DEACCESSION: Values roulette

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The New Criterion: Deaccession roulette, Hilton Kramer, 11 August 2009 "The word deaccession is one of those bureaucratic coinages whose chief purpose is verbal obfuscation. If a museum director tells you he has “deaccessioned” eighteen Cézannes, you think for a second, “Oh, that’s nice” while you wonder exactly how to conjugate the verb “to deaccess.” What would happen if museum directors were more direct? Suppose, for example, that instead of saying “I have deaccessioned eighteen Cézannes” he spoke in plain English and said: “I have looted my collection of eighteen Cézannes in order to sell them and raise money to cover the budget shortfall I created by imprudent management.” It sounds rather different, doesn’t it?.... Read more online

Research libraries face a paradigm shift from a world where investigators begin their research at 'the library', relying upon printed materials for the most part, to a predominantly 'digitised world' where the researcher's first port of call is the Internet. To be effective, managing the in between period, as libraries struggle to reimagine themselves as "collaborative learning, research, and knowledge creation centers", it must be done via networking. Some reading online

In the context of this paradigm shift, research needs to be done and partnerships need to be built with libraries, museums and other institutions interested in the management of cultural resources to establish best collaborative and cooperative approaches. Clearly this impacts upon museum deaccession policies and it likewise points to the need for rolling reviews – siloed status quoism was never credible but it has lost any credibility it may have claimed for itself.

The qualifications of valuers and the veracity of valuations needs to be clear and independently evaluated. For example 'material' donated under the "Gifts to the Nation" program to museums the Australian Tax Office rules for tax deductibility demand that the valuer must be accredited. It would be reasonable to assert the same rule in any museum –large, small, regional, local whatever.

It is not appropriate for a museum employee to simply determine a monetary value of material to be deaccessed – minimal or otherwise. It may however be appropriate for them to report on its significance – cultural, scientific, whatever – and have that peer reviewed in various contexts during a cooling-off period.

The focus on monetary value in museums is in almost all cases totally inappropriate given that the significance is generally dependant upon an object's cultural cargo and this does not always translate into a monetary value – both cultural value and monetary value are subjective.

"The cynic knows the price of everything
and the value of nothing." - Oscar Wilde

Musing Or Deeming?

In essence, a museum is a keeping place for:

• The stories and ideas that help us make sense of place – Launceston, Tasmania, Australia, Oceania; and
• The narratives that help us make sense of a changing world.

In a local context, museums reflect the cultural realities that lend meaning to places. Ultimately, museums add value to places and they are wealth creating.

SAMPLE STATEMENT: QVMAG MISSION: "Our mission is to be a leader in the intellectual and creative development of Launceston and the State by increasing our enjoyment and understanding of our natural and cultural heritage." LINK

Museums are places in our cultural imagination that are places where we might discover the extraordinary in the ordinary. They are places that cause us to wonder.

We construct museums and fill them with objects and ideas in order that we might make more sense of the world we share with each other. In a 21st Century context public museums are:

• The keeping places of a community's cultural property and heritage;
• The repositories of diverse, disparate and interconnected knowledge bases;
• An 'Ideas Factory' of a kind, and a place a community depends upon to help make sense of their world and engage with complex ideas – it has been ever so. To read on click here ....

[Museums today are contested spaces and]"necessarily require a rethinking of the way museums have engaged and connected with communities, stakeholders [Communities of Ownership & Interest] and media in the past and how these modes of engagement can be extended and transformed to embrace the special relationship required for the proper engagement of potentially controversial subjects. To read more click here ... Transcending fear - engaging emotions and opinions - a case for museums in the 21st century ...

CURATORS: Musing or Deeming?

PERMANENT COLLECTIONS AND CURATORS: caretaker ... or ‘gatekeeper’ ... or a ‘culture’, exhibition impresario ... or a researcher cum publisher ... or an artist, political cum social activist ... or ‘culture shaper’ ... or ‘taste maker’ ...

