A constellation of enterprising ideas about art and artifact collections.
This perfectly exemplifies the “preparation paradox” wherein through careful and thorough preparation one prevents a problem and, consequently, creates the sense that the intense preparation was actually an overreaction. This phenomenon readily reflects the risk mitigation efforts of professionals who steward the world’s cultural heritage.
In May of this year, New York City will join a small group of states including Colorado, California, Connecticut, Maryland, Rhode Island, and Washington requiring that all job listings post a salary range.
Surely, you have heard the recent story about the group of people who banded together to raise over $47,000,000 to bid on an original edition of the U.S. Constitution. Well, they nearly won it. Constitution DAO formed with a single goal: to crowdfund enough money to purchase the holy, historic document from auction at Sotheby’s. And while a literal “we the people” ironically lost out in a bidding war with a single billionaire – who at least will loan the document to a museum – the act demonstrates populist power ramifications that can extend to collections stewardship.
Collection storage grabs the recent headlines as the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen opens the Boijmans Depot in the Netherlands and thus creates a new, publicly-accessible facility while closing its main building in Rotterdam for renovation. In addition, this complaint-disguised-as-an-article in Hyperallergic naively suggests we should have less storage for our institutions and fails to offer a plan for what to do with un-exhibited collections. So, I will offer some ideas. The implication of which suggests a great cascade of object redistribution may have begun.
