FAUX Real: On the Trail of an Art Forger Part 5

Here we are at my fifth entry for the FAUX Real blog and I hope that you have been enlightened and feel free to contact me directly with questions.

I mentioned the aliases of Gardiner, Scott, Brantley and Lanois the last time in part four. Let us start with the first alias Steven Gardiner. This was in 2009 with the Mississippi Museum of Art when Landis gifted a watercolor by Stuart Davis. Later he gifted forgeries of the Lepine oil on panel as well as the self portrait by Marie Laurencin. The interesting thing that I mentioned when I started this blog is that Landis gifted these forgeries in honor of his mother or dad as he refers to them. When Landis used Gardiner, he gifted in honor of Joane Green Gardiner his mother… his mother was Jonita Joyce Brantley… now giving his mother an alias. How does that honor her memory since she passed in April of 2010.

picture: LSU University Art Museum

Mark Landis
Also known Aliases:
2009 – Steven Gardiner
2010 – Father Arthur Scott
2011 – Father James Brantley
2012 – Mark Lanois

Second alias of Father Arthur Scott (in memory of his mother Helen Mitchell Scott) I discovered in September of 2010 when he approached the Ackland Art Museum in Chapel Hill wanting to gift them a black chalk drawing by a French academic supposedly from the 17th century not to be confused with the red chalk drawing of a reclining nude I found over the years that was also 17th century. Landis dressed the part as a Jesuit priest with the balck suit, white plastic collar and the Jesuit lapel pin driving his late mother’s red Cadillac Seville. Maybe the diocese would drive a Caddy but a priest? That was one thing that made Landis suspicious to the institutions that were approached by Landis disguised as a priest. Mark Tullos at the Hilliard University Art Museum brought Fthr. Scott to my attention and now Tullos is the Deputy Director of the Louisiana State Museums. Good for Mark! Tullos, not Landis.

After Landis confessed to what he had been doing over thirty years to The Financial Times, I figured Landis had been shopped by me and would stop… or at least take some time to figure out how to start back up. To my surprise I get a call from a high school in New Orleans and the same day a call from a university in Georgia telling me that they had just been visited by Fthr. James Brantley… aka Mark Landis. It did not take Landis even six months to come up with a new name and believe it or not James Brantley was the name of his mother’s second husband… James E. Brantley!

Now to the fourth and final, at this point, alias Mark Lanois. Landis approached and gifted 10-11 forgeries to Loyola University in New Orleans ten years earlier and had talked with the same development person in February 2012 and told him his name was Mark Lanois. The staff person at Loyola had been following my updates over the years and contacted me regarding Landis and his dealings with them. I could not believe that now after a year of confessing to The Financial Times he was still at his con and now had come up with two more alias. Guys I have so much to share with you on this case and look for an upcoming publication in The New Yorker by a writer that has been with The New Yorker since 1980 and was at my home this past weekend and interviewed me for over twelve hours. This should come out this spring. So keep a look out and do your due diligence and…

Talk soon!

Matt

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FAUX Real: On the Trail of an Art Forger Part 4

picture: LSU University Art Museum

Mark Landis
Also known Aliases:
2009 – Steven Gardiner
2010 – Father Arthur Scott
2011 – Father James Brantley
2012 – Mark Lanois

So left I left you hanging with the thought of Picasso. As I have been talking with you, I mentioned that my mission has been to inform and educate people regarding Landis, his alias and his movements. Let’s go to Jacksonville Florida.

I called Holly Keris, curator at the Cummer Museum, and had told her of Landis and what I had discovered in 2008, the Cummer had not been ‘hit’. I called Holly a week later to check on her and the museum to see how they fared after a hurricane passed through. Holly told me she was fine and the collection was not hurt by the hurricane. But, Holly tells me over the phone, ‘guess what Matt, I have a FedEx envelope with an oil on panel by Picasso sitting on my desk’. Turns out, they had been gifted Portrait de Lora by Picasso an oil on panel that had been bought in at a US auction in 2008. Guess who the buyer was? Good guess, I have no idea! Landis forged and gifted a Picasso to another major US institution, the Cummer. A Picasso, yes! What I have discovered gang is Landis is not just making forgeries of lesser known artists but majors such as Picasso, Signac, Daumier, and many others, which also includes forged documents from John Hancock and Thomas Jefferson. I found that he had cut blank pages from the backs of centuries old books from libraries and used those pages to help him create and authenticate ‘the real McCoy’. Some kind of guts and foresight to make this happen. The institution that I know of for this occasion will remain anonymous. I can tell you Landis was caught and is no longer welcome…

