progressive theory in education universally; connect educational work back to life.
Below is a summary of the chapter, very closely paraphrased with direct quotes form the original text. In other words, the formulations are those of Hein, and not me unless noted in text:
The eighteenth Century enlightenment brought private collections to the public sphere. The first “children’s museum” was formed in 1899 and was explicitly educational. During the nineteenth century, the unevenness in museum education was comparable to the unevenness in attention to public education. The chapter notes the increased but uneven role of specialized education in museums over the past 50 years.
The 2005 ICOMS mission statement stresses museum education while the earlier 1946 statement does not even mention museum education.
Three possible museum philosophies are elaborated: educational, aesthetic, and social.
The educational philosophy is seen in the very notion of moving from guards to docents. The earliest mention of a “museum educator” is from a 1927 publication. A 2002 survey showed that museum educators operated in seven areas of programming with more than 45 task in these programs - the point being that museum educators are highly flexible in their responsibilities.
Several pages discuss the learning theories along a passive to active continuum, leading to a discussion of the advantages and challenges of a “Constructivist Museum” that seems to me to counter a modernist to a post-modernist paradigm. For example the “meaningful experience” is countered to the “defined content outcome.” Of interest is a mentioning that that mandatory testing programs in school systems have tended to force an overshadowing of addressing curriculum standards in museum education.
The chapter concludes with a very interesting discussion of the social responsibility in museums citing the contributions of John Dewey from the early twentieth century. Four aspects of Dewey’s contribution are highlighted: Constant questioning of dualisms; the goal of education is further education; applying progressive theory in education universally; connect educational work back to life.
Monday, October 15, 2007
National Museum of African American History and Culture
Below is a recent review of the NMAAHC's efforts to begin programming before they open their doors in 2015. It offers an interesting perspective on the challenges of online content and curation in an era when so much information is available elsewhere on the web.
CONNECTIONS
Web Preview: Tentative Step for Black Museum
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: October 15, 2007
Of all the hyphenated museums built in recent years or planned for the coming decade, of all the institutions exploring ethnic, racial or religious identities and their relationship to the larger American experience, none is as important as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, expected to open on Washington’s Mall in 2015.
Related
National Museum of African American History and Culture
All other such museums — whether they examine Arab-American culture, Jewish-American culture or Hispanic-American culture — are fully hyphenated. Each side of the hyphen is distinctive and stable. It is the hyphen that is the focus of dynamic attention, transforming each side into something new. In the case of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the metaphorical hyphen is made even more prominent, turned into an arrow or dagger, marking the confrontation of separate and unequal forces.
But an African-American museum on this scale — cost estimates range from $300 million to $500 million — is beyond hyphenation. Though it will of course tell the history of slavery, its perversions and its legacy, along with the much-hyphenated explorations of identity and culture that ensued, the museum’s tale of interactions may be more profound than any other hyphenated account. American history and black American history cannot be split apart.
With great violence and suffering, the institution of slavery actually melded both terms almost from the start, making each side of the hyphen unthinkable without the other. So rather than being a hyphenated museum, this may be a museum of American history, seen through a particular perspective.
The extraordinary ideals of American life, the scars left by one of their excruciating failures, and the fervent hopes that remain in their persistence — these shape an unfolding American chronicle. Such an integration of historical experience, with its combination of virtue and vice, reformation and resistance, mistakes and insights, could make this museum a national monument that would not only herald the accomplishments of black Americans but also transform American understanding of race.
The museum’s founding director, Lonnie G. Bunch, seems to understand the nature of this daunting task.
He doesn’t want to wait until 2015 to begin it, and late last month the museum actually opened — not in the world of bricks and mortar but in the world of hyperlinks and tags. With $1 million in assistance from I.B.M., the Smithsonian Institution created what Mr. Bunch calls a “virtual platform,” a Web museum (nmaahc.si.edu).
The museum is also offering an inaugural exhibition in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery and the International Center of Photography, “Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits,” a series of photographs of figures ranging from Frederick Douglass to Ella Fitzgerald from the Portrait Gallery’s collection.
That exhibition was organized by Deborah Willis, a member of the African-American museum’s scholarly advisory committee. It has already opened on the site (and was shown in New York over the summer). The show will have a more traditional debut at the Portrait Gallery in Washington on Friday and will later tour.
In establishing the Web site and its first exhibition, Mr. Bunch, who was previously a Smithsonian curator and a president of the Chicago Historical Society, is signaling the scope of his ambitions. He means the museum to be a national institution that would explore the full range of the black American experience, that would collaborate with other institutions, and that would, through the Web and these partnerships, reach far beyond its future walls. The Web presence would also help the museum in soliciting collections beyond the Smithsonian’s current holdings.
The Web site also announces several other ways these plans will be executed, most notably creating a “memory book,” in which viewers can upload memories and photographs related to black American life, filling historical gaps with first-hand experience (vetted by the museum’s staff). In a mission statement on the site, Mr. Bunch says that he wants the museum to become “a place of meaning, of memory, of reflection, of laughter, and of hope.”
Unfortunately, though, these declared ambitions are jarring given the half-realized efforts on display. Even in the realm of hyperlinks, the mortar has a long way to go here before it congeals. Given the enormity of the interpretive project ahead, and its national importance, why was it prematurely undercut with something as thin and uninspiring as this site?
Consider the exhibition of portraits. If it were going to be unveiled on the Web, then why not do it in full? Many images are not available. All have brief, overly compressed biographical notes. And the essays from the show’s catalog are unavailable.
Even the selection of portraits seems unshaped by an interpretive idea. The exhibition’s title, “Let Your Motto Be Resistance,” is taken from a fervent message delivered to free Northern black Americans by a black clergyman, Henry Highland Garnet, in 1843. And while there are photos of some who variously resisted the debilitating forces arrayed against them — from W. E. B. Du Bois to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — the idea of resistance is interpreted so broadly and blandly as to also encompass artists like Diana Ross and Wynton Marsalis. The idea may be that given historical circumstances any achievement can be interpreted as a kind of resistance; but distinctions, even among political positions, are left unexplored, at least on the Web.
It is also frustrating that a museum planning to be definitive in its reach — and even promising a sophisticated international vision — offers such scant insight into what it does portray. When describing the actor and singer Paul Robeson, for example, the Web site tells us: “Robeson became a committed socialist and worked actively against fascism both before and during World War II. But after 1945, growing conservatism at home clashed with his strong support of left-wing political causes” and “curtailed his American performing career.”
Actually Robeson became a committed Stalinist, praising that tyrant’s “deep humanity” and idealizing the Soviet state even after its horrors had become evident. That might have been used to suggest that tragically the experience of brutish racism in America had distorted his thinking. Instead, the biographical note simply ignores the complexities.
It is also futile to search the Web site for a hint of deeper and wider perspectives. Two exhibitions announced on the site, one scheduled for January 2009 in collaboration with the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, and the other for June with the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, are both concerned with the civil rights movement. The first will display graphic images, the second, photographs. These shows may turn out to be quite powerful, but as debut ideas they don’t suggest the scope of the enterprise Mr. Bunch outlines in his mission statement.
Even the Web-based “memory book” requires more curatorial oversight to give it better thematic shape than the awkward subject index “tags” placed by visitors. Its accounts also need to be more tightly edited to add force to meandering memories and imagistic poems. There are limits to the power of participatory exhibitions.
These initial glimpses of the museum do not seem like preliminary forays into a deep exploration of black American experience, but skate along on the surface. That would be fine if this were simply going to be another hyphenated museum, but it has the potential to be so much more. The Web site may be premature, but in coming years the hope is that its evolution will chronicle continuing efforts to discover the world within and beyond the hyphen.
Connections is a critic’s perspective on arts and ideas.
CONNECTIONS
Web Preview: Tentative Step for Black Museum
By EDWARD ROTHSTEIN
Published: October 15, 2007
Of all the hyphenated museums built in recent years or planned for the coming decade, of all the institutions exploring ethnic, racial or religious identities and their relationship to the larger American experience, none is as important as the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, expected to open on Washington’s Mall in 2015.
Related
National Museum of African American History and Culture
All other such museums — whether they examine Arab-American culture, Jewish-American culture or Hispanic-American culture — are fully hyphenated. Each side of the hyphen is distinctive and stable. It is the hyphen that is the focus of dynamic attention, transforming each side into something new. In the case of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the metaphorical hyphen is made even more prominent, turned into an arrow or dagger, marking the confrontation of separate and unequal forces.
But an African-American museum on this scale — cost estimates range from $300 million to $500 million — is beyond hyphenation. Though it will of course tell the history of slavery, its perversions and its legacy, along with the much-hyphenated explorations of identity and culture that ensued, the museum’s tale of interactions may be more profound than any other hyphenated account. American history and black American history cannot be split apart.
With great violence and suffering, the institution of slavery actually melded both terms almost from the start, making each side of the hyphen unthinkable without the other. So rather than being a hyphenated museum, this may be a museum of American history, seen through a particular perspective.
The extraordinary ideals of American life, the scars left by one of their excruciating failures, and the fervent hopes that remain in their persistence — these shape an unfolding American chronicle. Such an integration of historical experience, with its combination of virtue and vice, reformation and resistance, mistakes and insights, could make this museum a national monument that would not only herald the accomplishments of black Americans but also transform American understanding of race.
The museum’s founding director, Lonnie G. Bunch, seems to understand the nature of this daunting task.
He doesn’t want to wait until 2015 to begin it, and late last month the museum actually opened — not in the world of bricks and mortar but in the world of hyperlinks and tags. With $1 million in assistance from I.B.M., the Smithsonian Institution created what Mr. Bunch calls a “virtual platform,” a Web museum (nmaahc.si.edu).
The museum is also offering an inaugural exhibition in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery and the International Center of Photography, “Let Your Motto Be Resistance: African American Portraits,” a series of photographs of figures ranging from Frederick Douglass to Ella Fitzgerald from the Portrait Gallery’s collection.
That exhibition was organized by Deborah Willis, a member of the African-American museum’s scholarly advisory committee. It has already opened on the site (and was shown in New York over the summer). The show will have a more traditional debut at the Portrait Gallery in Washington on Friday and will later tour.
In establishing the Web site and its first exhibition, Mr. Bunch, who was previously a Smithsonian curator and a president of the Chicago Historical Society, is signaling the scope of his ambitions. He means the museum to be a national institution that would explore the full range of the black American experience, that would collaborate with other institutions, and that would, through the Web and these partnerships, reach far beyond its future walls. The Web presence would also help the museum in soliciting collections beyond the Smithsonian’s current holdings.
The Web site also announces several other ways these plans will be executed, most notably creating a “memory book,” in which viewers can upload memories and photographs related to black American life, filling historical gaps with first-hand experience (vetted by the museum’s staff). In a mission statement on the site, Mr. Bunch says that he wants the museum to become “a place of meaning, of memory, of reflection, of laughter, and of hope.”
Unfortunately, though, these declared ambitions are jarring given the half-realized efforts on display. Even in the realm of hyperlinks, the mortar has a long way to go here before it congeals. Given the enormity of the interpretive project ahead, and its national importance, why was it prematurely undercut with something as thin and uninspiring as this site?
Consider the exhibition of portraits. If it were going to be unveiled on the Web, then why not do it in full? Many images are not available. All have brief, overly compressed biographical notes. And the essays from the show’s catalog are unavailable.
