Jessica,
How do you deal with reports for groups of objects that are by both "known" and "unknown" artists?  I wanted us to go towards an approach like you describe, but we realized that the departments that had almost all "unknown" artists (Pre-Columbian, Antiquities, Decorative Arts, etc.) would use the "culture" as the artist in their wall label copy, while departments who have "known" artists generally do not.  I wanted EVERY object to have the Culture field populated (we made the decision that "culture" had to equal the nationality of the artist) for searching capabilities, but writing a report that would grab the culture field when the artist was unknown, and the constituent display name when they were not stressed me out too much.

Increasingly, we're having curators who are assembling exhibitions cross-departmentally, so the need for a consistent report that would treat ALL objects equally, and be as close as possible to what they would put on the wall labels is absolutely necessary.

Philadelphia has the same sort of collection as ours, so I'm curious if that issue has come up for you and how you've handled it.

Thanks,
David

David Aylsworth
Collections Registar
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
tel:  713-639-7824
fax: 713-639-7780



-----Original Message-----
From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Milby, Jessica
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 8:52 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 'Unknown' Constituent Records

Forgot to add that we require every object with "artist/maker unknown" to have a Culture.



-----Original Message-----
From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Milby, Jessica
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 9:49 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 'Unknown' Constituent Records

We use one constituent called "artist/maker unknown" for everything by an unknown maker and add our regional information to the object Geography.  We use Geography Types like "probably made in" and "assembled in" etc. to describe our certainty or otherwise for the place made but still allow for consistent searching based on location. This method arose from the need to display the geography in a semi-narrative format that satisfies the curators but still allows for logical searches.
--Jessica

______________________ 
Jessica Milby 
TMS Systems Manager 
Philadelphia Museum of Art 
Phone: 215-684-7283 
Fax: 215-235-0035 
[log in to unmask]

-----Original Message-----
From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Diane Lee
Sent: Tuesday, April 21, 2009 9:17 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 'Unknown' Constituent Records

I don't know if this will help with your situation or not as your system is
probably already well established, but thought I'd share anyway.  
We actually have 'Unknown' as a constituent, and we link that to
artist/maker etc.  For the place name, we don't use the geography assistant,
we use the Thesaurus feature and use Geography xrefs and have Types such as
'Place of origin' where we link the place name.  If there is a possible or
probable with it, we can add it to the remarks field.  
So if we don't know who did it, but know it's probably from Hartford,
Connecticut, we'll do Maker=Unknown constituent, and GeoXrefs=Place of
origin Hartford\Hartford County\Connecticut etc., and in remarks add
'Probably made in Hartford'. 

Hope that helps a little bit. 

Diane 


========================================
Diane Lee, Collections Manager Ÿ 860-236-5621 x242
Connecticut Historical Society


-----Original Message-----
From: The Museum System (TMS) Users [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Stephanie Hansen
Sent: Monday, April 20, 2009 6:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: 'Unknown' Constituent Records

Dear TMS list-serv,

I'm hoping we can pick up on this old topic again to help me make a decision

on how which field(s) to use for our decorative arts/sculpture "unknown" 
constituents. We wouldn't normally display "unknown" for dec arts-but 
rather "Costal New England, probably Salem, Massachusetts, or Portsmouth, 
New Hampshire" for example. Does anyone else list a place instead of 
an "unknown" constituent like this?

The problem is-that most of them are more than 48 charaters 
(prefix/suffix/culture) and most of them have qualifiers 
like "possibly", "probably", "or", etc.-so they don't work in the geography
fields 
either. I'm also afraid it will get too "out of sight/out of mind" in text
entries or 
a udf.

Do any of you have constituents that refer to a place-or has anyone come up 
with a good solution to listings such as the above?

Many thanks for any advice!!

Stephanie Hansen
Milwaukee Art Museum