So where do we go from here? I have been giving you tidbits on my discovery and how I came to find Landis. The truth is my fellow bloggers, is I have so much to share and so little time that I really do not know how to begin with all of this. I mean ask yourself if you were the sole person to discover an art forger, not know when to release this information to the authorities and track someone five years and pressing on, what would you do? I was afraid of slander, libel, and defamation of Landis. I had the proof in the pudding and evidence that this was real. I have never wanted or thought that this whole Landis case would take me anywhere nor is it what I sought after. However, this case on Landis has not only proven to strange and interesting, but it reawakened my life to not take things at face value but be diligent in your work and personal lives. Always be aware of the wolf in sheep’s clothing because they are real and they are out there. More later and I once again want to thank Angela for asking me to be part of The Team of Registrar Trek and I look forward to comments and contacts from you.

So this week, I ask you all to keep yourselves alert, check your files on the last name of Landis, Gardiner, Scott, Brantley and Lanois. Why you may ask yourself, those are the last names of the first four alias that I have found. Remember to look for my contact information is on the authors page of Registrar Trek.

Talk soon!

Matt

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The Registrar Trek blog goes Costa Rica

Some people from the discussion group. Photo: Georgina DeCarli

Some people from the discussion group. Photo: Georgina DeCarli

During this past January I was focused on a project with the ILAM Foundation-Latin American Institute of Museums, San José, Costa Rica. As you know, I am professor of virtual workshops and classroom courses on the registration area and cataloging collections there. These workshops have already seen eight editions, and I have taught for almost all Latin American countries.

On this occasion, Mr. Esteban Calvo, Registrar at the Costa Rican Art Museum who attended one of the workshops, had the great idea to do a talk, an informal chat with some colleagues from museums in San Jose. The event, held at the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design in San Jose on Wednesday, January 23, was attended by some directors, curators, registrars and educators from several museums. Georgina DeCarli, Director of the ILAM Foundation, also accompanied us, and updated us about the opportunities and terms and virtual and face trainings offered by the ILAM for museum workers. We talked cordially about interesting topics related to our practice, and we got a valuable feedback loop for all.

We talked cordially about interesting topics related to our practice, and we get a valuable feedback loop for all.

Projection of the website. Photo: Georgina DeCarli

Projection of the website. Photo: Georgina DeCarli

We took the chance and I presented our blog Registrar Trek: The Next Generation by projecting images of the website and inviting them to visit and write for it. There were good anecdotes about the founding of our blog, plus the peculiarities of everyday work in our museums. I have brought with me a couple of pictures of this meeting so special.

Fernando

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FAUX Real: On the Trail of an Art Forger Part 3

picture: LSU University Art Museum

Mark Landis
Also known Aliases:
2009 – Steven Gardiner
2010 – Father Arthur Scott
2011 – Father James Brantley
2012 – Mark Lanois

Hopefully I have sparked your interest on Landis thus far and are sharing this with others, even if they are not in the ‘art realm’. So Landis has been up to this for over 30 years. But why, people ask me – for example in a comment to part 1 here. There has never been any money exchanged, no mail or insurance fraud, no fraud of any type that has any interest to the authorities. Former FBI agent, Bob Wittman told me that if there has not been money exchanged or if Landis never sold his forgeries, then he has done nothing wrong. Except Landis has taken valuable time of museum professionals over the years and there are indirect and direct costs and they all hurt budgets and I believe museum professionals reputations. There are over 17,000 institutions here in the US that either showcase art or are collecting entities. And I have only found or have had 52 come forward, I know there are more out there that Landis has duped but they do not want to admit to themselves or their institutions being part of Landis’ game.

How does one detect a forgery you may ask? I have had not formal training or education into investigation. I was curious about the Signac gifted to the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and the Lepine gifted to St. Louis1. When I started to get suspicious, my anal retentive, registrar, OCD frame of thinking kicked in. I looked at the six gifts from Landis to Oklahoma City under a simple magnifying lupe and ultraviolet light. Each piece, the Signac, Lepine, Daumier, Laurencin, red chalk 17th century drawing and Valtat that we had received earlier, all had some kind of querky things about them. The Lepine glowed white under black light. Why? Where ever Landis did not use his 20th century oils to paint over the digital reproduction, they glowed white. The red chalk drawing supposed to be 17th century… not only did areas in question glow white or a dark blue but there was some other tool I used to confirm my suspicion… my nose. For a 17th century drawing to be authentic, the matting it was affixed to should have been brittle and snapped with little effort. I remember peeling back the lower left corner of the mat expecting it to snap, not harming the image, and guess what… it was stark white… brand new. Then I lifted the exposed area to my nose and it smelled like COFFEE! Fake!