Even the selection of portraits seems unshaped by an interpretive idea. The exhibition’s title, “Let Your Motto Be Resistance,” is taken from a fervent message delivered to free Northern black Americans by a black clergyman, Henry Highland Garnet, in 1843. And while there are photos of some who variously resisted the debilitating forces arrayed against them — from W. E. B. Du Bois to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. — the idea of resistance is interpreted so broadly and blandly as to also encompass artists like Diana Ross and Wynton Marsalis. The idea may be that given historical circumstances any achievement can be interpreted as a kind of resistance; but distinctions, even among political positions, are left unexplored, at least on the Web.
It is also frustrating that a museum planning to be definitive in its reach — and even promising a sophisticated international vision — offers such scant insight into what it does portray. When describing the actor and singer Paul Robeson, for example, the Web site tells us: “Robeson became a committed socialist and worked actively against fascism both before and during World War II. But after 1945, growing conservatism at home clashed with his strong support of left-wing political causes” and “curtailed his American performing career.”
Actually Robeson became a committed Stalinist, praising that tyrant’s “deep humanity” and idealizing the Soviet state even after its horrors had become evident. That might have been used to suggest that tragically the experience of brutish racism in America had distorted his thinking. Instead, the biographical note simply ignores the complexities.
It is also futile to search the Web site for a hint of deeper and wider perspectives. Two exhibitions announced on the site, one scheduled for January 2009 in collaboration with the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture at the University of Maryland, and the other for June with the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, are both concerned with the civil rights movement. The first will display graphic images, the second, photographs. These shows may turn out to be quite powerful, but as debut ideas they don’t suggest the scope of the enterprise Mr. Bunch outlines in his mission statement.
Even the Web-based “memory book” requires more curatorial oversight to give it better thematic shape than the awkward subject index “tags” placed by visitors. Its accounts also need to be more tightly edited to add force to meandering memories and imagistic poems. There are limits to the power of participatory exhibitions.
These initial glimpses of the museum do not seem like preliminary forays into a deep exploration of black American experience, but skate along on the surface. That would be fine if this were simply going to be another hyphenated museum, but it has the potential to be so much more. The Web site may be premature, but in coming years the hope is that its evolution will chronicle continuing efforts to discover the world within and beyond the hyphen.
Connections is a critic’s perspective on arts and ideas.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Reality Show Response
There are many concerns for the archaeologists and government historians asked to consult on the Jaketown museum project. First and foremost, the mission of the museum must be clearly delineated and followed in its entirety throughout the museum-building process. Unfortunately, it is not clear who will be responsible for writing and adhering to the mission statement. Is it Mr. Turner, the former mayor? The government run MDAH? The city of Belzoni? The same question holds true for funding. A small local museum requires far less expense than a larger urban museum, but the significance of the Jaketown museum as an archaeological museum, which will hold important and sometimes rare artifacts, requires professional formation and administration. It is clear that the former mayor is dedicated to creating a museum to showcase local history and culture, but how dedicated is the current mayor or governmental institution to building and supervising a museum? Is there public support for a local archaeological museum? Will the local public be actively involved in the running of the museum? Where would the museum be located? Will private funds need to be raised to build a new construction, or will public funds be used? Will the collection be housed in a public building already run by an organization such as the MDAH? Before starting construction on a new museum or even exhibiting a collection in an existing building, those in charge of the museum must develop a plan for long term funding for the museum with a priority on the care and security of the acquired, loaned, found, and excavated objects.
In addition, the administrators must develop proper guidelines for registering and cataloging acquired and loaned objects for related museum purposes such as insurance, as well as future academic research and local education. This should include documentary procedures such as photography and video. The building should have proper storage facilities, security, and conservation areas to deal with archaeological items. In addition to a facility, the museum must have the proper insurance and legal work to handle objects from an archaeological site. Those in charge should be familiar with laws regarding the acquisition and display of objects removed from an archaeological site. Administrators and professionals who value risk assessment and prevention must run the facility.
The site seems to have been excavated and published in 1955 by Ford, Phillips, and Hagg. Will the information and artifacts from this original excavation be available to the museum? How will the museum handle future excavations and academic inquests? The objects displayed in the museum will most likely be smaller goods such as pottery, projectile points, ceramics, beads, and other ceremonial and utilitarian objects. This will require comprehensive educational texts and graphics in the exhibit to contextualize the displayed objects for the viewer. In addition, the exhibit should follow anthropological guidelines for labeling the objects with generally accepted period names and explanations of these eras.
Although Mr. Turner appears dedicated to creating a Jaketown site museum, he must consult (and employ) professional historians, archaeologists, conservators, and museum administrators to develop a mission, goal, and long-term plan for a Jaketown museum so that it is capable of meeting both the needs of the local public and of the academic community. He has taken the first step in contacting the MDAH, who in turn contacted Prof. Connolly. Obviously a very well liked and charismatic person, Mr. Turner should have no problem turning his museum dream into reality if he engages the help of professionals such as Prof. Connolly and follows their recommendations.
In addition, the administrators must develop proper guidelines for registering and cataloging acquired and loaned objects for related museum purposes such as insurance, as well as future academic research and local education. This should include documentary procedures such as photography and video. The building should have proper storage facilities, security, and conservation areas to deal with archaeological items. In addition to a facility, the museum must have the proper insurance and legal work to handle objects from an archaeological site. Those in charge should be familiar with laws regarding the acquisition and display of objects removed from an archaeological site. Administrators and professionals who value risk assessment and prevention must run the facility.
The site seems to have been excavated and published in 1955 by Ford, Phillips, and Hagg. Will the information and artifacts from this original excavation be available to the museum? How will the museum handle future excavations and academic inquests? The objects displayed in the museum will most likely be smaller goods such as pottery, projectile points, ceramics, beads, and other ceremonial and utilitarian objects. This will require comprehensive educational texts and graphics in the exhibit to contextualize the displayed objects for the viewer. In addition, the exhibit should follow anthropological guidelines for labeling the objects with generally accepted period names and explanations of these eras.
Although Mr. Turner appears dedicated to creating a Jaketown site museum, he must consult (and employ) professional historians, archaeologists, conservators, and museum administrators to develop a mission, goal, and long-term plan for a Jaketown museum so that it is capable of meeting both the needs of the local public and of the academic community. He has taken the first step in contacting the MDAH, who in turn contacted Prof. Connolly. Obviously a very well liked and charismatic person, Mr. Turner should have no problem turning his museum dream into reality if he engages the help of professionals such as Prof. Connolly and follows their recommendations.
Monday, October 8, 2007
Pink Palace Response
Museum mission statements provide the basis for the objectives and functions of a museum. According to Mister Brister, the mission statement of the Pink Palace Museum is to collect and preserve objects related to the history and culture of Memphis and the surrounding region, and to exhibit these objects in a way which best serves the education of the local public. The extensive nature of the mission statement allows the Pink Palace Museum to collect, preserve, and exhibit objects related to natural history, history, art, commerce, and entertainment of the region. Since the Pink Palace Museum must adhere to its mission statement, it must often turn away potential objects from donors that do not relate to the specifics of the mission statement. Mister Brister emphasized this as a priority of the Pink Palace Museum.
In addition, Mister Brister seemed to be in charge of enforcing the mission statement and evaluating potential risks. The Pink Palace Museum has many strategies to prevent damage to objects following the guidelines stated in ICOM, such as special cabinets that keep out light and pests, humidity and temperature control, and theft protection. Mister Brister emphasized the best strategy for dealing with pests is a preventative approach. Additionally, the Pink Palace Museum regularly sprays for pests. Mister Brister also highlighted the difficulty in keeping constant temperature and humidity in a city as perpetually hot and humid as Memphis. Similarly, the urban environment of Memphis presents the Pink Palace Museum with pollution problems that have to be dealt with by conservation and prevention strategies, although Mister Brister did not mention this specifically. Not only does the Pink Palace Museum stress the importance of object preservation, but it also allocates a large amount of its funding to theft protection. Although the ICOM focuses on the external threats such as nighttime burglary, Mister Brister mentioned that the biggest theft threat to the Pink Palace Museum is from internal sources such as independent contractors and construction workers.
As a principal part of the mission statement, preservation at the Pink Palace Museum takes precedence. The Pink Palace Museum appeared to incorporate successful strategies in storage, cleanliness, and organization of objects in accordance with ICOM. In fact, the storage facilities at the Pink Palace Museum were much more pristine and exact according to the ICOM than I expected after completing the readings. The Pink Palace Museum also has special conservation rooms and employs an expert conservator. The goal of the Pink Palace Museum is to use sustainable methods that can be adapted to future conservation technologies without permanently damaging the objects. In its entirety the Pink Palace Museum and the Collections Curator, Mister Brister, appeared to diligently follow the standards set forth by the ICOM to the best of their abilities considering their limited resources, budget, and external forces such as weather and pollution.
In addition, Mister Brister seemed to be in charge of enforcing the mission statement and evaluating potential risks. The Pink Palace Museum has many strategies to prevent damage to objects following the guidelines stated in ICOM, such as special cabinets that keep out light and pests, humidity and temperature control, and theft protection. Mister Brister emphasized the best strategy for dealing with pests is a preventative approach. Additionally, the Pink Palace Museum regularly sprays for pests. Mister Brister also highlighted the difficulty in keeping constant temperature and humidity in a city as perpetually hot and humid as Memphis. Similarly, the urban environment of Memphis presents the Pink Palace Museum with pollution problems that have to be dealt with by conservation and prevention strategies, although Mister Brister did not mention this specifically. Not only does the Pink Palace Museum stress the importance of object preservation, but it also allocates a large amount of its funding to theft protection. Although the ICOM focuses on the external threats such as nighttime burglary, Mister Brister mentioned that the biggest theft threat to the Pink Palace Museum is from internal sources such as independent contractors and construction workers.
As a principal part of the mission statement, preservation at the Pink Palace Museum takes precedence. The Pink Palace Museum appeared to incorporate successful strategies in storage, cleanliness, and organization of objects in accordance with ICOM. In fact, the storage facilities at the Pink Palace Museum were much more pristine and exact according to the ICOM than I expected after completing the readings. The Pink Palace Museum also has special conservation rooms and employs an expert conservator. The goal of the Pink Palace Museum is to use sustainable methods that can be adapted to future conservation technologies without permanently damaging the objects. In its entirety the Pink Palace Museum and the Collections Curator, Mister Brister, appeared to diligently follow the standards set forth by the ICOM to the best of their abilities considering their limited resources, budget, and external forces such as weather and pollution.
Sunday, October 7, 2007
Response: A Reality Show Comes to Museum Practices
The role of museums, whether small or large, is very important to the community that they provide services to. They are in charge of the world’s cultural property and they interpret it to the public. These museums are part of the world’s natural or cultural heritage whose cultural property provides primary evidence in disciplines such as archaeology and the natural sciences. Museums represent an important contribution of knowledge and are an essential component in defining cultural identity, nationality and internationality. The Jaketown project of the Poverty Point culture can contribute to the community of Louisiana, but first certain steps must be taken before planning the exhibitions of the artifacts that will be acquired by loans from private collectors.
