I finally got my author’s copies of Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections and I was notified that there is a problem with ordering the book from Amazon:
You might remember that in my New Year’s post I announced that a friend of mine is working on a book with a collections manager as main character, right? Guess what? It is out!
I am low-key proud that me talking about our profession so passionately inspired it. Well, kinda, we were touching the topic every now and then. Like the conversations with him and two friends of us (one writes horror and mystery, the other a fantasy) often go, it derailed completely from how something disappearing from a museum is among a registrar’s worst nightmares to the thought of what would happen if you realize one bright, new, early morning that, well, a whole seven feet high statue has simply disappeared from your well-guarded grounds.
Paul tackled the topic with his usual sense of humor and unusual talent for creating quirky characters. I added some reality check to it while at the same time granting enough artistic license to let it stay a riveting tale instead of becoming a novel about museum policies, loan procedures, and conflict of interest that it probably had become if I had written it. It kept me on the edge of my seat and laughing out loud so I highly recommend it, although my view is of course not really neutral.
Fun fact: While he wrote it, it inspired me to write a few chapters of a spin-off story where another statue, Leonardo, finds himself suddenly alive as a collateral damage of the events in the book. It is written from Leonardo’s point of view and you can imagine that it is quite confusing to find yourself standing on a pedestal in the middle of a museum. Especially if you haven’t been alive before. Ever. And your head is marble. This makes thinking…hard. Leonardo and his friend Betty, barista extraordinaire, even make a guest appearance in Paul’s book.
Anyway, in these dire times I feel we can all use some lighthearted humor and Egypt Calling provides you with plenty of it. If you are up for it, I here is the start of Leonardo’s story.
Ah, autumn. The leaves are falling, the days get shorter, little kids stand you up at your own front door, demanding sweets to protect your house from harm, just like tradition dictates. And, oh, yes, flocks of registrars, collections managers, and documentation specialists travel all over the world to hold their secret – or not so secret – gatherings. ‘Tis the season!
I am just back from a trip to St. Pölten, Vienna, and Berlin and am preparing to head out to Zürich and Rome. I am looking forward to reconnect with familiar faces and get to know new ones at the European Registrars Conference. If you attend there, too, just say “hi”. I am happy to chat with you.
If you are interested in what is new, you can catch me talking about the book online for Museum Studies LLC on Tuesday November 19 at 9 pm Continental Europe, 8 pm U.K., 3 pm Eastern, 2 pm Central, 1 pm Mountain, Noon Pacific, 11 am Alaska, 10 am Hawaii, Wednesday 9 am New Zealand, Wednesday 7 am Australian Eastern. You can register by writing to Webinar@MuseumStudy.com
I hope you are enjoying spooky season and perhaps we see each other, soon!
The new edition of “Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections” is in the making but not done. In fact, this post finds me bowed over my revising notes and frantically typing in all I have missed last time.
Time to open up the conversation, show you what I have done so far and comparing notes with you, the readers of the first edition, students from my courses, or just people generally interested in the topic.
Time for you to grab the keys – or the mike!
Join the free online talk!
Museum Study will host a free Unmanaged Collections Talk on Tuesday December 19 at 9 pm Continental Europe, 8 pm U.K., 3 pm Eastern North America, 2 pm Central, 1 pm Mountain, Noon Pacific, 11 am Alaska, 10 am Hawaii, Wednesday December 20 9 am New Zealand, Wednesday 7 am Australian Eastern.
EODEM 1.0, the Exhibition Object Data Exchange Model, was officially released on September 1st. But why should you, a registrar, be excited about those five letters? Isn’t it just another standard in a museum world that doesn’t lack standards – but is short of people, money, time, and, every so often, the institutional buy-in to enforce those standards?
Well, first of all, it isn’t a standard: it is an exchange model. That’s right, this isn’t something that will force you to restructure your data – although, seriously, there are good reasons to do so while you are at it, and EODEM itself is defined as a profile of the LIDO standard. EODEM is something that will enable you to exchange the data you already have about your objects with other colleagues. Something you most likely already do when you are lending, borrowing, and/or co-operating with other institutions for exhibitions.
So the tedious task of typing data from a spreadsheet or email you received from another institution could become a thing of the past with EODEM! If it is implemented, you can just import the EODEM file your colleague sent you and the information will appear in exactly the fields in your database where you need them to be. It doesn’t matter what collections management system your colleague uses. If one system can create an EODEM file from its data, you will be able to import that EODEM file in whatever system you are using!
EODEM logo
There is one big if, though: just because EODEM is out doesn’t mean it is already in your collections management system. The good news: EODEM was developed together with vendors, so, right from the start, this model was built in a way that should make it easy to implement it in most collections management systems. The bad news? Vendors of collections management systems are not big software companies, just as the museum field isn’t a big industry. So, there isn’t an armada of developers idly waiting for EODEM to be ready for them to bring it into their systems. Instead, EODEM is competing with a lot of other things to be implemented, developed, and/or fixed.