After having conversations with more than 20 institutions in less than 60 minutes, I uncovered the most prolific art forger of our time. But not like any that has been shopped in the past, but an unusual character that was not in it for the money, but to be philanthropic, honor if mother and dad and to be treated ‘nice’. Landis had no interest in seeing the FAUX Real exhibition I put together at the University of Cincinnati last April. And I quote ‘I don’t care to see this stuff, I have already seen it. Is there anyone here to speak to that is nice? Yeah, that would be nice. Is there anyone here to talk to that is nice?’. Words from Landis… try three days of this as I did in the summer of 2008… it will wear you out. So my fellow sleuths, don’t be afraid to use your gut instinct and ask questions. You just be the next registrar to uncover something as big as my case on Mark Augustus Landis. Discerning eyes, experience, due diligence, patience, inquisitive nature… don’t take things at face value. You may get duped!

More specifics on this scam coming soon. I could write for hours on this case but I am trying to keep my two week series concise only giving you enough to wonder why and get you thinking. Oh wait until I share the forgery of the Picasso! Remember to look for my contact information is on the authors page of Registrar Trek. Talk soon!

Matt

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FAUX Real: On the Trail of an Art Forger Part 2

picture: LSU University Art Museum

Mark Landis
Also known Aliases:
2009 – Steven Gardiner
2010 – Father Arthur Scott
2011 – Father James Brantley
2012 – Mark Lanois

Well, I mentioned at the end of part one of this blog that I had the complete story on Mark Landis… I should have said ‘incomplete’ as I am still tracking Landis to this day. It is amazing, to say the least, that I have put five years of my life thus far tracking this individual’s movements, but still have the gut feeling he is laying low on how he can restart his scam even though Landis told me he was going to stop. Yeah stop what he has been doing for the last thirty plus years? I thought this was the case when I found his third alias, Father James Brantley in 2011. This was shortly after the story was released by the Financial Times where he confessed to what he had been doing and how he had been doing ‘it’. I figured after reading the article (you can find the article on the internet) that he truly had been shopped and would stop… my quest was over… and Landis was done. It was not until February of 2012 that I received an inquiry from a development officer at Loyola University in New Orleans. This particular gentleman knew I had been tracking Landis over the years and he had some new news! Landis had approached Loyola, as he did ten years earlier as Mark Landis, now as Mark Lanois. I guess that Lanois must be French for Landis, right! I recorded this in my dossier and now I have four alias’ (I will talk about each in the upcoming parts).

So let’s back up before I get ahead of myself and get you all excited. On August 7, 2008, after finding something was not right with the gifts to Oklahoma City, I put out a call to my colleagues at other US institutions to see if anyone had a donor and gifts from Mark Landis. Within the first hour, I had over twenty inquiries via phone and email wanting to know what was going on. I shared my story with each one that I conversed and the stories were each the same. Landis had either sent a gift via FedEx or showed up in person promising more art and money for an endowment. Each institution gave him carte blanche in their museum shops, gave him dinner never to hear from him again. My favorite question I asked each one was… ‘did he mention he had a bad heart and was to have surgery?’. To my amazement the answer was yes! I guess he has been having heart surgery for over thirty years then, right? That was his ploy to why people may have wondered why he never resurfaced. Maybe the surgery didn’t go well or maybe he was in bad health. That was not the case. He used this as one of many reasons not to show up again… you know why? He used many tactics to keep himself under wraps even though I do not believe he felt he was doing anything wrong. But fraud is fraud and a forgery is a forgery. If you knowingly give something to someone else under a false pretence, then you are knowingly defrauding that individual. Plain and simple. You do not have to get money for what you do or scam or scheme or however you wish to eventually categorize Landis after reading my blog. Landis has knowingly been doing this for a long time and you know he knows, otherwise why would he change his name and appearance four times in five years? He knew someone had discovered him and has been tracking him… yeah me!

More in a few weeks and please feel free to contact me with questions or any comments. My contact information is on the authors page of Registrar Trek. Talk soon!

Matt

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Size does matter!

This paper machine was measured a few times before being transported.

This paper machine was measured a few times before being transported.