Before Dr. Connolly should help to organize the exhibition, displays, exhibit labels, documentation of archive materials and a production of an introductory video, he must make sure that Mr. Turner has followed the proper guidelines in beginning a museum. Mr. Turner needs to make sure that this museum is what the community of Belzoni needs and will be productive for the city and its people. A new museum needs a home, collections, income and activities that will benefit the community. It is also a necessity that he finds collectors, experts and specialists in the community and secures their cooperation in beginning the museum collections. He should provide a written, published public document which accords with national laws and clearly states the standing of the institution, its legal status and mission statement as well as its non-profit nature. The mission statement should publicize the objective and policy statement of the new museum before beginning the acquisition of collections.
Once he has established these guidelines, then he must confirm that the new museum has an acquisitions policy that addresses the care and preservation of the objects that they will acquire by purchase, gift, loan, bequest or exchange. The collections should have proper ownership documentation along with a full history of the item from discovery to production and must be relevant to their mission statement. He should require proper care of biologically or culturally sensitive material, such as the jasper owls and effigy beads, and ensure that they can be properly cared for and stored safely with protection from the nine agents of deterioration.
After these steps have been fulfilled, Dr. Connolly can assist in exhibition planning. Before beginning this process, it is important that the “whole design” of the exhibition is planned and this design focuses on what Mr. Turner wants to achieve with the exhibition. When producing graphics for museum displays it is important to ensure that the display communicates the context of history, memory, identity or scientific knowledge to a person or group of persons. This is why it is important to get expert museum advice and competent museum workers to help communicate the objects history and meaning. Mr. Turner most likely asked for Dr. Connelly’s advice because of his eight years of experience as Station Archaeologist at the Poverty Point site. Also important in the interpretation of museum exhibitions is the exhibit label wording. This wording is just another step in defining the objects in the exhibition and communicating their cultural significance through the aid of graphics and written information in the form of text panels, captions and individual exhibit labels.
In addition to this, documentation of all the artifacts is an essential resource for collections management, research and public services. Any objects acquired for the museum by Mr. Turner needs full identification, description, its associations, provenience, condition, treatment, present locations as well as photographic documentation. The production of the introductory video that Dr. Connelly agreed to assist in should utilize all the information from the excavation reports and articles that he discovered on other Poverty Point exhibitions. This information should communicate the message of the exhibition in a clear and precise visual and written language that is easy to understand at any level or levels of public interpretation. This video will aid in public outreach that aims to educate people in the community of Belzoni about their cultural heritage.
These are but a few deliberations that need to be addressed when planning a new museum and exhibition of culturally significant artifacts to a community.
The role of museums, whether small or large, is very important to the community that they provide services to. They are in charge of the world’s cultural property and they interpret it to the public. These museums are part of the world’s natural or cultural heritage whose cultural property provides primary evidence in disciplines such as archaeology and the natural sciences. Museums represent an important contribution of knowledge and are an essential component in defining cultural identity, nationality and internationality. The Jaketown project of the Poverty Point culture can contribute to the community of Louisiana, but first certain steps must be taken before planning the exhibitions of the artifacts that will be acquired by loans from private collectors.
Before Dr. Connolly should help to organize the exhibition, displays, exhibit labels, documentation of archive materials and a production of an introductory video, he must make sure that Mr. Turner has followed the proper guidelines in beginning a museum. Mr. Turner needs to make sure that this museum is what the community of Belzoni needs and will be productive for the city and its people. A new museum needs a home, collections, income and activities that will benefit the community. It is also a necessity that he finds collectors, experts and specialists in the community and secures their cooperation in beginning the museum collections. He should provide a written, published public document which accords with national laws and clearly states the standing of the institution, its legal status and mission statement as well as its non-profit nature. The mission statement should publicize the objective and policy statement of the new museum before beginning the acquisition of collections.
Once he has established these guidelines, then he must confirm that the new museum has an acquisitions policy that addresses the care and preservation of the objects that they will acquire by purchase, gift, loan, bequest or exchange. The collections should have proper ownership documentation along with a full history of the item from discovery to production and must be relevant to their mission statement. He should require proper care of biologically or culturally sensitive material, such as the jasper owls and effigy beads, and ensure that they can be properly cared for and stored safely with protection from the nine agents of deterioration.
After these steps have been fulfilled, Dr. Connolly can assist in exhibition planning. Before beginning this process, it is important that the “whole design” of the exhibition is planned and this design focuses on what Mr. Turner wants to achieve with the exhibition. When producing graphics for museum displays it is important to ensure that the display communicates the context of history, memory, identity or scientific knowledge to a person or group of persons. This is why it is important to get expert museum advice and competent museum workers to help communicate the objects history and meaning. Mr. Turner most likely asked for Dr. Connelly’s advice because of his eight years of experience as Station Archaeologist at the Poverty Point site. Also important in the interpretation of museum exhibitions is the exhibit label wording. This wording is just another step in defining the objects in the exhibition and communicating their cultural significance through the aid of graphics and written information in the form of text panels, captions and individual exhibit labels.
In addition to this, documentation of all the artifacts is an essential resource for collections management, research and public services. Any objects acquired for the museum by Mr. Turner needs full identification, description, its associations, provenience, condition, treatment, present locations as well as photographic documentation. The production of the introductory video that Dr. Connelly agreed to assist in should utilize all the information from the excavation reports and articles that he discovered on other Poverty Point exhibitions. This information should communicate the message of the exhibition in a clear and precise visual and written language that is easy to understand at any level or levels of public interpretation. This video will aid in public outreach that aims to educate people in the community of Belzoni about their cultural heritage.
These are but a few deliberations that need to be addressed when planning a new museum and exhibition of culturally significant artifacts to a community.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Reality Show Response
This project sounds like a typical project for a small town, attempting to focus on an aspect of its history and create an exhibit with community involvement. When doing an exhibit like this, however, which involves the donation and loan of artifacts from the private sector as well as the acquisition or loan of valuable artifacts, it is necessary that the museum, however small, have the necessary skills, resources, and guidelines to properly deal with these influxes.
The first issue that should be addressed is the donation of artifacts. In order for the museum to accept the pieces, they should be included within the mission statement of the museum, must have proper documentation of ownership, must be determined as genuine, and should not be subject to repatriation according to NAGPRA. Seeing that the artifacts come from a nearby site, it is likely that they would fall under the mission statement of the museum, but care must be taken that the objects being donated follow all of the other guidelines. After the object itself has been accepted, the museum must make sure that its storage facilities are able to manage and curate the pieces sufficiently. Lastly, the proper paperwork for transfer of title must be filed, and objects should be assigned acquisition numbers, recorded, observed for a condition report and labeled immediately.
Loan items must also have paperwork describing the length of time for the loan and any payment received for the loan. A condition report should be drawn up at the beginning of the loan to monitor any changes in condition at the end of the loan period.
The “effigy beads” present a unique problem because of their worth. It is unlikely that a small museum has high-tech security equipment to properly guard very valuable items and care must be taken to create a secure environment for the pieces if taken in on loan or donated to the museum. A first step in this process would be the completion of a risk assessment taking into account the acquisition of the “effigy beads” and the specific problems that the display of these might create. Special care must be taken in the construction of the display case for both stability of the objects and security of the case itself as well as the construction of the entire exhibit in order to best protect the rare artifacts from both thieves and other damaging influences, such as environment, temperature and humidity, etc. Because of their rarity, if the museum obtains the pieces, it should consider its educational role in society and make the beads available for study to both the public and other institutions.
In relation to this, the visual recording (photography) of these beads as well as the other objects in the exhibit, needs to be of the highest available quality along with the representations used in both the exhibit and video being produced. The labels and exhibit themselves need to be worded so that the public can understand and learn from them and they must be presented in a way that flows without interruption within the exhibit. Therefore, before drawing up labels, it would be useful to know how the exhibit will be set up as well as what all will be included in it. Thought must also be given to the availability of these materials that are to be collected in the research for the exhibition and the best method of dissemination. Copies of all the fieldwork notes, etc. sent to Mr. Turner should also be made available to the public in some way. Along with this, the creation of take-home pamphlets and the option of selling the video or offering it to teachers would greatly expand the educational outreach of the exhibit.
All of these considerations must be taken into account when creating an exhibit which requires the acquisition and loan of materials.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Creation Science Museum in Petersburg KY
Take a look at this link and the letter by Alysia Fischer at Miami University in Oxford OH. Your thoughts
http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/an.2007.48.6.fm
http://www.anthrosource.net/doi/abs/10.1525/an.2007.48.6.fm
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Nazi-era art repatriation in the news
It came up again last night, so here is an article on the subject that showed up in today's times.
Heirs Make Huge Claim Over Dutch Works of Art
By MARLISE SIMONS
Published: September 26, 2007
Just as the Dutch government was moving to discourage new claims for restitution of art looted during World War II, the heirs of a Dutch Jewish art dealer have filed one of the largest claims to date for paintings now held in Dutch museums.
Four heirs of the dealer, Nathan Katz, who died in 1949, say that he was the rightful owner of more than 200 artworks recovered in Germany at the end of the war and handed over to the Dutch government. The claimants are Mr. Katz’s four children: Sybilla Goldstein-Katz, who lives in Florida; her brother, David; and her sisters Margaret and Eva, who all live in Europe.
The details of the restitution claim have not been made public, but Dutch museum directors say the works in question include paintings by 17th-century Dutch masters, among them Jan Steen, Gerard Dou and Nicolaas Maes. Some works are by Flemish and Italian artists. Many are centerpieces of major museums in the Netherlands, including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Mauritshuis in The Hague and the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem.
The Dutch Ministry of Culture said the claim was filed in March for 227 items — 225 paintings and 2 tapestries — but Bob van het Klooster, a spokesman, declined to provide further details. The matter became publicly known only on Friday when museum directors were notified of the claim.
The spokesman said the claim will now be studied by the Restitution Commission, a group of experts set up in 2001 to advise the government on the return of cultural property that was lost, sold or stolen after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands.
The application filed by the Katz heirs is larger than the claim for 202 paintings made by the heirs of Jacques Goudstikker and finally resolved in favor of the heirs in 2006. However, it also appears to be less clear cut.
Nathan and Benjamin Katz, brothers, had one gallery in Dieren, their hometown in the east of the Netherlands, and another in The Hague. They reportedly continued doing business after the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940. Researchers for the Restitution Commission said that the brothers sold many works to Alois Miedl, who was buying art for Hermann Goering and other Nazi leaders.
Tina M. Talarchyk, the Florida lawyer who is representing the Katz heirs in their claim, said that when Nathan and Benjamin Katz wanted to flee the Netherlands, they traded several sets of paintings for visas, and in this way also enabled 65 relatives to leave the country to eventual safety. One poignant detail, she said, was that the dealers’ mother was released from Westerbork, a Dutch concentration camp, in exchange for a Rembrandt painting through the intervention of Miedl.
Nathan Katz left in February 1942, after he obtained German permission to take his family to Switzerland via Frankfurt. They had to leave behind their home and many of their possessions.
Although the Dutch government in exile had decreed that citizens could not trade with the enemy, many Dutch art dealers, both Jews and non-Jews, sold works to eager German collectors, who circulated wish lists in the first few years of the war. Dutch traditional painting was sought after, because the Nazis did not consider it “degenerate” art.
