Category Archives: Curatorial

Case Study: Returning works of cultural heritage to their homelands

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How will this develop at the Quai Branly Museum in Paris? Read more in Fayah Nayeri’s New York Times article of June 5, 2020.

On the museum’s website you can link to a variety of tours to explore their collections.

You can also explore collections from places around the globe from the map.

Where did you spend the COVID-19 quarantine?

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The Bartow-Pell Mansion Museum, a 28,000-square-foot Greek-Revival estate in a forested area of Pelham Bay Park in the Bronx. Antonio Cruz, the resident caretaker, has lived in an upstairs apartment in the mansion with his wife and family since 1999, rent free. Mr. Cruz, with their French bulldog Dexter, gets some air with his wife, Mary Janet Cruz, and their sons Scott, 21, and Joseph, 17. The couple raised both of their sons on the property.

“The resident caretakers of some of New York’s cherished landmarks may have the city’s strangest work-from-home assignment.” Read more in Stefanos Chen’s article from the New York Times, June 5, 2020, “Quarantined in a museum.”

Collecting COVID-19

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What object(s) would you contribute to a museum to represents your experience of the COVID-19 pandemic? Read Adam Popescu’s article from the New York Times (May 25, 2020) to see what museums are collecting and the questions that arise from the act of collecting and deciding what is collected.

Ruben Natal-San Miguel’s “Toilet Paper Hoarder, Manhattan NYC” was submitted to the Museum of the City of New York‘s #CovidStoriesNYC project.
Credit: Ruben Natal-San Migue, via Museum of the City of New York
How Will We Remember the Pandemic? Museums Are Already Deciding

Leonardo at the Louvre

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An exhibition in three reviews…

• Philip Kennicott, “Not every Leonardo…” Washington Post, Oct. 18, 2019.

“Beyond the Glass” at the Louvre’s Leonardo da Vinci exhibition, 2019. (XP captures, Courtesy Emissive and HTC Vive Arts)

• Michael Glover, “Leonardo da Vinci, Lost at the Louvre.” Hyperallergic, Nov. 2, 2019.

Leonardo da Vinci, Lost at the Louvre

• Sebastian Smee, “Quiet please…” Washington Post, Oct. 29, 2019.

The Louvre’s 2019 Leonardo exhibition includes Andrea del Verrocchio’s “Christ and Saint Thomas” (1467-83), a work that inspired da Vinci. (Musee du Louvre/Antoine Mongodin)

OK, four reviews…but this one in London:

Leonardo: Experience a Masterpiece, commissioned & produced by the National Gallery and created by 59 Productions. Photo by Justin Sutcliffe.

National Gallery, London: Virgin of the Rocks, through January 12, 2020.

College art museums

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This is from 2016…but it can start our discussion about the place of art museums on college campuses.

Jacoba Urist, “Why Do Colleges Have So Much Art?” The Atlantic, Nov. 1, 2016.

“Campus museums are home to prodigious exhibits and installations that blur the line between academics and civics.”

Think about these terms in relation to our campus and other campuses you have visited: art, gallery, museum, collection, teaching collection, fine art.

Canada: repatriating cultural heritage

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Art and Law

“People Across the Globe Want Their Cultural Heritage Back. Canada May Offer a Blueprint for How to Get There”

“A proposed law would mobilize a national strategy to help Indigenous communities reclaim cultural heritage objects at home and abroad.”

Kate Brown,

A mask of the Kwakiutl, a native American clan on the West coast of Canada on display in the Humboldt Box museum in Berlin. Photo: JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images.

An additional article on the Cranmer Potlatch of 1921 from the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, June 8, 2018. That article closes with the following important questions:

Ask yourself:

Question 1:

What would you want to pass down to future generations?

Question 2:

What kind of cultural heritage is important to you and your community?

Question 3:

What role can museums play to help preserve and protect heritage?

 

Deaccessioning to add new works

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The Baltimore Museum of Art (photo by Mike Steele, via Flickr)

Benjamin Sutton, “Baltimore Museum of Art Acquires 23 Major Works…” Hyperallergic, June 28, 2018.

Njideka Akunyili Crosby, “Dwell: Aso Ebi” (2017), the Baltimore Museum of Art, purchased as the gift of Nancy L. Dorman and Stanley Mazaroff, Baltimore, in Honor of Kristen Hileman (courtesy the Baltimore Museum of Art)

Announcement fro the BMA

And the earlier story:

Cara Our, “Artists and Curators Weigh in on Baltimore Museum’s Decision to Deaccession Works by White Men to Diversify its Collection.” Hyperallergic, May 8, 2018.