If you want to hear museum people moan, just say “measuring”. Everybody has a story about it. Murphy of Murphy’s Law seems to linger around our tape measures, folding rules and distance meters. Not all stories are as extreme as the story shown in the pictures. The paper machine was measured again and again because it was obvious it was the most difficult thing to move in the great storage relocation. We had a technical documentation. We had specialists in heavy loads for this, experienced in much more problematic cases than our “little” paper machine. We had confidence in our abilities as professionals when we supervised this part of the machine being craned on the low-bed trailer. It was not until then we realized the machine didn’t fit through the gate when standing on the low-bed trailer. It wasn’t much, maybe a few inches. It seemed that the inaccurancies in measurements (height of the machine part, height of the trailer, height of the gate) just added up to the worst case. There was no denying – we had a problem.

On the flat-bed trailer the machine didn't fit through our gate. The riggers had to be creative...

On the flat-bed trailer the machine didn’t fit through our gate. The riggers had to be creative…

Fortunately, we had experienced heavy load riggers. After a few discussions we decided to crane the machine on wheel boards and push it carefully through the gate. It worked. After passing the gate the paper machine was craned back on the low-bed trailer and moved to its new home.

Don't let your eyes fool you: Now it seems obvious that it doesn't fit through the gate, but that's only due to perspective. In reality it were only about 4 cm missing.

Don’t let your eyes fool you: Now it seems obvious that it doesn’t fit through the gate, but that’s only due to perspective. In reality it were only about 4 cm missing.

Other cases in wrong measurements are less spectacular, but the problems caused are sometimes bigger. I don’t know why, but some people tend to round down when it comes to measuring. Not particulary helpful, especially if you have a crate builder or a showcase designer who has the same tendency…

A special problem appears when you work with international partners. In the European Union, measuring in the metric system is common practice, whereas the UK and the USA use their own system (Imperial units and United States customary units, which vary in some cases). You normally keep this in mind as a registrar but misunderstandings are bound to happen anyway. I remember one case when a hardly readable fax with object data reached us. Looking back it sounds weird but for a long time we planned that something will arrive in a small box of approximately 50 x 20 x 21 centimetres (20 x 8 x 8 inches). When the estimated shipping costs were faxed we were shocked by the amount given. It was then that we re-read the fax, realizing that we misinterpreted it. Yeah, the sign behind the measures was NOT a double prime (“) it was just a normal prime (‘). The small sign that seperates the inch (1” = 2.54 cm) from the foot (1′ = 30.48 cm). We were not going to receive a neat little crate, we were going to receive a veritable 20’ container…

Angela

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Digital Media, University Didactics and Cultural Cannibalism: Reflections of an exiled Latin professor

January 2013

“If you don’t know the answer, argue the question” (Clifford Geertz)

In anthropological language the “native” is a local being, the one who belongs to the land and is the first inhabitant of a place, whereas an “immigrant” is a stranger or foreigner who comes from the outside to take the place of the native or to occupy his territory. It’s like a Hollywood cowboys and indians movie, in which the indian is played by Elvis Presley and his indigenous mother by a latin as Dolores de los Rios!

It is interesting to note that the language of the cyberculture or the cyberspace employs, thus, the reificated concepts by occidental culture about colonialism and imperialism: in this new cybercontext, the “native” is that who was born inside a digital order and therefore reasons according to that logic, whilst the “immigrant” is being displaced from the bookish medieval-renaissance culture to the cyberculture still keeping one foot here and another there.

How this culture stays on cyberspace if we think about the large number of grammar and digital illiterate people of Latin America? Néstor García Canclini, in books such as Diferentes, Desiguais e Desconectados, Editora UFRJ, 2005, explores the contradictions of South American indigenous populations using the internet without at least being taught to read and write! As an anthropologist and educator, this seems a relevant question to be discussed: how to enter in the digital era, of global or international character, without losing regional references of Brazilian culture, inspiring me here on the stance of “cultural cannibalism” of Oswald Andrade?
As a way to stimulate my students to develop a critical sense -the goal of every college education- I’ve been developing a product of visual creation in Art-Education, in which I deal with the importance of devouring the cyberculture in a critical way and return it re-changed, according to a local “native” language. It seems to me that this remarkable question is never emphasized when it comes to speak about cyberculture: could it be possible that all the cultural statutes represented there, apparently in a democratic way obtain the same socioeconomic preponderance when swallowed?
Then, how to introduce a context of “critical cannibalism” along with the students? That is, how to awaken on them an aesthetic sense (in a platonic way) of concepts? How to make them separate the wheat from the chaff amidst the digital media crowded chaos, which is inevitably surpassed by the capitalist, imperialist and colonialist logic of the European and North American first world?
Philosophical and humanisitic questions of first order, partners: would it be possible that what a typical “digital native” thinks is relevant, pertinent, politically and ethically correct and can make the world change for best? Or, still more important, which is the real didactic contribution that the teacher’s erudite knowledge can make in relation to the majority of the sub -information transmitted by the digital media in today world?
Dinah Papi Guimaraens – PhD in Architecture and Urbanism by Universidade Federal Fluminense and Director and Associate Founder of Museu de Arte e Origens, NYC (PhD by Post graduate program in Social Anthropology -Museu Nacional- UFRJ and New York University – Museum Studies Program /Fullbright Scholar; PhD, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, USA)
Translated by Araceli Galán