After the war the Dutch government returned 28 paintings that the Katz brothers had claimed. Among them was Rembrandt’s “Portrait of a Man,” believed to have been used to buy their mother’s freedom.
Evelien Campfens, a member of the Restitution Commission in The Hague, said the claim of the Katz heirs would “be a complex case, with many different aspects to it: it will take time.” She said that the Katz brothers were important dealers involved in many transactions, and that many important paintings had passed through their hands.
The commission was notified of the claim in June, she said, and still has a large backlog of other applications.
Ms. Talarchyk, the lawyer, said the family discovered the Dutch restitution program only several years ago, while on a visit to the Netherlands. They filed for the return of one painting in 2003 as a test case and received a reply only in 2006. Their full claim was made in March to meet a government deadline of April 4.
They were assisted in their search for former Katz properties by Rudi Ekkart, a well-known Dutch art historian who is the director of the Origins Unknown Agency. His group has helped the government set standards for its restitution policy and has compiled inventories of the thousands of cultural objects lost by their owners.
In an interview Mr. Ekkart called the Katz claim “haphazard,” saying that it had been made in a “slapdash and hasty manner” and included art owned by the dealers in the 1930s that was sold before the war and therefore could not be subject to any claim.
But Mr. Ekkart added that the largest number of paintings claimed were sold after the Nazi invasion. During the war, he said, no paintings owned by the Katzes had been confiscated by the Germans. The central question, he stressed, was to determine which works had been sold involuntarily. “This will be judged by the Restitution Commission,” he said.
Ms. Talarchyk said that she saw the issue as “very straightforward.”
“When you’re dealing with German intermediaries and Jewish sellers in the war, there is no other conclusion than that this art was subject to forced sales,” she said. “There is a wrong that needs to be righted.”
Heirs Make Huge Claim Over Dutch Works of Art
By MARLISE SIMONS
Published: September 26, 2007
Just as the Dutch government was moving to discourage new claims for restitution of art looted during World War II, the heirs of a Dutch Jewish art dealer have filed one of the largest claims to date for paintings now held in Dutch museums.
Four heirs of the dealer, Nathan Katz, who died in 1949, say that he was the rightful owner of more than 200 artworks recovered in Germany at the end of the war and handed over to the Dutch government. The claimants are Mr. Katz’s four children: Sybilla Goldstein-Katz, who lives in Florida; her brother, David; and her sisters Margaret and Eva, who all live in Europe.
The details of the restitution claim have not been made public, but Dutch museum directors say the works in question include paintings by 17th-century Dutch masters, among them Jan Steen, Gerard Dou and Nicolaas Maes. Some works are by Flemish and Italian artists. Many are centerpieces of major museums in the Netherlands, including the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Mauritshuis in The Hague and the Frans Hals Museum in Haarlem.
The Dutch Ministry of Culture said the claim was filed in March for 227 items — 225 paintings and 2 tapestries — but Bob van het Klooster, a spokesman, declined to provide further details. The matter became publicly known only on Friday when museum directors were notified of the claim.
The spokesman said the claim will now be studied by the Restitution Commission, a group of experts set up in 2001 to advise the government on the return of cultural property that was lost, sold or stolen after the Nazis invaded the Netherlands.
The application filed by the Katz heirs is larger than the claim for 202 paintings made by the heirs of Jacques Goudstikker and finally resolved in favor of the heirs in 2006. However, it also appears to be less clear cut.
Nathan and Benjamin Katz, brothers, had one gallery in Dieren, their hometown in the east of the Netherlands, and another in The Hague. They reportedly continued doing business after the German occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940. Researchers for the Restitution Commission said that the brothers sold many works to Alois Miedl, who was buying art for Hermann Goering and other Nazi leaders.
Tina M. Talarchyk, the Florida lawyer who is representing the Katz heirs in their claim, said that when Nathan and Benjamin Katz wanted to flee the Netherlands, they traded several sets of paintings for visas, and in this way also enabled 65 relatives to leave the country to eventual safety. One poignant detail, she said, was that the dealers’ mother was released from Westerbork, a Dutch concentration camp, in exchange for a Rembrandt painting through the intervention of Miedl.
Nathan Katz left in February 1942, after he obtained German permission to take his family to Switzerland via Frankfurt. They had to leave behind their home and many of their possessions.
Although the Dutch government in exile had decreed that citizens could not trade with the enemy, many Dutch art dealers, both Jews and non-Jews, sold works to eager German collectors, who circulated wish lists in the first few years of the war. Dutch traditional painting was sought after, because the Nazis did not consider it “degenerate” art.
After the war the Dutch government returned 28 paintings that the Katz brothers had claimed. Among them was Rembrandt’s “Portrait of a Man,” believed to have been used to buy their mother’s freedom.
Evelien Campfens, a member of the Restitution Commission in The Hague, said the claim of the Katz heirs would “be a complex case, with many different aspects to it: it will take time.” She said that the Katz brothers were important dealers involved in many transactions, and that many important paintings had passed through their hands.
The commission was notified of the claim in June, she said, and still has a large backlog of other applications.
Ms. Talarchyk, the lawyer, said the family discovered the Dutch restitution program only several years ago, while on a visit to the Netherlands. They filed for the return of one painting in 2003 as a test case and received a reply only in 2006. Their full claim was made in March to meet a government deadline of April 4.
They were assisted in their search for former Katz properties by Rudi Ekkart, a well-known Dutch art historian who is the director of the Origins Unknown Agency. His group has helped the government set standards for its restitution policy and has compiled inventories of the thousands of cultural objects lost by their owners.
In an interview Mr. Ekkart called the Katz claim “haphazard,” saying that it had been made in a “slapdash and hasty manner” and included art owned by the dealers in the 1930s that was sold before the war and therefore could not be subject to any claim.
But Mr. Ekkart added that the largest number of paintings claimed were sold after the Nazi invasion. During the war, he said, no paintings owned by the Katzes had been confiscated by the Germans. The central question, he stressed, was to determine which works had been sold involuntarily. “This will be judged by the Restitution Commission,” he said.
Ms. Talarchyk said that she saw the issue as “very straightforward.”
“When you’re dealing with German intermediaries and Jewish sellers in the war, there is no other conclusion than that this art was subject to forced sales,” she said. “There is a wrong that needs to be righted.”
Monday, September 24, 2007
A Reality Show Comes to Museum Practices
For your writing assingment due October 9, we will change the project to the following. Last Friday, I was asked to consult on a museum project. Below I briefly describe some of the project detail. Based on what you have read, discussed in class, learned through the Pink Palace visit, if you were in my shoes, what concerns do you believe need to be addressed in the project? What are some of the specific problems? What would you recomend to Mr. Turner? Are there issues that need to be resolved before you even consider participating in the project? and so on . . .
So here's the story . . . I received a phone call from John Connaway, staff archaeologist in Clarksdale with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH). He said a Mr. Tom Turner in Belzoni was putting together a museum of collections from the Jaketown site, a nearby mound complex that dates to the time of the Poverty Point culture. John knew that I worked for 8 years as the Station Archaeologist at the Poverty Point site located near Epps Louisiana, a couple hours as the crow flies from the Jaketown site. John asked me to come down and give some advice on exhibits, text, and so forth based on my experience at Poverty Point. I agreed to the meeting for a couple of reasons. First, I believe such small town museums are important as a means of educating local citizens about scarce cultural resources and insuring the resources preservation - along with a host of identity and economic benefits for the community. Second, I have a couple of ongoing research projects that could benefit from more complete access to Jaketown site collections.
Here is what I learned about the musuem during my visit. The artifacts exhibited in the museum will be composed of Jaketown site collections curated with MDAH, a public entity. As well, several individuals agreed to donate their collections to the museum and other individuals agreed to loan artifacts. I asked Mr. Turner if he had obtained for the musuem any "jasper owls" or "effigy beads" rare and highly valued artifacts from the region and period. He said not yet, but there was one collector that owned 2 of 16 jasper owls known to exist in the entire Southeast United States. Tommy Turner, until just recently, had been mayor of Belzoni for the past 24 years. He knows everyone. He remembered me from when I spoke at the Belzoni library during Archaeology Week nearly 10 years ago.
After a lunch of catfish, peas, greens, corn bread and sweet tea at the Varsity Cafe (the best blue plate eating in Belzoni), I agreed to do the following: assist in the production of graphics for the museum displays, assist with exhibit label wording, search archive materials for photographs and field records from the 1952 excavations, assist in the production of an introductory video, mail Mr. Turner numerous articles and so forth I have on Poverty Point collection exhibits I have worked on in the past.
So . . . if you were in my shoes, what would your next steps be.
Thanks,
Robert Connolly
So here's the story . . . I received a phone call from John Connaway, staff archaeologist in Clarksdale with the Mississippi Department of Archives and History (MDAH). He said a Mr. Tom Turner in Belzoni was putting together a museum of collections from the Jaketown site, a nearby mound complex that dates to the time of the Poverty Point culture. John knew that I worked for 8 years as the Station Archaeologist at the Poverty Point site located near Epps Louisiana, a couple hours as the crow flies from the Jaketown site. John asked me to come down and give some advice on exhibits, text, and so forth based on my experience at Poverty Point. I agreed to the meeting for a couple of reasons. First, I believe such small town museums are important as a means of educating local citizens about scarce cultural resources and insuring the resources preservation - along with a host of identity and economic benefits for the community. Second, I have a couple of ongoing research projects that could benefit from more complete access to Jaketown site collections.
Here is what I learned about the musuem during my visit. The artifacts exhibited in the museum will be composed of Jaketown site collections curated with MDAH, a public entity. As well, several individuals agreed to donate their collections to the museum and other individuals agreed to loan artifacts. I asked Mr. Turner if he had obtained for the musuem any "jasper owls" or "effigy beads" rare and highly valued artifacts from the region and period. He said not yet, but there was one collector that owned 2 of 16 jasper owls known to exist in the entire Southeast United States. Tommy Turner, until just recently, had been mayor of Belzoni for the past 24 years. He knows everyone. He remembered me from when I spoke at the Belzoni library during Archaeology Week nearly 10 years ago.
After a lunch of catfish, peas, greens, corn bread and sweet tea at the Varsity Cafe (the best blue plate eating in Belzoni), I agreed to do the following: assist in the production of graphics for the museum displays, assist with exhibit label wording, search archive materials for photographs and field records from the 1952 excavations, assist in the production of an introductory video, mail Mr. Turner numerous articles and so forth I have on Poverty Point collection exhibits I have worked on in the past.
So . . . if you were in my shoes, what would your next steps be.
Thanks,
Robert Connolly
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Care and Preservations of Collections
The Pink Palace: A Review
Museums are charged with the long-term duty of preserving and presenting the patrimony of a nation, culture or community. The primary concern of museums is to protect the intellectual integrity of collections and objects through their care and preservation. During our tour at the Pink Palace Museum, led by Ron Brister, I was surprised to see that in such a brief time he mentioned many aspects of preserving collections in museums. These aspects included adhering to mission statements concerning the loan of objects, collections management, collection preservation, environment control, risk assessment and disaster planning.