And guess what? That’s where you come in.
The more users of a particular collections management system ask their vendor about when EODEM will be available to them, the more likely it will be to get a top spot on the roadmap. So, what you, yes, you, the only registrar on staff, the loan arranger, the museum professional who wears far too many hats, can do to export and import your exhibition data with a click of a button in the future, is simply to ask your vendor when you will see that option in your own database.
Nagging someone until they finally do it just because it is easier than saying “no” or “we will see about that” to you every single time sounds familiar to you? Ha! Thought so! It is basically the job description of a registrar. Which means, you will get EODEM if you put your mind to it.
It has been seven years since “Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections” first saw the light of day. Rowman & Littlefield kindly asked me if I want to do a new edition and I am inclined to shout: “Heck, yeah!”
But it has been a long while since the first edition and basically, I said all I had to say back then. So, I am handing it over to you: What do you want to see enhanced? What did you miss? What was unnecessary and can be “deaccessioned” in the new edition?
Also, I like to include more of your stories. Has the book helped you tackling a messy collection? Do you like to write a short real-world example? Please, get in contact, I would be delighted.
Have you used the book and it shows because it is dog-eared and full of notes? Please, I want to see those photos of the book in action! I also would very much like to show them on here.
The world has changed, but some things didn’t. Even after so many years not active here, you can still reach me under angela.kipp AT museumsprojekte.de
With the overtaking of twitter by some people I would rather not be affiliated with, and not making profit of me, I have changed to Mastodon as the friendlier alternative. You can find me there as @registrartrek@glammr.us although I am still in the process of figuring out what and how much I want to do over there.
Ah, yes, the Registrar Trek Blog is its own instance as well, you can get updates by following @admin@world.museumsprojekte.de from your Mastodon account.
Take care and I am looking forward to hearing from you!
Professional association gets the award endowed with 2,200 Euro
On the 8th of November 2018 the award “Riegel – KulturBewahren. Preis für Schutz, Pflege und Ausstellen von Kunst- und Kulturgut” (The Lock Bar – Preserving Culture. Award for safeguarding, caring and exhibiting of art and cultural heritage) was granted. The award that comes with an endowment of 2,200 Euro went to the »Registrars Deutschland e.V.«
Central hub of manifold functions
The association Registrars Deutschland e.V. was founded 2004, one of the reasons being to actively raise awareness and understanding for the work and the significance of the registrar in museums, collections and exhibitions. In the meantime, the association has more than 140 members who meet for annual assemblies, workshops and further trainings. Networking is done on an international level.
Reasons for the award 2018
Part of a registrar’s job is everything that has to do with the movement and storage of artworks and cultural heritage inside and between museums. Furthermore, the occuptional profile encompasses transport, (inter-)national loans, packing, documentation and registration, as well as cataloging, security and insurance – registrars are perfect managers of time and data (Kähler).
In Germany, registrars are known for over 30 years for a wide range of manual, technical, commercial and legal processes regarding the handling of artworks and cultural objects of all kind. In spite of this central function this professional guild is working comparably invisible inside the cultural institutions. The award Riegel – KulturBewahren is aiming to make a contribution to foster understanding for the work and significance of the registrar. One of this aims is to develop commonly approved standards and enforce them throughout the area of responsibility of the registrar.
Volker Thiel and Nicole Schmidt, chair and vice chair of the Registrars Deutschland e.V. have accepted the award and the 2,200 Euro grant on behalf of the registrars. Both were clearly moved by the attention and recognition that the award Riegel – KulturBewahren means.
Around 70 experts from museums, associations and businesses took part in the awarding ceremony at the Bach-Archiv in Leipzig. The event on the 8th of November was part of the 5th international conference “KULTUR!GUT!SCHÜTZEN! Sicherheit und Katastrophenschutz für Museen, Archive und Bibliotheken” (Culture!Property/good!Preserve! Security and emergency preparedness for museums, archives and libraries).
• ArchiBALD Regalanlagen GmbH & Co. KG, Dissen (Superior)
• Dussmann Service Deutschland GmbH, Leipzig (Sponsoring)
• hasenkamp Holding GmbH, Köln (Premium)
• IBB • Ingenieurbüro Bautechnischer Brandschutz, Leipzig (Premium)
• Image Access GmbH, Wuppertal (Classic)
• miniClima Schönbauer GmbH, Wiener Neustadt (Classic)
• SchmittART. Beratung │ Konzeption | Public Relations, Leipzig (Classic)
• Tandem Lagerhaus und Kraftverkehr Kunst GmbH, Frechen (Superior)
• Zilkens Fine Art Insurance Broker GmbH, Köln (Premium)
The Riegel – KulturBewahren
There are many awards for creating artworks. But when it comes to preserving mobile art and artifacts there is next to nothing comparable in Germany and Europe, at least no awards that go along with a grant. It is the aim of “Riegel – KulturBewahren. Preis für Schutz, Pflege und Ausstellen von Kunst- und Kulturgut” (The Lock Bar – Preserving Culture. Award for safeguarding, caring and exhibiting of art and cultural heritage) to change this. The “Riegel” was first awarded in 2016, the minimum grant is 500 Euro.
