A constellation of enterprising ideas about art and artifact collections.
We’re all in the cultural sector and the things museums remind me is that most things don’t survive. We see different civilizations and all the things they’ve left behind that don’t exist anymore. We should remember that we, too, are heading in this direction where our civilization as we know it will cease to exist. This is just what happens. I think that when things close, they make space for new things.
Lastly, the biggest reason that sea freight will most likely not have a major impact on emissions in our sector is due to the lack of any real incentives besides “doing the right thing”. It costs about the same. It takes longer. It places more of a burden on staff. Why do it unless you have no other choice? One must have a true incentive, usually financial, to make a big impact.
My interest, naturally, lies in the dataset used to curate the show. In other words, the algorithm bloodhounds the internet for traces of digitized collection information from cataloged objects relevant to the prompt entered into ChatGPT. In other words, the catalog information of the collection available online. In other words, the work of registrars and collections managers.
Those of us who spend time with collections (not just in museums) know that several pieces will never wake from hibernation. While candidates for deaccessioning, removing objects could create a major image problem and also requires a large amount of work for staff. Safely storing and housing these objects similarly requires massive amounts of resources and represents a safety risk as illustrated by the British Museum.
On an almost weekly basis, we hear a new story about objects returning to their country or culture of origin. Fantastic, right? On the one hand, like dropping a stone down a deep, black well, we wait for the splash which seems to never arrive. Likewise, the amount of plundering by colonial powers that occurred throughout history appears similarly profound and endless. On the other, does the steady return also show that institutions around the world take seriously the situation and actively seek to return objects?
Of course, we never want to subject high-value objects to the rigors of apathetic handling by FedEx, DHL, UPS, etc. but we can find ourselves cornered by lack of availability of options due to time sensitivity or geography or any number of reasons that eliminate a traditional art shipper as an option. Galleries and other smaller institutions may also do so for budgetary reasons or, frankly, because it more efficiently gets the job done and distributes its wares to every nook and cranny of the globe.