Mr. Brister clearly stated that the museum must adhere to their mission statement regarding objects that they purchase or receive as a gift, loan or exchange. The Pink Palace preserves the cultural, historical, archaeological, and biological history of the Memphis region. If an object does not contribute to the mission, it can not be acquired. If it does follow these requirements, then the object must have a valid title of ownership. In the Collections department, each of the objects is given an up to date catalogue of the collections which provides the museum with easy access to the information and location of objects. However, the catalogue did not have photographs of these objects as ICOM states as one of the basic collection preservation strategies.
Other characteristics of collection preservation discussed in our readings were apparent in policies at the Pink Palace. The conservator does not permanently alter objects if the techniques to preserve them extend beyond what is necessary to ensure its survival. Rooms that require different conservation techniques are separated into clean and dirty rooms, and rooms with hazardous materials. The Pink Palace also practices preventive conservation where the main agents of deterioration, such as temperature, humidity, pest control and storage facilities, are monitored. This allows the care of the whole collection instead of responding to individual aspects of each object. Mr. Brister covered most of these agents, although he did not address pollutants, lighting or water prevention. As I observed water stains on the ceilings in the exhibition rooms, I wondered how long it had been since they had performed a risk assessment survey of the plumbing. The collections department also employs acid free tissue to wrap around textiles so as not to contribute to the breaking down of the fabric. In addition to this, they do not fold the textiles, because over time the crease in them breaks down the material and makes long-term preservation difficult.
To support environmental control, the Pink Palace utilizes a hygrothermograph that monitors the objects relative humidity. As stated in ICOM, museums aim to achieve 50-55% humidity, but the Pink Palace humidity levels are kept at 60%. The levels of humidity are extremely important in the preservation of collections, therefore documentation of these humidity levels are recorded in object condition reports for the purposes of loans. Another issue Mr. Brister addressed was the risk management of pests. ICOM mentions a new pest control strategy called IPM (Integrated Pest Management) which is the strategy that the Pink Palace employs. ICOM states that museums should avoid sources and attractants for insects, especially food garbage. All of the conservation rooms had signs that prohibited any food or drink which follows the rules of IPM. In addition to this, screens were installed over the vents in airtight collection cases that would further exclude an insect infestation. Simon Knell mentions that extremely low temperature also helps with bug infestations, and Mr. Brister affirmed this by commenting on how they keep their collections store room at cooler temperatures as part of preventative conservation.
Inspection of collections in storage and exhibits and a detection system for theft is very important to museums. The Pink Palace has guards that inspect the museum every hour. Further, they have security guards stationed there 24-hours a day to monitor for theft problems. These are among the basic collection preservation strategies that ensure protection against the agents of deterioration. They also consider disaster planning in the construction of their cases, because of the risk of earthquakes in the area. Therefore, these cases are mad by museum staff in order to protect the displayed objects if such an event occurred.
The Pink Palace seems to have addressed many of the policies and ideas involved in the care and preservation of collections. In addition to this, they adhere to many of the rules and regulations stated in these policies. My observations of our tour to the Pink Palace further bolstered the belief that preservation of collections is one the most important to museum practices.
The Pink Palace: A Review
Museums are charged with the long-term duty of preserving and presenting the patrimony of a nation, culture or community. The primary concern of museums is to protect the intellectual integrity of collections and objects through their care and preservation. During our tour at the Pink Palace Museum, led by Ron Brister, I was surprised to see that in such a brief time he mentioned many aspects of preserving collections in museums. These aspects included adhering to mission statements concerning the loan of objects, collections management, collection preservation, environment control, risk assessment and disaster planning.
Mr. Brister clearly stated that the museum must adhere to their mission statement regarding objects that they purchase or receive as a gift, loan or exchange. The Pink Palace preserves the cultural, historical, archaeological, and biological history of the Memphis region. If an object does not contribute to the mission, it can not be acquired. If it does follow these requirements, then the object must have a valid title of ownership. In the Collections department, each of the objects is given an up to date catalogue of the collections which provides the museum with easy access to the information and location of objects. However, the catalogue did not have photographs of these objects as ICOM states as one of the basic collection preservation strategies.
Other characteristics of collection preservation discussed in our readings were apparent in policies at the Pink Palace. The conservator does not permanently alter objects if the techniques to preserve them extend beyond what is necessary to ensure its survival. Rooms that require different conservation techniques are separated into clean and dirty rooms, and rooms with hazardous materials. The Pink Palace also practices preventive conservation where the main agents of deterioration, such as temperature, humidity, pest control and storage facilities, are monitored. This allows the care of the whole collection instead of responding to individual aspects of each object. Mr. Brister covered most of these agents, although he did not address pollutants, lighting or water prevention. As I observed water stains on the ceilings in the exhibition rooms, I wondered how long it had been since they had performed a risk assessment survey of the plumbing. The collections department also employs acid free tissue to wrap around textiles so as not to contribute to the breaking down of the fabric. In addition to this, they do not fold the textiles, because over time the crease in them breaks down the material and makes long-term preservation difficult.
To support environmental control, the Pink Palace utilizes a hygrothermograph that monitors the objects relative humidity. As stated in ICOM, museums aim to achieve 50-55% humidity, but the Pink Palace humidity levels are kept at 60%. The levels of humidity are extremely important in the preservation of collections, therefore documentation of these humidity levels are recorded in object condition reports for the purposes of loans. Another issue Mr. Brister addressed was the risk management of pests. ICOM mentions a new pest control strategy called IPM (Integrated Pest Management) which is the strategy that the Pink Palace employs. ICOM states that museums should avoid sources and attractants for insects, especially food garbage. All of the conservation rooms had signs that prohibited any food or drink which follows the rules of IPM. In addition to this, screens were installed over the vents in airtight collection cases that would further exclude an insect infestation. Simon Knell mentions that extremely low temperature also helps with bug infestations, and Mr. Brister affirmed this by commenting on how they keep their collections store room at cooler temperatures as part of preventative conservation.
Inspection of collections in storage and exhibits and a detection system for theft is very important to museums. The Pink Palace has guards that inspect the museum every hour. Further, they have security guards stationed there 24-hours a day to monitor for theft problems. These are among the basic collection preservation strategies that ensure protection against the agents of deterioration. They also consider disaster planning in the construction of their cases, because of the risk of earthquakes in the area. Therefore, these cases are mad by museum staff in order to protect the displayed objects if such an event occurred.
The Pink Palace seems to have addressed many of the policies and ideas involved in the care and preservation of collections. In addition to this, they adhere to many of the rules and regulations stated in these policies. My observations of our tour to the Pink Palace further bolstered the belief that preservation of collections is one the most important to museum practices.
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
Pink Palace Response
Despite coming from a varied and background, the Pink Palace Museum has come to follow many of the standards set forth for museums by ICOM and Spectrum regarding mission statement, acquisitions, collections management, conservation, deaccessioning and educational outreach. The mission statement of the museum clearly sets out what is to be expected from the exhibits and educational programs offered by the museum and even sets out a specific geographic area of concentration. The museum is careful to adhere to these guidelines, as is evidenced by their collections on display, their high level of community outreach commitment through educational programs and their acquisitions policies as stated by Ron Brister.
As is condoned by ICOM, the museum does not accept donations of items that do not represent their mission statement. Also, they do not accept donations without clear proof of ownership, or those that the museum would be unable to use. Likewise, their deaccession policy follows the ICOM standards. Although they do deaccession, which is to be avoided, they look to first put items on loan or offer them to other institutions and only deaccession items that they are no longer able to care for, have moved out of the focus of the museum, or they have duplicates of. They also must have the permission of the director as well as the board to make final decisions regarding both accessions and deaccessions.
As for collections management and care, they follow strict guidelines in order to protect the objects. Security cameras, personnel and security systems are employed along with the use of sturdy and secure cases. Each object is numbered and has an information surrogate in a card file, an appropriate way to keep abbreviated yet accessible documentation. The cases are made specifically for what is to be contained in them and because of the threat of earthquakes in the area, mounts for objects on display are each handmade by staff to protect the object in case of an earthquake. This care involves appropriate risk assessment, including accounting for the natural surroundings of the area. A side note here, however, regarding this is that there are plants surrounding the building at close quarters on at least three sides while bug problems were listed by Ron as a strong threat to many of the artifacts in the building. Perhaps a more thorough risk assessment involving this point should be taken into consideration.
Other aspects of collections care, such as storage environment and conservation seemed well within good museum practice codes. A hygrothermograph is stationed within the storage facility (although I am not sure they are positioned in the galleries, which is also a necessity) and the temperature and humidity are kept at a constant determined amiable for the artifacts housed there. Acid free tissue is used in wrapping artifacts and, wherever possible, folding is avoided. Proper storage containers with seals to protect the items within are also in use.
As for conservation, the
Although faced with a number of issues concerning politics and funding, as are all museums, the Pink Palace has been able to put into place practices that very closely follow the guidelines set out my the museum governing institutions in regards to a number of their departments. As well, they are able to keep research collections and a library for the active research of their collections. In addition, they keep teaching materials which are used for public outreach programs. All in all, this museum meets the requirements of both its mission statement and the general guidelines for museums very well in almost all aspects that were seen in the tour.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Week 3 discussion notes
Week 3, 11 September 2007
Inventories and Documentation of Collections and the Virtual Museum
ICOM ch.3*
Spectrum (MDA standards) *
Marty, “Museum Informatics”, Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science *
Marty and Jones, Museum Informatics, Chapters 3,4,6,10,11and 20 *
Museum informatics?
Reasons for information collection around items:
1. Establish legal ownership of items
2. Reduce damage by creating information surrogates
3. Collections information contextualise objects
Methods
1. Unique numbers for all items
2. Consistency
3. Flexibility
4. Inventory control
5 standards from ICOM – history and differences
Relationship to libraries
Core components
ICOM p. 39
Create a list on the board of information objects and interventions in museums and talk about the implementation of each.
- collections (the objects themselves as information resources)
- inventory
- research library
- image collection
- contextual research information
- collections database
- exhibits
- educational materials and programs
- books in the gift shop
- websites
- in museum kiosks
- marketing materials
Explore the idea of an information surrogate. (Paul story re: safe information) and burden on objects through access and research (Marty 22)
Explore the idea of a virtual museum.
Personalisation technologies (Marty 66)
Chapter 4 “Representing Museum Knowledge”
27 – museum knowledge representation supports museum missions.
“information management is the central role of the museum”
object v. process v. action data models
Chapter 10, “A World of Interactive Exhibits”
110 – talks about difference between data nad interpretation. Is this possible.
Virtual museum – sort this out
Shift form objects ot ideas in museums (like new museology – what do we think about this?)
Ch. 11 “Bluring boundaries for museum visitors”
Museums are paces for the social conduct of information
Chapter 20 “future of museums in the information age”
“techno-skeptical museum leaders”
Underlying meta-question from readings
By calling objects information resources do we diminish the role of the object in the museum?
Inventories and Documentation of Collections and the Virtual Museum
ICOM ch.3*
Spectrum (MDA standards) *
Marty, “Museum Informatics”, Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science *
Marty and Jones, Museum Informatics, Chapters 3,4,6,10,11and 20 *
Museum informatics?
Reasons for information collection around items:
1. Establish legal ownership of items
2. Reduce damage by creating information surrogates
3. Collections information contextualise objects
Methods
1. Unique numbers for all items
2. Consistency
3. Flexibility
4. Inventory control
5 standards from ICOM – history and differences
Relationship to libraries
Core components
ICOM p. 39
Create a list on the board of information objects and interventions in museums and talk about the implementation of each.
