Dear Colleague,
I have been director of five museums in the United States. I am also on the accreditation team for the American Association of Museums and, in this capacity I visit many museums for an in-depth look at their operations. So far I don't know of any museum in this country that performs an annual inventory of its collections. If there are some, they are certainly the exceptions. Of course, in the U.S. about half of all museums are private organizations and so they may not be subject to the kind of strict governmental regulations of other countries where most museums are state operated. But, in any case, this would seem to be a great hardship and considerable disruption and expense; and, if it simply must be done, one could argue for doing it perhaps every five years or so. here we do tests each year to see if the system works in general.. Under independent supervision a number of items are selected at random from the records and then traced to their locations; also a number of items are selected from exhibitions and the storage area and traced back to their respective files (about ten examples of each). If everything checks out we do it again the next year. Of course, this may not prevent an "insider" theft, which may be what your regulation is really addressing, but it does work for us.
I hope this helps.
Sincerely
Milton J. Bloch
President
Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute.
>>> Virgil Nitulescu <[log in to unmask]> 03/08/00 10:40AM >>>
Dear colleagues,
The public museums from Romania are asked, by the Finance Ministry,
to make a complete inventory of all the cultural goods registered in the
museums (sometimes, hundreds of thousands of items), annually. This implies
an object-per-object checking (including the conservation estate of the
goods). I am interested about the members of the List's opinion on this and
if the members are aware about any recommended rule on this subject.
Virgil Stefan NITULESCU, The Vicechairperson of the ICOM Romanian National
Committee
Expert
CAMERA DEPUTATILOR
Comisia pentru cultura, arte, mijloace de informare in masa
Str. Izvor nr. 2-4, sect. 5
70647 Bucuresti
ROMANIA
tel: +40.1.4021284 or 3143178
fax: +40.1.3142913
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Change ICOM-L subscription options, unsubscribe, and search the
archives at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/icom-l.html
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Change ICOM-L subscription options, unsubscribe, and search the
archives at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/icom-l.html
|
