The Museums Council of New York met last night at the New York
Historical Society. The place looks wonderful, a real contrast to the
image presented over the last few years in the professional and
general press.
Betsy Gotbaum, the Director, greeted us graciously and announced
1 and 1/2 interesting news items. The first is that NYHS has received
a $7.5 million grant from the Luce Foundation which will enable them
to bring their collection back in house, after some period where it
lived in a warehouse in Manhattan. They have hired a project manager
who is a very experienced and very pleasant museum professional (his
name escapes me at the moment, though we spoke quite a lot).
The second 1/2 interesting item is that "there is something that will
be announced next week of equal or greater importance than the Luce
program." From what she suggested it sounded like a major
collaboration or partnership with an existing institution, not the
Museum of the City of New York (she clarified).
Jack Rutledge (I think, I'm bad with names), who is the Director of
Exhibitions and Collections (worse with titles), spoke about the
deaccessioning fracas. I won't go into detail in this description,
but he certainly conveyed two points: 1) the deaccessioning was
critical to the survival of the institution; 2) that it was conducted
thoughtfully and carefully with an eye toward distributing items that
were not part of a reasonably broadly defined mission statement.
Then we had a rich and fascinating tour of the Audubon exhibition that
has been traveling around the country and recently returned to the
Society. Jack emphasized that the Society is not primarily an art
museum, so the exhibition is re-cast as a social/historical
exhibition, with art objects at its core. As an example, he recounted
Audubon's personal story surrounding his various failures in business
and his apparently sudden decision, at 35, to leave his wife and two
children to get on a boat to paint all of America's birds. Jack also
emphasized the work behind the artifacts, both the fieldwork and the
artwork, not to mention the work of JJ Audubon's wife at home raising
two children with no money...
I should point out that the watercolors (which also include various
media like charcoal, pen, shellac, collage) are very inviting and
impressive as art objects as well.
Then, we had dinner. It was a large convivial group of nearly 60
museum people representing 18 institutions. I hope that you will
join us, if possible, the next time when we meet in April at the
Jewish Museum to look at their exhibit, Points of Entry, (I think its
called, bad with exhibition titles, too) about immigration.
We have published our annual directory, which has staff listings
for all of the 81 member institutions, as well as exhibition schedules
for the coming year, admissions, etc. It's a big job to get together,
and it is available for sale ($5 to members, $10 to non-members) from
Marcia Rudy at the New York Hall of Science (718)699-0005.
Plans for a web site were recently initiated, and we'll keep you
posted.
Eric Siegel
Chairman
The Museums Council of New York
|