- collections (the objects themselves as information resources)
- inventory
- research library
- image collection
- contextual research information
- collections database
- exhibits
- educational materials and programs
- books in the gift shop
- websites
- in museum kiosks
- marketing materials
Explore the idea of an information surrogate. (Paul story re: safe information) and burden on objects through access and research (Marty 22)
Explore the idea of a virtual museum.
Personalisation technologies (Marty 66)
Chapter 4 “Representing Museum Knowledge”
27 – museum knowledge representation supports museum missions.
“information management is the central role of the museum”
object v. process v. action data models
Chapter 10, “A World of Interactive Exhibits”
110 – talks about difference between data nad interpretation. Is this possible.
Virtual museum – sort this out
Shift form objects ot ideas in museums (like new museology – what do we think about this?)
Ch. 11 “Bluring boundaries for museum visitors”
Museums are paces for the social conduct of information
Chapter 20 “future of museums in the information age”
“techno-skeptical museum leaders”
Underlying meta-question from readings
By calling objects information resources do we diminish the role of the object in the museum?
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Chapter 11
Chapter 11: Blurring the Boundaries for Museum Visitors
Areti Galani,
Matthew Chalmers,
This chapter, proposed by Areti Galani and Matthew Chalmers, deals with a visitor-centered approach to local and remote museum visiting that is shaped by social conduct in terms of both visitor’s intentions and overall experience. These studies investigate social interaction among friends and how social context is one of the three key elements that influence visitor’s experience. Other visitor-centered studies looked at how social interaction might affect learning and how social behavior is expressed by family and friends in museums. These studies have helped give insightful information in the ways social interaction have influenced interpretation and learning. This visitor-centered approach was inspired by sociological ethno methodology that attempts to examine how museum objects are constantly constituted in and through the social interaction of visitors by utilizing video recordings that captures social interactions around displays among friends and strangers at the object face. This sociological study looked to other resources visitors use to re-organize their conduct with fellow visitors and the exhibition. Inspecting this behavior around displays may help in the design of novel displays and enable and encourage social interaction.
Further visitor-centered studies indicated that the pace of the visit is influenced by social conduct and verbal and visual cues facilitate direct interaction and peripheral awareness of the group. These studies are primarily concerned with physical visits but the remote on-line viewer is increasing and they usually visit on-line museums with the company of others. Studying this social conduct is a better way to understand the visiting activity and design and social action (i.e. gestures and postures) support overall museum experiences and informs ones own engagement with artifacts.
The next section focuses on how the museum visit is a social activity and social interaction often mediates and shapes personal engagement in both asynchronous and synchronous environments. These collaborative virtual environments use 3D graphics and chat technologies to support synchronous remote visits among distributed on-line visitors. The evaluation on these technologies focused on technical and usability issues of the system and limited analysis of conversations that took place in the system indicated guided tours generated more talk about the artifacts. Social awareness and interaction have also been explored through networked art installations by supporting a two-way communication between physical and digital by offering view of the virtual museum environment to local visitors and view of physical environment to remote visitors.
After this was a discussion on a mixed reality museum application, called the Mack Room Mixed Reality, which supported social conduct among local and remote participants and sought to capture and understand the visiting activity in relation to its sociality. It also supported simultaneous visiting among local and remote visitors (whose categorization of participants is not a straightforward cut) whose social conduct may blur boundaries among the local and remote museum visitors and may have shared experiences for on-site and on-line audiences. This application combined virtual environments, hypermedia technology, handheld devices and an ultrasound positioning device. This was so all three visitors, one on-site and two remote, could visit the
Further, they discuss the shared engagement with museum artifacts, along with the empowerment of the remote visitor and the emergence of a mutually complementing physical and digital museum design. The design’s diversity does not seem to inhibit their shared experience which supports Galani and Chalmers idea that in looking at mixed reality environments one must treat all media – new and old – as equal resources in the course of interaction. In these instances, social conduct can support interaction in and through physical and digital environments and facilitate the blending of media and environments in one common activity.
Last, they discuss the practical consideration of two aspects regarding the application and maintenance of mixed reality technology in museum settings: the ecology of the museum environment and issues of maintenance and updating. These technologies are not just about presenting information, but also about supporting social interaction. They recognize the costs of design and maintenance of new technologies and they suggest that the computing and telephone technology of the 21st century will make such interaction accessible. This technology may offer the means to augment the accessibility of collections and educational activates of an institution.
Review of Chapter 4
Chapter four explores the representation of knowledge in museums, problems inherent in representing that knowledge, and the ways in which the objectives of museums have changed with the widespread use of sophisticated computer equipment among the general public. The way that a museum represents knowledge is dependent on several factors including its internal objectives, which relate to its mission statement, the needs of the public and researchers, as well as the importance of standardizing the process so that museums can share information among themselves.
Knowledge representation refers to the ways in which museums store and organize information. How a museum represents knowledge is linked to the goals of the specific institution. For example, a museum may want the information to be accessible to the general public and not be presented in a way that is incomprehensible or intimidating to the lay person, while at the same time retaining vital information about the object, such as its original cultural context, or scientific measurements, that may be useful to researchers. Because of the varied objectives of museums, cataloging and storing information presents unique challenges. There is currently no standard protocol for museum knowledge representation. Attempts at adopting systems used by libraries have mostly been unsuccessful because of the inherent differences in cataloging books and cultural objects. One obvious difference between books and objects is that books have a title page that gives all of the information needed to systematically categorize and organize information about them. On the other hand, objects can only be identified by the information that is known about them, and this knowledge is often limited which leads to difficulty in categorization.
Another aspect that the article briefly discusses is the sharing of knowledge among museums. Historically, museums have not shared information with each other. This seems to be antithetical to the role museums claim to play in our culture. As the article states, the goal of museums is as all encompassing as representing all of human knowledge and interpreting that knowledge. If there is no communication among museums this goal can never be fully realized. It is for this reason that museums must find some way to standardize their protocol on knowledge representation. Communication among museums, as well as partnerships with information specialists and software designers, should become the standard for museums so that a solution to these problems can be found.
Arguably one of the most important changes in museum knowledge representation stems from the advances in computer technology in the last twelve years. With the advent of cheap, sophisticated computer equipment and high speed Internet, the role that computers play in representing knowledge to the public has become primary. A carefully developed website can help a museum accomplish its mission by offering high quality images and information to the general public and researchers alike. Additionally, the multi-media capability of today’s computers can serve to enhance knowledge through video lectures and other multi-media presentations.
In conclusion, it may be possible for museums to accomplish the objective of representing all of human knowledge and interpretation of that knowledge by working with computer scientists and software designers to standardize the protocol for knowledge representation. Additionally, museums can further accomplish their missions through the use of technology to represent knowledge to the public and researchers. By working together and including other disciplines such as computer and library science, museums may eventually reach the ultimate goal of representing the whole of human knowledge.
Knowledge representation refers to the ways in which museums store and organize information. How a museum represents knowledge is linked to the goals of the specific institution. For example, a museum may want the information to be accessible to the general public and not be presented in a way that is incomprehensible or intimidating to the lay person, while at the same time retaining vital information about the object, such as its original cultural context, or scientific measurements, that may be useful to researchers. Because of the varied objectives of museums, cataloging and storing information presents unique challenges. There is currently no standard protocol for museum knowledge representation. Attempts at adopting systems used by libraries have mostly been unsuccessful because of the inherent differences in cataloging books and cultural objects. One obvious difference between books and objects is that books have a title page that gives all of the information needed to systematically categorize and organize information about them. On the other hand, objects can only be identified by the information that is known about them, and this knowledge is often limited which leads to difficulty in categorization.
Another aspect that the article briefly discusses is the sharing of knowledge among museums. Historically, museums have not shared information with each other. This seems to be antithetical to the role museums claim to play in our culture. As the article states, the goal of museums is as all encompassing as representing all of human knowledge and interpreting that knowledge. If there is no communication among museums this goal can never be fully realized. It is for this reason that museums must find some way to standardize their protocol on knowledge representation. Communication among museums, as well as partnerships with information specialists and software designers, should become the standard for museums so that a solution to these problems can be found.
Arguably one of the most important changes in museum knowledge representation stems from the advances in computer technology in the last twelve years. With the advent of cheap, sophisticated computer equipment and high speed Internet, the role that computers play in representing knowledge to the public has become primary. A carefully developed website can help a museum accomplish its mission by offering high quality images and information to the general public and researchers alike. Additionally, the multi-media capability of today’s computers can serve to enhance knowledge through video lectures and other multi-media presentations.
In conclusion, it may be possible for museums to accomplish the objective of representing all of human knowledge and interpretation of that knowledge by working with computer scientists and software designers to standardize the protocol for knowledge representation. Additionally, museums can further accomplish their missions through the use of technology to represent knowledge to the public and researchers. By working together and including other disciplines such as computer and library science, museums may eventually reach the ultimate goal of representing the whole of human knowledge.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Review of Museum Informatics, Chapter 10
Chapter 10 delves into the use of computer based information and communication technologies within a museum and the experiences that these technologies can create as well as the dangers of using them. When used in public displays and in interpretation of artifacts, these technologies have the potential to create a unique and sometimes personal interactive experience for the visitor. According to the article, involvement can be physical, intellectual, emotional or social, although the social aspect can be questionable.
Four types of technologies are discussed with the pros and cons of each enumerated. We begin with the information kiosk. Information kiosks offer a wide variety of aids to the visitor such as maps, object information, labels and information about exhibits and the museum in general. They also have the potential to create 3-D or virtual reality and collaborative group experiences. One very important aspect of the kiosk which is only touched on in the chapter is the ease of changing and adding information to these portable computers. They can constantly be updated and moved in order to be reused for different exhibits. Although no doubt expensive, over the long term, the money saved from printing and mounting numerous labels and pamphlets can add up.
A drawback to the kiosk is the fact that it must be properly placed for functionality within the gallery space. It must not impede the viewing of objects but must also be accessible to everyone. This, however, creates another problem. When there is a large amount of information on a kiosk, it is likely that it will be used for a significant amount of time by each person. Many people might miss out on the information that it has to offer because they do not want to wait.
A solution to this wait is the use of handheld or personal computing devices. These can personalize a tour or allow a person to search information at their own speed. It can also be interactive by giving the person access to the web, a camera and other functions. Handhelds, however are extremely expensive and, as noted by the authors, a museum must think hard about purchasing them. They need to be able to work within the goals of the museum. I would add that they also need to have a lot of information put into them, more than would be offered by any other media in order to make them worthwhile.
The web is another wonderful resource being used by museums to promote, share and research collections. There are many things that the web allows, however, again, the goals of the museum must be met by what is placed on their site. The site must be navigable by many different types of people, standard vocabularies must be used, and colloquial searches enabled for the public. High quality images must be used to represent objects, and sufficient information on pieces needs to be included in databases. Otherwise, they are useless to the researcher or even the interested public. The information, if presented, needs to be organized and suitable for all users, or, separate sections should be set up. A type of this separation can be seen on the British Museum website, which has independent collections searches for children and adults.