The awarding of the “Riegel – KulturBewahren 2018″ is a common initiative of SiLK – SicherheitsLeitfaden Kulturgut (security guideline for cultural heritage), Bundesamt für Bevölkerungsschutz und Katastrophenhilfe (Federal Office for Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance) and SchmittART.
The award itself is an initiative of the professional periodical “KulturBetrieb. Magazin für innovative und wirtschaftliche Lösungen in Museen, Bibliotheken und Archiven” (Culture business. Periodical for innovative and economical selutions in museums, libraries and archives) and the online portal “KulturBewahren. Forum für Bewahrung, Pflege, Sicherheit und Präsentation von Kunst- und Kulturgut” (Preserving culture. Forum for preservation, caring, safeguarding and exhibiting of art and cultural heritage) .
Information / Contact
SchmittART, Wielandstraße 5, D-04177 Leipzig
Dr. Berthold Schmitt
Tel 0049 / 341 / 5296524
Mobil 0049 / 1522 / 2807125
mail@schmitt-art.de www.riegel-preis-kulturbewahren.de
Working as a registrar might require unexpected skills: Like being all dressed up for the big opening and still be able to deliver a cart of desperately needed tools to the mount-maker.
Thanks to Lisa Kay Adam for the picture.Three things happened in the last four weeks:
1. I changed offices and decided t get rid of my very first safety boots.
2. My current summer safety boots died the usual unpleasant death that awaits all my safety boots.
3. I re-read the piece about shoes at conferences by Janice Klein.
It inspired me to write a piece about a registrar’s working shoes. It’s the same problem like with shoes for conferences, only worse. As a registrar in a small museum you need to be one moment on the top of the ladder, exchanging the light bulb, at the next moment guiding a group of students and yet the next moment shake hands with the president of your university.
As a registrar in a larger museum, you are not really better off: You have to walk miles in the gallery spaces, again climb ladders and if you enter visitor’s spaces you should look halfway presentable.
Each task requires different clothing and it is likely that you have several working outfits in your locker. Along with them there is an army of different working shoes, from rubber boots for the annual springtime water leak in the cellar to high-heels that fit your evening dress for events. A male registrar’s arsenal might be slightly smaller, but I don’t know a single registrar who can work with just one pair of shoes.
There are some advantages of being a collections manager at a science and technology museum.As a collection manager in a science & technology museum with the history of working conditions in its mission, I’m slightly better off. I decided a long time ago that I’m a living representation of working conditions and therefore usually wear working attire no matter what (with a few exceptions, like opening ceremonies and lectures). However, this comes with a downside:
Because I wear my safety boots almost every time at work they tend to die an unpleasant death within a timespan of about a year to a year and a half. This is a problem because a the same time it’s incredibly hard to find safety boots in size 37 (U.S. size 6 1/2). My very first safety boots – the ones I ditched and which are still under consideration to be accessioned for our collection of working clothes – were 36 (5 1/2) because I couldn’t find safety boots my size on the market. The first two years of my career I worked in boots that were too small. In fact, according to a friend, they were the “cutest little safety boots I ever saw”. So, everytime a pair of boots start to show signs of weakness, I search frantically for new ones my size. An exhausting race against time.
Fortunately, this time I’m spared: my niece has exactly the same shoe size and gave me the safety boots she got for her summer job. As she graduated to become an elementary school teacher last year, she doesn’t need them anymore.
Always keep your feet on the ground! Angela
And for your amusement: A gallery of shoes that were killed in action:
Light summer safety shoe, bought 2015. The seam that tied the leather to the sole snapped and the leather ripped. Probably due to the stress imposed on this part of the shoe by standing on my toes frequently. To make matters worse, I often need the fine feeling of my toes to give the forklift truck the exactly right dose of gas when handling a delicate load. A former more sturdy all-year safety boot, I think it was the 2007/2008 one, died exactly the same way.
The most common way my safety boots die is however that the sole becomes so thin that they start to leak. You usually realize this when you are standing in a puddle of water. If it’s a dry season, you realize it when you suddenly feel every stone you walk over like you walk barefoot.
This is the shoe that died the most spectacular way. These were pretty good light hiking shoes I loved to wear when there were no heavy duty jobs that require safety boots, only light work that requires a lot of walking. In the middle of an exhibit installation in 2011 parts of the sole literally fell off.
