Category Archives: collections
Museums Seek Clarity, Face Challenges to Budgets and Relevance
Lately I’ve been taking advantage of the comp museum admission perk through my employment with New-York Historical Society. I’ve saved a pretty good amount of cash at some of New York’s premier cultural institutions ($25, MoMA; $20, Frick Collection; $22, … Continue reading
Frames Upon Frames At Collector’s Showroom
Today I went to Diego Salazar Antique Frames in Long Island City, New York. It’s a place well known in the frame game (Merkelson 2013), but I surprisingly found it hidden among steel-doored warehouses just south of Queens Boulevard. Having … Continue reading
A "New" Bridge Between Collectors and Museums
Exhibition labels are often overlooked and underused. We ignore these small, strategically positioned placards for any number of reasons. “It’s too long to bother reading”; “It doesn’t say anything I’m interested in”; “It’s written in a funny language” — we all … Continue reading
Posted in collections, exhibition, heritage, museums, Vastari
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What is a collection, and what is collecting?
As a child I had all sorts of collections: stamps, keychains, milk caps (“pogs”), coins, and ice hockey pucks. As an adult I still have all sorts of collections: rocks and minerals, photographs, books, and museum maps. And sure enough, … Continue reading
Museum Collecting Guide as Cultural Heritage
Today I was given a copy of the 1977 Guide to Field Collecting of Ethnographic Specimens, an information leaflet written by the late William C. Sturtevant, Curator of North American Ethnology at the National Museum of Natural History. For a Smithsonian publication, … Continue reading
Posted in anthropology, collections, culture, museums, Smithsonian, UNESCO
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Culture in Peril 