Lastly, the chapter briefly introduces the take-home media. This is any type of media that can be taken away from the museum, usually a CD or DVD, for educational purposes. This is a very important facet of the technology used in museums and plays a crucial role in the visitor’s experience. These resources allow the visitor to extend their interaction with the museum and also possibly share it with others. Although given only a small paragraph in the chapter, I believe this to be one of the best and most cost effective ways for museums to heighten education, interaction, and promotion.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
Week 2 discussion notes
Role of Museums and Professional Ethics
ICOM ch.1*
Macdonald, Chapters 25-26
Kavanagh, Part 6: Codes of Ethical Conduct
What is the role of the museum in society? How has this role changed as reflected in shifting definitions of the museum and shifting obligations outlined in professional ethics?
To what extent does the museum profession conform to notions of a profession?
How is museum practice controlled or influenced by codes of conduct and ethics?
Look at the codes in Kavanaugh. Compare the codes for contents and details, similarities and differences, exclusions and inclusions. What are the priorities of these codes? Are they different? Who were these codes written for? How do these documents work within museums?
Besterman – 435 – “intergenerational stakeholder” – unpack and discuss
Read three news articles at the break (one per student) and discuss ethical consideration in each.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-history4sep04,0,3248493.story?coll=la-home-world
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rosenbaum4sep04,0,7124279.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
file:///Users/jmgorman/Desktop/MUSEUM%20PRACTICES/ethics%20papers/PrinterFriendlyPopup.aspx.webarchive
Ethical situations and case studies.
1. You are the curator of a social history gallery and have a large collection of photographs and negatives, from a business that has operated in your area for over 70 years. Some of the photos are very striking, particularly those of children and you use them in your social history gallery in an interactive program on a new leaflet.
2. The nat hist collection for which you are responsible is stored in a damp basement and you know it is deteriorating rapidly. Your museum has become much more interested in active environmental work and has not exhibited any stuffed specimens for at least ten years.
3. Apulian krater example
4. Houston fine arts example
5. Lydian horde from Genoways and Ireland
ICOM ch.1*
Macdonald, Chapters 25-26
Kavanagh, Part 6: Codes of Ethical Conduct
What is the role of the museum in society? How has this role changed as reflected in shifting definitions of the museum and shifting obligations outlined in professional ethics?
To what extent does the museum profession conform to notions of a profession?
How is museum practice controlled or influenced by codes of conduct and ethics?
Look at the codes in Kavanaugh. Compare the codes for contents and details, similarities and differences, exclusions and inclusions. What are the priorities of these codes? Are they different? Who were these codes written for? How do these documents work within museums?
Besterman – 435 – “intergenerational stakeholder” – unpack and discuss
Read three news articles at the break (one per student) and discuss ethical consideration in each.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-history4sep04,0,3248493.story?coll=la-home-world
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rosenbaum4sep04,0,7124279.story?coll=la-news-comment-opinions
file:///Users/jmgorman/Desktop/MUSEUM%20PRACTICES/ethics%20papers/PrinterFriendlyPopup.aspx.webarchive
Ethical situations and case studies.
1. You are the curator of a social history gallery and have a large collection of photographs and negatives, from a business that has operated in your area for over 70 years. Some of the photos are very striking, particularly those of children and you use them in your social history gallery in an interactive program on a new leaflet.
2. The nat hist collection for which you are responsible is stored in a damp basement and you know it is deteriorating rapidly. Your museum has become much more interested in active environmental work and has not exhibited any stuffed specimens for at least ten years.
3. Apulian krater example
4. Houston fine arts example
5. Lydian horde from Genoways and Ireland
NYT article concerning charitable giving in the US
September 6, 2007
AGE OF RICHES
Big Gifts, Tax Breaks and a Debate on Charity
By STEPHANIE STROM
Eli Broad, a billionaire businessman, has given away more than $650 million over the last five years, to Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to establish a medical research institute, to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and to programs to improve the administration of urban schools and public education.
The rich are giving more to charity than ever, but people like Mr. Broad are not the only ones footing the bill for such generosity. For every three dollars they give away, the federal government typically gives up a dollar or more in tax revenue, because of the charitable tax deduction and by not collecting estate taxes.
Mr. Broad (rhymes with road) says his gifts provide a greater public benefit than if the money goes to taxes for the government to spend. “I believe the public benefit is significantly greater than the tax benefit an individual receives,” Mr. Broad said. “I think there’s a multiplier effect. What smart, entrepreneurial philanthropists and their foundations do is get greater value for how they invest their money than if the government were doing it.”
It is an argument made by many of the nation’s richest people. But not all of them. Take the investor William H. Gross, also a billionaire. Mr. Gross vigorously dismisses the notion that the wealthy are helping society more effectively and efficiently than government.
“When millions of people are dying of AIDS and malaria in Africa, it is hard to justify the umpteenth society gala held for the benefit of a performing arts center or an art museum,” he wrote in his investment commentary this month. “A $30 million gift to a concert hall is not philanthropy, it is a Napoleonic coronation.”
Elaborating in an interview, Mr. Gross said he did not think the public benefits from philanthropy were commensurate with the tax breaks that givers receive. “I don’t think we’re getting the bang for the buck for gifts to build football stadiums and concert halls, with all due respect to Carnegie Hall and other institutions,” he said. “I don’t think the public would vote for spending tax dollars on those things.”
The billionaires’ differing views epitomize a growing debate over what philanthropy is achieving at a time when the wealthiest Americans control a rising share of the national income and, because of sharp cuts in personal taxes, give up less to government.
Familiar Recipients
A common perception of philanthropy is that one of its central purposes is to alleviate the suffering of society’s least fortunate and therefore promote greater equality, taking some of the burden off government. In exchange, the United States is one of a handful of countries to allow givers a tax deduction. In essence, the public is letting private individuals decide how to allocate money on their behalf.
What qualifies for that tax deduction has broadened over the 90 years since its creation to include everything from university golf teams to puppet theaters — even an organization established after Hurricane Katrina to help practitioners of sadomasochism obtain gear they had lost in the storm.
Roughly three-quarters of charitable gifts of $50 million and more from 2002 through March 31 went to universities, private foundations, hospitals and art museums, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.
Of the rest, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation accounted for half on the center’s list. That money went primarily to improve the lives of the poor in developing countries. Valuable as that may be, it also meant that the American public effectively underwrote several billion dollars worth of foreign aid by private individuals, even though poll after poll shows Americans are at best ambivalent about using tax dollars in such assistance.
In contrast, few gifts of that size are made to organizations like the Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity and America’s Second Harvest, whose main goals are to help the poor in this country. Research shows that less than 10 percent of the money Americans give to charity addresses basic human needs, like sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry and caring for the indigent sick, and that the wealthiest typically devote an even smaller portion of their giving to such causes than everyone else.
“Donors give to organizations they are close to,” said H. Art Taylor, president and chief executive of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance. “So they give to their college or university, or maybe someone close to them died of a particular disease so they make a big gift to medical research aimed at that disease. How many of the superrich have that kind of a relationship with a soup kitchen? Or a homeless shelter?”
Philanthropists like Mr. Broad say that looking at philanthropy solely as a means of ameliorating need is too narrow. “If you look historically at what Carnegie did with creating a library system and the Rockefellers in creating Rockefeller University, I think it does a lot more for society than simply supporting those in need,” Mr. Broad said.
About 2 percent of the money Mr. Broad has given away through his two foundations over the last five years, or $15 million, went to support organizations like the United Way and the United Jewish Fund, which serve needy people as well as the middle class. The foundations also have given money to groups that help homeless children, and the International Rescue Committee.
Still, Mr. Broad dedicates his biggest gifts to areas he thinks lack government support, like the $25 million he gave to the University of Southern California last year to found an institute for integrative biology and stem cell research, or the tens of millions he dedicated to complete the new Disney concert hall in Los Angeles.
Like many major philanthropists, Mr. Broad said he considered such gifts an illustration of the Chinese proverb: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” The argument is that simply taking care of the poor does nothing to eliminate poverty and that they will ultimately benefit more from efforts to, say, find cures for the diseases that afflict them or improve public education.
As for Mr. Gross, despite his uncharacteristically fiery criticism of what he calls “philanthropic ego gratification,” some of the large gifts he and his wife, Sue, have made are not so different from those made by other billionaires. He has given millions to a local hospital, for example, and for stem cell research.
And in 2005 the couple gave roughly $25 million to Duke, Mr. Gross’s alma mater.
But the Duke gift illustrates Mr. Gross’s priorities. The money is almost exclusively for scholarships.
“Universities have their own thing going — they want to build infrastructure and endowments and perpetuate their system, which isn’t necessarily in the social interest,” Mr. Gross said. “Scholarships get a little more down to the ground level.”
Taking Aim at the Tax Code
The investor Warren E. Buffett also voices strong feelings about how donations are used.
When Mr. Buffett pledged $30 billion to the Gates Foundation, he included a little-noted requirement that the foundation spend each increment of the gift he hands over, in addition to its own annual legally mandated spending. If Mr. Buffett transfers $1.3 billion of stock to it, it must spend every nickel within a year.
“I wanted to make sure,” he said, “that to the extent I was providing extra money to them, it didn’t just go to build up the foundation size further but that it was put to use.”
The Gates Foundation’s work is largely international, although a portion of its spending supports efforts to improve urban education and access to college, so Mr. Buffett’s money is unlikely to be used to address basic needs in this country.
“I think the government ought to make sure that all the people here who drew short straws have a decent minimum,” Mr. Buffett said. “We moved toward that with Social Security, but we could go a lot further now.”
He does not regard his gift as charitable and expects no tax benefit from it, in part because he has credit for past donations that he has not used.
Rather, he calls his sister, Doris Buffett, the “real philanthropist” in the family. Ms. Buffett runs an organization, the Sunshine Lady Foundation, that helps the needy pay for college, medical expenses, mortgages, glasses and cars.
Mr. Buffett recently has brought attention to himself as a critic of inequities in the nation’s tax system, which offers the wealthy better tax breaks for charitable giving than it does the average taxpayer. Deductions for charitable giving can be claimed only by the fewer than half of all taxpayers who itemize, and those falling in higher tax brackets get bigger deductions for cash gifts.
The charitable deduction cost the government $40 billion in lost tax revenue last year, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, more than the government spends altogether on managing public lands, protecting the environment and developing new energy sources.
Rob Reich, an assistant professor of political science and ethics in society at Stanford, goes so far as to say that the tax code promotes inequities through the breaks it provides for charitable giving.
Take schools. The Woodside Elementary School in Woodside, Calif., where the median family income is $196,505, raised $7,065 a pupil in 1998 from charitable contributions to a foundation it created, according to Professor Reich’s research. Across the San Francisco Bay, a similar foundation to support the Oakland Unified School District, where the median family income is $44,384, raised $138 a pupil that year.
In effect, the government is subsidizing a system that enhances inequities between poor and wealthy public schools, Professor Reich said.
Raising Questions
Legislators, regulators and others are asking more questions about exactly what charities do with the money they are given.
“When foundations, corporations and individuals give money to the opera,” said Xavier Becerra, a California Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee who represents a district in Los Angeles populated largely by young working-class immigrant families, “my folks are very unlikely to benefit from those forgone tax dollars that could have been used for health care, for after-school programs for kids, for help in getting access to college education.”