Click here for an international perspective on the role and history of museum curatorship

CURATOR

cu·ra·tor (ky-rtr, kyr-tr)
n. One who manages or oversees, as the administrative director of a museum collection or a library.
[Middle English curatour, legal guardian, from Old French curateur, from Latin crtor, overseer, from crtus, past participle of crre, to take care of; see curative.]
cura·tori·al (kyr-tôr-l, -tr-) adj.
cu·rator·ship n.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

curator
n
1. the administrative head of a museum, art gallery, or similar institution
2. (Law) Law chiefly Scots a guardian of a minor, mentally ill person, etc.
[from Latin: one who cares, from cu¯ra¯re to care for, from cu¯ra care]
curatorial adj
curatorship n
Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged 6th Edition 2003. © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1991, 1994, 1998, 2000, 2003 ……

Curator (from Latin cura, care), means manager, overseer.

Traditionally, a curator or keeper of a cultural heritage institution (e.g., gallery, museum, or archive) is a content specialist responsible for an institution's collections. The object of a traditional curator's concern necessarily involves tangible objects of some sort, whether it be inter alia artwork, collectibles, historic items or scientific collections. More recently, new kinds of curators are emerging: curators of digital data objects, and biocurators. …. wikipedia

cu·ra·tor [kyoo-rey-ter, kyoor-ey- for 1, 2; kyoor-uh-ter for 3]
noun 1. the person in charge of a museum, art collection, etc. 2. a manager; superintendent. 3. Law. a guardian of a minor, lunatic, or other incompetent, esp. with regard to his or her property.
Origin: L, equiv. to cu¯ra¯(re) to care for, attend to (see cure ) + -tor -tor; r. ME curatour AF L as above
Related forms:
cu·ra·to·ri·al [kyoor-uh-tawr-ee-uhl, -tohr-] , adjective
cu·ra·tor·ship, noun
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2009.

cu·ra·tor Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, from curare to care, from cura care
Date: 1561

: one who has the care and superintendence of something; especially : one in charge of a museum, zoo, or other place of exhibit

cu·ra·to·ri·al adjective
cu·ra·tor·ship noun

The role

• along with conservators and art technicians, to delineate a comprehensive and accurate record of the artwork, object, information, for the future ... read more
• Traditionally, a curator has been defined as the custodian of a museum or other collection – essentially a keeper of things. The Association of Art Museum Curators identifies curators as having a primary responsibility for the acquisition, care, display and interpretation of objects, such as works of art. They work with their institutions to develop programs that maintain the integrity of collections and exhibitions, foster community support, and generate revenue ... A curator of an ... read more
  

Accountability & Relationships Diagrams

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“You need to focus on the main thing, and then you need to be sure that the main thing is really the main thing.” (Richard P. Chait’s – Museum governance in a new age 2001 – Museum Trusteeship VOL15 2002 )

"The past quarter-century has seen fundamental shifts in the public sector [museums], the theoretical underpinnings of which are rooted in agency theory, market economics and the `new managerialism’. This movement has brought with it an emphasis on

• accountability, the monitoring of performance and incentives for good performance;
• separation of strategy from delivery, and a focus on management rather than policy;
• an inclination to introduce market mechanisms for delivery, including competition and contracting-out;
• responsiveness to customer preferences; and
• disaggregation of large bureaucratic structures, but with autonomy having to be earned within a framework of strong central control."

(Adrian Babbidge, Egeria Heritage Consultancy – PAPER – INTERCOM Conference: Leadership in Museums: Are our Core Values Shifting, Dublin, Ireland, October 16 – 19, 2002.)

MUSEUMS: Stakes, Shares & Ownerships

In the 1970s it was fashionable to start to consider “stakeholders” in planning and management processes. At the time it was intended to be an inclusive notion but very quickly some of these stakeholders began to assert precedence over others – they demanded ranking and privileges to match.

Very quickly their concerns were accommodated and as a consequence before anyone could be considered a stakeholder they needed to demonstrate a ‘legitimate interest’ – a pecuniary interest, an ownership, a potential loss of something, whatever. Stakeholdership quite quickly became at once an elastic concept and an idea in retreat – more often than not, one that served some more than others.