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FAUX Real: On the Trail of an Art Forger Part 1

When I’m thinking about remarkable registrar’s stories one story immediately comes to my mind: The story of the art forger Mark Landis. Registrar Matthew C. Leininger discovered his forgery and tries to keep track on him ever since. I’m really happy that he agreed to contribute his story. We will do this as a follow-up real life detective story, so stay tuned! You can watch some of the forgeries that were done by Landis in this youtube video. Landis is still around doing his forgery, so you will always find his picture and known aliases in every story. It’s our goal to keep museum people around the world informed about this art forger and how he acts. If you recognize him: inform Matt Leininger about it. Thanks! – Angela

What I am about to share with you is the insight of my personal encounters with what the New York Times has called ‘the most prolific art forger of our time’.
I was a registrar and department head at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art in 2008 when this all began.

picture: LSU University Art Museum

Mark Landis
Also known Aliases:
2009 – Steven Gardiner
2010 – Father Arthur Scott
2011 – Father James Brantley
2012 – Mark Lanois

Registrars are the true caretakers of collections and overtime their experience becomes second nature when reviewing collections, especially when they come from a donor that seems obscure. August 7, 2008 my due diligence and discerning eye paid off in a way that I could not even fathom when I uncovered Mark Augustus Landis of Laurel, Mississippi. Landis earlier in 2008 had gifted a water color ‘by’ Louis Valtat to OKC. We were so excited about this rare work that without doing any research we matted, framed and installed the work in our gallery. We were not only excited about this gift, but the promised gift of more art work and money for an endowment that Landis told us about. This was in May of 2008 when we received the Valtat. July of 2008 Landis arrived at the museum during one of the most difficult installations the museum had taken on. I was called to drop everything I was doing and cater Landis along with the Chief Curator and Director. It was a grueling two and a half days to say the least. The staff considered Landis not only obscure, but there was something just not right about him, not a good feeling you know? We have him carte blanche in our store and fed him lunch, which he never ate. The chief curator took him to the airport for his return to Laurel (did I mention Landis paid his own airfare, hotels and meals?). Landis fell asleep at the gate and someone stole all his store goods! We had to return to the airport and help him rebook so he could make it home.
I mentioned August 7 and I remember it well. We were getting ready to take the five newly gifted works to our committee for accessioning. I did my research on the pieces and low and behold the Savannah College of Art and Design had received the same Paul Signac watercolor gifted from Landis around the same time he was in OKC. Then came an oil on panel by Stanislas Lepine. This piece showed up in a press release on the website at the St. Louis University Museum of Art. Hmm, yes gifted by Landis. I was onto something. I researched the remaining three and also found them in other collections throughout the United States. After tracking Landis movements over the last five years, I have uncovered well over one hundred forgeries gifted by Landis in twenty states and over fifty institutions… and I am the sole individual that found Landis and revealed his scam nationally and internationally.
This is just the beginning and I have only scratched the surface with this blog. I thank Angela Kipp for inviting me to participate and I hope you enjoy as I continue to share with you my dossier and the complete story on Mark Landis.

Stay tuned,

Matt

This text is also available in French translated by Kelsey Brow.

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Cotton gloves? White or blue jeans gloves?

Why do registrars use white gloves? Well, so you can see when they are dirty! “Registrars do it with gloves on”, this is almost a slogan.

designall

“Registrars do it with their gloves on”
taken from here

All collection objects pass through the hands of the registrar and his / her team of assistants, from the very day of accessioning until they leave for exhibition or lent. And a good registrar never allows anyone to touch the objects without very clean white gloves or gloves with nonslip rubber bullets, also very clean, if the objects are heavy or slippery.
UPDATE 2013/01/15: Forget about the rubber bullets. As you can see in the comments section that’s not best practice. Use of nitrile gloves – or nylon gloves with nitrile palms for the heavy artifacts – is much better.

