Mary Case wrote:
>I think collections people have long been toiling for accountability AND
>accessability.
 
They have? There are still an awful lot of collections curators who
resent the "public" who put their objects in danger and perhaps they
have a point.
 
>If the paradigm were shifted slightly to accountability FOR
>accessability, I think it would focus even folks in the deepest recesses of
>the museum's most removed off-site storage areas on the reasons we collect and
>preserve in the first place--to serve our audience (visitors, scholars, etc.)
 
If exhibition and museum designers would work with collections curators
to provide both adequate access and protection the audience would be
better served. The Metropolitan has, I'm told, the entire Egyptian collection
on display. And the Luce Study Center for American Art at the Met is an elegant
computerized solution to what would, in the wrong design hands, have looked
like a cluttered antiques shop. On the other hand the Brooklyn has just
spent millions to move their objects in storage to...another storage area.
 
Mary is right about shifting the paradigm, but how do you get the the
different factions in the museum, the exhibition curators, the design team
and the collections curators, to work together? And I didn't even mention
the cleaning staff who can stop a project cold.
 
Robbin Murphy
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