Rarely does the idea of ‘obligation’ come into the stakeholder equation but ‘rights’ are regularly asserted – albeit so often self defined. Stakeholdership is an untidy and contentious idea to say the least! It is especially so if you are left out of the loop.

However there is another way, and more inclusive way, to think about all this. If we think about Museum & Art Galleries (Cultural Institutions & Enterprises) as having Communities of Ownership and Interest– layers of cognitive owners including stakeholders – we might then begin an interesting conversation with each other in regard to resource management and cultural values.

There is no need to invent and then market this idea as if it were some new idea as clearly Public Museums and Art Galleries have an extraordinary Communities of Ownership and Interest (COI). All that really needs to be done is:

• Identify the COI membership – individuals, groups, institutions, communities;
  
• Acknowledge and celebrate the COIs presence; and
  
• Begin the conversation!
  

That might seem to be a job for a consultant but not really – they have not delivered yet. It isn’t rocket science! It is simply about making a list and being prepared to continually add to it and act upon it.

Mapping the ‘ownerships’ shared in the cultural and intellectual property – cultural knowledge – enriches them rather than diluting or downgrading them. Nonetheless the tensions between Freehold Property, 'The Crown', Cultural Property and the Public Domain will not dissolve. However, they may be managed in more productive ways when these layers of ‘ownerships’ are acknowledged alongside all others in the cognitive ownership layering.

Do institutions shape our culture?
Or, do our cultural realities shape our institutions?

Acknowledging a COI is a cultural mindset. It is not a bureaucratic process – rather it is a participatory process. The cognitive ownership model demonstrates the richness of places – museums here – as an alternative to the poverty of perspective embedded in adversarial and unconsultative bureaucratic planning processes.

An audit of cognitive ownerships would reveal the confluences and conflicts in ownership claims. If we abandon the notion that there can be a hierarchical structure to the ownership of place, – museums here again – it is possible that managers of cultural property can begin:

• To work towards accommodating competing claims in the context of coexistent cognitive ownerships;
• To resolve conflicts and tensions over usage and access; and
• To establish appropriate planning processes and management systems that engage with the Community of Ownership and Interest.

Who are these cognitive owners? The simple answer is almost everyone but a list of them must be inclusive rather than exclusive or privileged and it must be an ‘open list’. More important than knowing 'who the owners are' is knowing what their interest and ownerships are – and the cultural context in which an ownership is claimed. Knowing that allows for the accommodation of inclusive and holistic planning and management processes.

Governance Model

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MUSEUM DEFINITIONS

MUSEUM:

• A museum is a non-profit, permanent institution in the service of society and its development, open to the public, which acquires, conserves, researches, communicates and exhibits the tangible and intangible heritage of humanity and its environment for the purposes of education, study and enjoyment ... The International Council of Museums' Definition of a Museum ..... Development of the Museum Definition according to ICOM Statutes (1946 - 2007)

• A building, place, or institution devoted to the acquisition, conservation, study, exhibition, and educational interpretation of objects having scientific, historical, or artistic value. ..... Answers.com

• Public institution dedicated to preserving and interpreting the primary tangible evidence of humans and their environment ... In Roman times the word referred to a place devoted to scholarly occupation. ..... Britannica Concise Encyclopedia

• An institution devoted to the procurement, care, study, and display of objects of lasting interest or value; also : a place where objects are exhibited ... mu·se·um Etymology: Latin Museum place for learned occupation, from Greek Mouseion, from neuter of Mouseios of the Muses, from Mousa Date: 1672 ..... Merriam-Webster

• SPECULATIVE: A museum is a non-profit, community cultural enterprise dedicated to servicing a Community of Ownership and Interest through the acquisition, conservation, research, communication and exhibition of the COI’s tangible and intangible cultural assets and heritage under its stewardship for the purposes of education, study and amusement.

CLICK HERE: Museums Act 1950 Tasmania

Some Rhetoric