Curator & Collector

Official First Day Terry Fox Coin I recently learned that when a museum accessions a piece, it gives it a number, for example, 2003.4.3.2. The 2003 would refer to the year that a piece was acquired by the museum, the 4 would indicate that this was the fourth accession of that year, while the next [...]

Despite my intention, stated only two posts ago, to resume blogging about museums and numismatics, I feel I cannot quite get there before writing down a few thoughts on the recent election of the Conservative Party as a strengthened minority party. Some in the news media are blaming the fact that the Tories let a [...]

Photograph of British Museum acquisition astrolabe taken from the BBC “He had an astrolabe to match his art / And calculating counters laid apart / On handy shelves that stood above his bed”–Chaucer’s words, taken from our favourite Canterbury Tale, “The Miller’s Tale,” refer to an instrument that has been described, according to the BBC, [...]

Image of Johnstone Heritage Society Museum inside Morrison’s borrowed from the BBC A recent article from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, noting that “Everyone’s familiar with the big names atop Pittsburgh’s famous museums: Carnegie, Warhol, Heinz,” asks “But what about Kerr, Bayernhof and Burtner? Scattered across the suburbs are many more houses of history that might [...]

Canadians may not see these monetary denominations much longer A Quebec financial company, the Desjardins Group, recently made headlines when it suggested that Canada drop the penny and the nickel, and replace the five dollar bill with a coin of the same denomination. (Also see this link at the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business.) [...]

Not a week goes by without several donations to museums, and we have several today to report. Starting with the smallest, the Children’s Museum of Arkansas received $370,000 in the form of a grant from the Walton Family Foundation. Part of the money will be used to hire an executive director. The Museum of East [...]

We’ve got more museum stories today than one can shake a stick at. On the donations front, we have Leonard A. Lauder’s American Contemporary Art Foundation donating $131 million to the Whitney Museum of American Art. $125 million of this will go towards endowment funds, which the New York Times notes are more difficult to [...]

Peter Doig’s “Milky Way.” Oil on canvas, 1989-1990. Image taken from the CBC The CBC has a wonderful (if inconveniently laid out) feature on the British-born “Canadian” artist Peter Doig, whose art is being exhibited in a retrospective in the Tate Britain. Tate Britain itself has a webpage devoted to the exhibition on Doig. Following [...]

Rembrandt’s “Conspiracy of the Batavians.” Image from the National Museum of Sweden The common thread in today’s stories is that fundraising can sometimes be creative. A good fundraiser in a museum can ensure that ridiculous steps–such as selling prime artworks from the museum collection–don’t have to be taken.Our first example of creative,* but very solid [...]

O’Keeffe’s 1927 work “Radiator Building–Night.” Image borrowed from the CBC This story from last Friday was delayed until now, but it is no less important for that. A judge in Tennessee has ruled in the Fisk University-O’Keeffe Museum debacle. Judge Ellen Hobbes Lyle has ruled against the museum, writing that Fisk University may keep the [...]