-----Original Message-----
From: Museum discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of Felicia Liss
Sent: February 22, 2001 8:43 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Object Sharing

I have had some interesting discussions recently about the number of museums
that keep popping up around the country ...
***** This is happening a lot in Canada as well.

There are not enough objects for all the museums that are being created.
***** That is a good point for debate. Certain items will always be in too
short a supply due to their being rare or unique e.g. a painting by A. Y.
Jackson or a luggage tag used by Sir Frederick Banting (Canadian co-inventor
of Insulin). Many historic items do have a high survival rate e.g. sad
irons, scrub boards, US Army M1 Garand army rifles (the inventor was born in
Canada), mangles, washing machines, shoe lasts, horseshoes, mass produced
art prints etc. Many, many museums have over stuffed storage areas and are
now actively looking into deaccessioning some of their collection items. In
the past, museums tended to acquire almost everything that was offered, and
as a result often have items in the collection that are duplicates, are not
relevant to their collecting mandate of the museum and/or are in poor
condition.

While museums often loan objects to other institutions for exhibitions, I
was wondering if museums have developed an "object share" program.  For
example, a large institution often can not display all their collections at
once.

Do these institutions have programs with smaller museums to "store" and
"display" their
artworks?  If you know of programs like this, please let me know. ...
Felicia Liss
Museum Education Specialist
Lee H. Skolnick Architecture + Design Partnership
7 West 22nd Street
New York ...


***** I am curator of a city museum. There are two key issues here that I
see:
1. Lending (= "object share")
2. Deaccessioning (permanent removal of an artifact from the museum's
collection)

***** The larger the museum, the larger percentage of the collection that is
usually in storage. In some cases is could be as much as 90% of the
collection in storage.

***** Lending is not usually a big problem if the borrowing museum is
willing to meet the owning institution's requirements for security, shipping
etc. We had a railway section handcar on loan to the Rossland Museum from
1981 to 2001. The loan was renewed as needed, and we ended up deaccessioning
this item and transferring it to that museum permanently as it was a
duplicate for us and we had no room for it.

***** Our museum is typical in that it has storage that is overflowing with
historic artifacts and we are actively looking at deaccessioning artifacts
that we do not need. This is a thorny subject of course. At one city museum
I know of the curator was directed to deaccession half of the collection
that was in storage. In our case we are putting our emphasis on
deaccessioning the following:
a. Large items that we do not need. We made better progress in freeing up
storage space by deaccessioning one barber chair than we would have by
deaccessioning a dozen straight razors.
b. Items that are broken, deteriorated, are not historically significant to
our museum and city, and are not economical or feasible to repair or restore
e.g. rotten wagon wheels.

***** We don't worry about the dollar value. In most cases we received the
items as donations, and as long as they go to another public institution,
the "value" is irrelevant as it is not for sale.

***** I cannot speak for art galleries but with regards to history museums,
if a museum asks, they might just receive!

***** Does any museum out there need:
* scrub boards
* copper boilers
* cross-cut saws (without handles)
* foundry patterns and equipment
etc.
:-)

Colin Macgregor Stevens
Curator
Burnaby Village Museum
City of Burnaby, British Columbia, CANADA

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