Got boots that died a similar – or more spectacular -way? Share your photos and send them along with their story to story@museumsprojekte.de!
I didn’t come to post on this blog for a whole month, mainly because I was teaching a course on Managing Previously Unmanaged Collections for Museum Study which was simply eating up all the spare time I am willing to give to museum topics while not on clock. So, I was looking back at the work I did last month.
At first, I found it disappointing. I didn’t save the world. I didn’t save the big opening. I didn’t negotiate that one important contract. Heck, I didn’t even have that one genius idea that freed up more space than expected.
Instead, it was business as usual. But then I thought, maybe that’s well worth a post. Because it is the business as usual that, in a way, is the stepping stone for others to do magnificent things. So, here we go:
Radios and other home entertainment equipment selected for the move.
We are uniting our newly aquired collection of radio and broadcasting equipment with the collection we already have. This means we select what will go to a new storage space and what stays where it is.
Packing cases folded, labeled and ready for packing.
The selection is packed, correctly labeled and the objects and boxes are tracked in the database. Note: the “real work” is done by two young emerging museum professionals. I’m just the database and logistics consultant, box provider and forklift truck driver.
Boxes packed, ready for transport.
I’m often smiled upon or even challenged because I insist on documenting every move of an object, even if it’s “just” from one offsite storage to another or the museum. But just this month it happened that I accidentally found an object which was missing for quite a while and suspected to be stolen. It didn’t leave its box ever. If the location of this box was correctly documented, no one would have wasted his/her precious time searching it. Seems no one ever has the 30 seconds for changing a location, but always the hours for searching.
Radios still to be processed.
It seems useless to bring all the radios together in one place. In the end, what is a database there for? But having them together has a lot of advantages: similar object groups have similar storage needs and are endangered by the same kind of pests. Some radios are duplicates, bringing them together at one place will help us to decide if we really need a second or third one or if we just keep the best. Finally, it’s much easier to prepare loans and exhibitions on this topic if we don’t have to go to different locations for it.
Several small bike related labels and pins.
Our bicycle exhibition is open and doing fine, but there remained a lot of artifacts which were in the first selection but didn’t make it in the final selection. When putting them back to their original location I check the database entries and fill in what is missing. Measures, descriptions, conditions… some I sent off to our photographer to have their mugshots taken, so to speak. When preparing an exhibition there is never enough time to do this. You can only do it for the things that really go on display. By doing it now, future curators will have better data and more time for other duties. Assmann psychrometer on a tripod.
I checked the calibration of our dataloggers with an Assmann psychrometer.
I also checked the reliability of our sensors against two different salt solutions. That way we know our climate data is reliable for the moment. We will check them again every 6 months.
Roll of polyethylene tube for packing maps.
Together with the responsible curator I packed about 200 rolled maps. They always gave me headaches because I found no good way to store them. Then the curator took over a large collection of maps along with a wall rack designed to hang them. Because there are more hanging spaces than maps we can now store all our maps hanging. A pallet of bagged maps.
This means that we have to bag them all and apply a hanging system for those who have no hook.
Because we will hang them high above the ground this will create free space where they were stored previously, which is great. But I can’t claim this success, as it was the idea of the curator. Empty shelves, ready to be filled again.
So, this month passed by. Of course there were many more things to do, each underwhelming in itself, but important in the big picture.
So, as you are all struggeling with your daily underwhelming tasks, never forget that you might not save the world, but doing major improvements in the way you eat an elephant: one piece at a time.
The forger – Mark Augustus Landis Also known Aliases: 2009 – Steven Gardiner 2010 – Father Arthur Scott 2011 – Father James Brantley 2012 – Mark Lanois 2013 – Martin Lynley and John GraumanWell, as I think back to August 7, 2008 whilst at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art working on preparations for an acquisitions meeting, I am proud to say that I am the sole individual to bring down the most prolific art forger in history! Now, I can continue to educate people but now in a much bigger and broader scale with a new medium and here’s why!
The film, Art and Craft that debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City, will hit theaters in the US on September 19 at Lincoln Plaza in New York City. Art and Craft has been getting rave reviews from all the festivals in which it has been an official selection and much attention from movie goers. I am certain that the museum realm will once again open their eyes to my findings once Art and Craft hits theaters.
For those of you not in the US but want to see the film, EARLY 2015 you will be able to find Art and Craft on DVD, Amazon Instant Video, NETFLIX, iTunes, Hulu and other streaming media.
Trekker, your daily work is a big contribution to the museum community and don’t think for a moment it goes unnoticed! That day in August, yeah I never thought this would happen!
Here is a link on Youtube.com for the official theatrical trailer. Please share on your social media sites so you can help me continue to spread the word about the most prolific art forger in history!