Yet Mr. Becerra himself is a beneficiary of one of the country’s wealthiest charities, Stanford, which has a $15.2 billion endowment and gave him a scholarship. “There is no way my parents could have afforded for me to go there without the generous financial aid the university gave me,” he said.
At the other end of the political spectrum, Grover G. Norquist, whose Americans for Tax Reform lobbies for lower taxes, suggests taxing nonprofit hospitals that cannot demonstrate that they provide significant care for the poor.
“I’m not aware of anything they do that a for-profit hospital doesn’t do in terms of providing free care,” Mr. Norquist said.
Like other billionaire philanthropists, Thomas M. Siebel, founder of Siebel Systems, has given his largest gifts to his alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1999, he donated $32 million for a computer science center bearing his name, and he pledged $100 million this year to support basic research that he hopes will reduce dependency on carbon-based fuels.
But when the university suggested using some of that gift to put up another new building named for him and hire new professors, he said no.
“I told them to use the basement of an existing building and some of the really smart people they already have,” Mr. Siebel said.
Attracting philanthropic support to fight substance abuse is one of the biggest challenges in fund-raising, but Mr. Siebel has donated more than $15 million to the Meth Project, an organization he created. “I think we’ll save a lot of lives in the end,” Mr. Siebel said. “Isn’t that what philanthropy is supposed to be about?”
He has also given the Salvation Army more than $18 million over the last six years, mostly to support services for the homeless. He said he gives to the organization because of its low administrative costs and lack of frills.
“When I first started doing this, I made a contribution to some organization, Harvest something or other, I think, that was working on homelessness,” Mr. Siebel said. “The next thing I knew, I got a plaque in the mail and an invitation to an awards ceremony.”
He added: “I never gave them another nickel. What were they spending money on plaques for?”
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
AGE OF RICHES
Big Gifts, Tax Breaks and a Debate on Charity
By STEPHANIE STROM
Eli Broad, a billionaire businessman, has given away more than $650 million over the last five years, to Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to establish a medical research institute, to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and to programs to improve the administration of urban schools and public education.
The rich are giving more to charity than ever, but people like Mr. Broad are not the only ones footing the bill for such generosity. For every three dollars they give away, the federal government typically gives up a dollar or more in tax revenue, because of the charitable tax deduction and by not collecting estate taxes.
Mr. Broad (rhymes with road) says his gifts provide a greater public benefit than if the money goes to taxes for the government to spend. “I believe the public benefit is significantly greater than the tax benefit an individual receives,” Mr. Broad said. “I think there’s a multiplier effect. What smart, entrepreneurial philanthropists and their foundations do is get greater value for how they invest their money than if the government were doing it.”
It is an argument made by many of the nation’s richest people. But not all of them. Take the investor William H. Gross, also a billionaire. Mr. Gross vigorously dismisses the notion that the wealthy are helping society more effectively and efficiently than government.
“When millions of people are dying of AIDS and malaria in Africa, it is hard to justify the umpteenth society gala held for the benefit of a performing arts center or an art museum,” he wrote in his investment commentary this month. “A $30 million gift to a concert hall is not philanthropy, it is a Napoleonic coronation.”
Elaborating in an interview, Mr. Gross said he did not think the public benefits from philanthropy were commensurate with the tax breaks that givers receive. “I don’t think we’re getting the bang for the buck for gifts to build football stadiums and concert halls, with all due respect to Carnegie Hall and other institutions,” he said. “I don’t think the public would vote for spending tax dollars on those things.”
The billionaires’ differing views epitomize a growing debate over what philanthropy is achieving at a time when the wealthiest Americans control a rising share of the national income and, because of sharp cuts in personal taxes, give up less to government.
Familiar Recipients
A common perception of philanthropy is that one of its central purposes is to alleviate the suffering of society’s least fortunate and therefore promote greater equality, taking some of the burden off government. In exchange, the United States is one of a handful of countries to allow givers a tax deduction. In essence, the public is letting private individuals decide how to allocate money on their behalf.
What qualifies for that tax deduction has broadened over the 90 years since its creation to include everything from university golf teams to puppet theaters — even an organization established after Hurricane Katrina to help practitioners of sadomasochism obtain gear they had lost in the storm.
Roughly three-quarters of charitable gifts of $50 million and more from 2002 through March 31 went to universities, private foundations, hospitals and art museums, according to the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.
Of the rest, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation accounted for half on the center’s list. That money went primarily to improve the lives of the poor in developing countries. Valuable as that may be, it also meant that the American public effectively underwrote several billion dollars worth of foreign aid by private individuals, even though poll after poll shows Americans are at best ambivalent about using tax dollars in such assistance.
In contrast, few gifts of that size are made to organizations like the Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity and America’s Second Harvest, whose main goals are to help the poor in this country. Research shows that less than 10 percent of the money Americans give to charity addresses basic human needs, like sheltering the homeless, feeding the hungry and caring for the indigent sick, and that the wealthiest typically devote an even smaller portion of their giving to such causes than everyone else.
“Donors give to organizations they are close to,” said H. Art Taylor, president and chief executive of the BBB Wise Giving Alliance. “So they give to their college or university, or maybe someone close to them died of a particular disease so they make a big gift to medical research aimed at that disease. How many of the superrich have that kind of a relationship with a soup kitchen? Or a homeless shelter?”
Philanthropists like Mr. Broad say that looking at philanthropy solely as a means of ameliorating need is too narrow. “If you look historically at what Carnegie did with creating a library system and the Rockefellers in creating Rockefeller University, I think it does a lot more for society than simply supporting those in need,” Mr. Broad said.
About 2 percent of the money Mr. Broad has given away through his two foundations over the last five years, or $15 million, went to support organizations like the United Way and the United Jewish Fund, which serve needy people as well as the middle class. The foundations also have given money to groups that help homeless children, and the International Rescue Committee.
Still, Mr. Broad dedicates his biggest gifts to areas he thinks lack government support, like the $25 million he gave to the University of Southern California last year to found an institute for integrative biology and stem cell research, or the tens of millions he dedicated to complete the new Disney concert hall in Los Angeles.
Like many major philanthropists, Mr. Broad said he considered such gifts an illustration of the Chinese proverb: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” The argument is that simply taking care of the poor does nothing to eliminate poverty and that they will ultimately benefit more from efforts to, say, find cures for the diseases that afflict them or improve public education.
As for Mr. Gross, despite his uncharacteristically fiery criticism of what he calls “philanthropic ego gratification,” some of the large gifts he and his wife, Sue, have made are not so different from those made by other billionaires. He has given millions to a local hospital, for example, and for stem cell research.
And in 2005 the couple gave roughly $25 million to Duke, Mr. Gross’s alma mater.
But the Duke gift illustrates Mr. Gross’s priorities. The money is almost exclusively for scholarships.
“Universities have their own thing going — they want to build infrastructure and endowments and perpetuate their system, which isn’t necessarily in the social interest,” Mr. Gross said. “Scholarships get a little more down to the ground level.”
Taking Aim at the Tax Code
The investor Warren E. Buffett also voices strong feelings about how donations are used.
When Mr. Buffett pledged $30 billion to the Gates Foundation, he included a little-noted requirement that the foundation spend each increment of the gift he hands over, in addition to its own annual legally mandated spending. If Mr. Buffett transfers $1.3 billion of stock to it, it must spend every nickel within a year.
“I wanted to make sure,” he said, “that to the extent I was providing extra money to them, it didn’t just go to build up the foundation size further but that it was put to use.”
The Gates Foundation’s work is largely international, although a portion of its spending supports efforts to improve urban education and access to college, so Mr. Buffett’s money is unlikely to be used to address basic needs in this country.
“I think the government ought to make sure that all the people here who drew short straws have a decent minimum,” Mr. Buffett said. “We moved toward that with Social Security, but we could go a lot further now.”
He does not regard his gift as charitable and expects no tax benefit from it, in part because he has credit for past donations that he has not used.
Rather, he calls his sister, Doris Buffett, the “real philanthropist” in the family. Ms. Buffett runs an organization, the Sunshine Lady Foundation, that helps the needy pay for college, medical expenses, mortgages, glasses and cars.
Mr. Buffett recently has brought attention to himself as a critic of inequities in the nation’s tax system, which offers the wealthy better tax breaks for charitable giving than it does the average taxpayer. Deductions for charitable giving can be claimed only by the fewer than half of all taxpayers who itemize, and those falling in higher tax brackets get bigger deductions for cash gifts.
The charitable deduction cost the government $40 billion in lost tax revenue last year, according to the Joint Committee on Taxation, more than the government spends altogether on managing public lands, protecting the environment and developing new energy sources.
Rob Reich, an assistant professor of political science and ethics in society at Stanford, goes so far as to say that the tax code promotes inequities through the breaks it provides for charitable giving.
Take schools. The Woodside Elementary School in Woodside, Calif., where the median family income is $196,505, raised $7,065 a pupil in 1998 from charitable contributions to a foundation it created, according to Professor Reich’s research. Across the San Francisco Bay, a similar foundation to support the Oakland Unified School District, where the median family income is $44,384, raised $138 a pupil that year.
In effect, the government is subsidizing a system that enhances inequities between poor and wealthy public schools, Professor Reich said.
Raising Questions
Legislators, regulators and others are asking more questions about exactly what charities do with the money they are given.
“When foundations, corporations and individuals give money to the opera,” said Xavier Becerra, a California Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee who represents a district in Los Angeles populated largely by young working-class immigrant families, “my folks are very unlikely to benefit from those forgone tax dollars that could have been used for health care, for after-school programs for kids, for help in getting access to college education.”
Yet Mr. Becerra himself is a beneficiary of one of the country’s wealthiest charities, Stanford, which has a $15.2 billion endowment and gave him a scholarship. “There is no way my parents could have afforded for me to go there without the generous financial aid the university gave me,” he said.
At the other end of the political spectrum, Grover G. Norquist, whose Americans for Tax Reform lobbies for lower taxes, suggests taxing nonprofit hospitals that cannot demonstrate that they provide significant care for the poor.
“I’m not aware of anything they do that a for-profit hospital doesn’t do in terms of providing free care,” Mr. Norquist said.
Like other billionaire philanthropists, Thomas M. Siebel, founder of Siebel Systems, has given his largest gifts to his alma mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1999, he donated $32 million for a computer science center bearing his name, and he pledged $100 million this year to support basic research that he hopes will reduce dependency on carbon-based fuels.
But when the university suggested using some of that gift to put up another new building named for him and hire new professors, he said no.
“I told them to use the basement of an existing building and some of the really smart people they already have,” Mr. Siebel said.
Attracting philanthropic support to fight substance abuse is one of the biggest challenges in fund-raising, but Mr. Siebel has donated more than $15 million to the Meth Project, an organization he created. “I think we’ll save a lot of lives in the end,” Mr. Siebel said. “Isn’t that what philanthropy is supposed to be about?”
He has also given the Salvation Army more than $18 million over the last six years, mostly to support services for the homeless. He said he gives to the organization because of its low administrative costs and lack of frills.
“When I first started doing this, I made a contribution to some organization, Harvest something or other, I think, that was working on homelessness,” Mr. Siebel said. “The next thing I knew, I got a plaque in the mail and an invitation to an awards ceremony.”
He added: “I never gave them another nickel. What were they spending money on plaques for?”
Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company
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