They are white cotton gloves, they are not blue jeans!

I remember about 20 years ago I gave several pairs of clean white gloves to a new apprentice of mine, explaining how to use them and why, and so on. The next day the assistant came with gloves dyed dark green; this apprentice said to me: “well, this way one doesn’t see the dirt on them.” Please… that’s mentally having blue jeans

All of us know we can wear a blue jeans several days (Oh, c’mon, who doesn’t?), you won’t see much dirt… (as they are dark blue). But the white gloves used to handle objects are white for exactly that reason: to see when they are dirty and so one can exchange them immediately for clean ones and don’t handle the next object with dirty gloves. Imagine to handle objects in the collection with dark gloves “one doesn’t see the dirt on” and the damage and stains that occur to the objects handled.

We can say that if there is a symbol for museums registrars worldwide it’s a pair of white gloves! This holds especially true to registrars who handle art, documents or archaeological artifacts. It is not just a smart advertising idea of the company that sell those shirts. The Mid-Atlantic Association of Museums in the USA have a project called the “White Gloves Gang”, where registrars, collection managers, arcivists, museum studies students… help one day voluntarily in a chosen museum with a collections project.

The “White Gloves Gang” would be a suitable name for registrars and collection managers worldwide…

Fernando Almarza Rísquez

This text is also available in French translated by Kelsey Brow.

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Serious business

Which way is up? No way to get it right with these signs…

Yes, a registrar’s work is serious business. All those valuable objects in our collection, all those tasks in documenting, we registrars are very serious and no-nonsense, right? Right! Why is it then that sometimes at a meeting you see the registrar’s team caught in helpless giggling? Because our job is crammed with unintended humor!

I remember that one day a crate for an exhibition arrived that said “This side up” on two totally different sides. Unfortunately, I haven’t taken a picture. You can imagine how happy I was to receive the picture on the left hand side taken by Noel Valentin of El Museo del Barrio, New York.

Not to mention the humor you can take out of data base entries. How about “Knife with missing blade and missing haft”? I guess it’s a smart way to tell us that this object was a total loss. Or a note I found in the “condition” field of our data base saying “needs vacuuming”. We have the vacuum cleaner always at hand so I guess it took more time making the entry than actually vacuuming the object… And then there are condition reports. I remember a colleague mailed she actually found “ugly, but durable” in one report.

"Close door! Because of climate" Registrar's do something against climate change!

“Close door! Because of climate” Registrar’s do something against climate change!

I love stupid inscriptions best. I try to make photos every time I see something stupid written on something. I lost a personal favorite, a box which was marked with “Vorsicht Inhalt” (“Caution content!”). It turned out that it contained a fire extinguisher for a car and the inscription was a warning not to throw away the box (which was a box for a bottle of wine) because there was a valuable still undocumented artifact inside! Well, from the inscription I expected something with at least asbestos or quicksilver…

What I found is the one you can see on the right hand side which reads “Close door! Because of climate”. Of course we all know what was meant by this sign: the door should be kept shut because of the temperature and the relative humidity that has to be kept stable in the room behind. But somehow, with all the discussions about climate change… well, it looks like a quite simple solution.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who is fond of unintended humor concerning registrar’s work. Take a look at this wonderful film “Stuff Museum People Say” that the Atlanta History Center made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhAJiz2ixuY In 1:23 you can see a scene quite typical for a registrar: a staff member hurts herself and the registrar shouts “Bleed away from the artifacts!”

Oh yeah, and then there are the failures when it comes to storing objects. Liz Walton made a blog out of this: Art Storage Fail. Enjoy, and if you have something that fits: submit it to her.

Let me close this post with two unintentionally humorous postcards I received from our chimney sweeper. Our outside storage collection deposits are not staffed 24/7. He learned this from the many, many times he came to do the yearly check-up and nobody was there. So now he sends a postcard first to make an appointment. The first one I received read: “I’m coming February 25 at 10:15 a.m. or on the following days”. After he didn’t show up on the 25 I called him up to make the appointment for February 26, 11 o’ clock and everything went fine. The following year I received a postcard “We are coming in February. Please do not wait, we will call you to make an appointment.” Again, all went fine after we phoned but until today I can’t get the picture out of my head of someone waiting the whole February for a chimney sweeper to arrive…

Angela

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A project to break down language barriers and connect registrars worldwide