In a message dated 00-09-15 09:44:12 EDT, Audra wrote:

<< History museums also deal with many more artifacts than art museums.  Often
 these individual items are of far less value than a painting or sculpture
 donated to art museums.  With the quantity of items we deal with in history,
 it is far too easy to possibly attribute a gift incorrectly.  Then, too,
 with our donors, we can also inadvertently raise family squabbles and find
 ourselves in the middle of family disputes via, "He didn't have the
 right..." >>

I'm gratified that my message stirred reactions (and that some people even
agreed with me).  Audra and Lucy are entitled to their opinions and may have
good reasons for them, but I hope they're more substantive than those
advanced.  At the risk of encouraging further polarization and argument
without resolution, I must say I'm rather saddened by this attitude toward
donors.  I honestly think that the good will which a donor credit policy can
generate is worth the minimal effort it requires.  Nor do I think this is
inherently "uninteresting" to the average visitor.  While few people are
interested in specifically who gave what (unless it's a famous person), many
people are interested in KNOWING that an institution cares enough to credit
even obscure donors.  I think that fact resonates well with viewers--to see
that the institution gives credit where credit is due.  And it has an
educational function--it demonstrates how museums acquire their stuff.  Done
appropriately, professionally, and tastefully, it sends a subtle message and
does not need to be distracting.

I've never seen a donor credit in an art museum or any other kind of museum
exhibit that I thought was truly distracting--with one exception, which I'll
relate below.  Many museums, as has been pointed out, simply put it in a
smaller type face than the rest of the label.  How distracting is a simple
"Gift of Joe Blow"?  I certainly don't advocate relating the entire
provenance in an exhibit label.  Most donor information is short, sweet, and
uncomplicated and doesn't take up much space.  The distracting type of donor
information, which struck me as unusual, was something I recently saw in an
exhibition of 19th- and 20th-century photographs at the Denver Art Museum.
Each of the 19th-century photographs had a label identifying a long list of
donors, apparently all identical lists.  I assume this meant that all the
donors had contributed funds to acquire a group of photographs.  I didn't see
the point of repeating this whole list for each object, and agree that it
would have been better to have a single label indicating that the
19th-century photographs had been acquired through gifts from those on the
list.  Nevertheless, the awkward solution adopted was better than no credit
at all.

Even when you don't have this level of complexity, I agree that in some cases
it might be acceptable to list all the donors of objects in an exhibition on
a separate list, without identifying who gave what.  This can vary, depending
on your form of presentation.  There are obviously types of displays,
especially period rooms, in which you couldn't have separate labels for each
object, whether for simple identification or full-blown interpretation, in
which case you can have more distant text--including donor credits--keyed to
the exhibit somehow.  There are lots of ways to do this.

But the risk of attributing a gift incorrectly because you have so many
objects to deal with?  Yeah, there's always a risk of making a mistake, but
it's minimal for a properly run museum.  There's a strong museum tradition of
numbering objects to key them to catalog and accession records, and in a
properly run museum, mixups shouldn't be a problem.  If you have a real fear
that mixups are likely in your museum, it suggests sloppy practices, so I
hope this fear is groundless!  And donor credits raising family squabbles?
Come on.  If you do your job properly and settle ownership and rights issues
at the time of donation, as indeed you legally should, and send an
acknowledgment letter indicating how you're recording the acquisition, as in
"Your donation has been entered in our records as a gift from..." this
shouldn't be a problem later.

As far as the monetary value of objects is concerned, I don't see the
relevance.  Donor credits shouldn't be reserved for just the fat cats who
donate gazillion-dollar Rembrandts or the famous celebrities who give
personal memorabilia.  Museums should also, IMHO, be prepared to publicly
acknowledge the humble everyday objects given by Mr. or Ms. Average Person.
If an object is significant enough to collect and display, it ought to
warrant the same level of appreciation as a high-priced masterwork.

Among your museum's visitors are potential donors.  Evidence that your museum
appreciates and values the thoughtfulness of donors enough to mention them in
an exhibit label--and/or in an online catalog of your collections--can
attract more donors.  I think it's just good business.  Oh, you''re already
inundated with offers of stuff you can't use and are tired of being pestered
by would-be donors?  Fine--just continue not providing credits; in fact, you
might want to put up a sign saying "Don't call us, we'll call you."

As you can see, I'm passionate about this issue.  I think the art museums
which established the tradition of credits in labels knew what they were
doing.  But I think that the assumption that such credits make sense only for
high-value art objects in an elitist, rarefied atmosphere misses the point of
true philanthropy.  You can be cynical if you wish, but I still think it's
the thought that counts.  If wealthy donors can receive credit for supporting
art museums--and the occasional, mysterious "anonymous gift" credit has a
point to make as well--why should not those of more humble means who donate
to more humble--if that's the word--and presumably more democratic history
museums receive public acknowledgment as well?  Although some donations may
be simply cast-offs which a donor was only too eager to dispose of and simply
called your museum instead of Good Will, at least he/she had sufficient
thoughtfulness and a sense of history to connect with your museum instead of
consigning the object to an all-purpose charity or the local dump; the
donor's "gravitas" (to use a current vogue word) deserves acknowledgment.  In
other cases, collectors who devote considerable energy and study to locating
items which they subsequently donate to your museum also deserve credit,
regardless of how much or little their efforts cost them in dollars. Finally,
family heirlooms often find their way into museums, and the personal meanings
of such donations also deserve acknowledgment.

In the resistance to donor credits in "history" museums I sense a subtext
about the nature of artifacts.  As museums have transformed themselves, their
attitudes toward historical artifacts has changed.  In our zeal to "tell as
story" about people and culture and avoid putting material "relics" on a
pedestal, often showing objects as mere illustration or afterthought, we
sometimes forget part of this human dimension.  The objects are more than
mere illustration: they are the physical evidence of the past, and their
users, owners, and donors are part of that story.

My own museum has not always been consistent in this area.  One special
exhibition in recent years (which I won't identify), to my dismay, failed to
give donor credits.  I loaned to that exhibition, curated by another
colleague, items of family significance which had been donated by a man who
was one of our volunteers.  He was annoyed (and, I think, hurt) that his
donation was not credited in the exhibit label.  This seemed to be the policy
for the exhibition, which nevertheless displayed credits to the
administrative units which had contributed items to the show!  Now THAT was a
credit line which I found unnecessary--the message it sent seemed to be how
complex the administrative structure of our institution is, which isn't
something I would have found essential or desirable to highlight.  The space
would have been much more profitably devoted to the actual donors, not the
intramural lenders.  I was disappointed by what I feel was a real lapse of
judgment on my colleague's part, and I learned that you can't take a
donor-credit tradition for granted.  I supplied the information, but it
wasn't used.  Now I insist that it be used, because I feel that it's part of
the covenant with my donors.

Sorry to be so long-winded.

David Haberstich

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