We have similar issues here, and it has been a topic of discussion at
meetings with curators and registrars. Our curatorial focus tends to shift
when staffing changes. For example, when we originally got collection
software (20 years ago), we had one curator for all Western painting and
sculpture. Now we have three curators for what used to be one department. We
also have discreet collections that have been moved around to different
curatorial departments. For example, 20th century art glass, like Chilhuly,
was originally brought in under our decorative arts department. Much later
they moved it to painting and sculpture. This required basically
hand-picking which works needed to be moved to another department in TMS. 
 
Some of the curators want me to create new departments in TMS to reflect
recent staffing changes. However, I prefer to keep the departments more
broad to allow for future curatorial division decisions. I encourage and
assist curators with using fields such as constituent, classification, and
date ranges to help them find the objects that meet their criteria for a
given situation. There does not seem to be a solution that makes everyone
happy. However, I am an advocate of keeping the departments fairly broad in
TMS.
 
Suzanne Stephens
Database Administrator
Birmingham Museum of Art

-----Original Message-----
From: Aylsworth, David [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Thursday, October 30, 2008 10:34 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Crossing Department lines



I imagine that there are a other museums that are in our situation and I'd
be curious how many of you feel it is a problem, or how you deal with it.

 

Our museum has a lot of curatorial departments that have a lot of crossover
between them.  Some of them are time based (Antiquities, Modern &
Contemporary), others are culture based (Latin American, American, European,
Asian), others are media based (Prints & Drawings, Photography, Film &
Video), and we've now added one that is religion based (Islamic).

 

Objects in the Islamic department are also Asian or Antiquities.  Our Asian
department collects not only traditional woodblock prints and the like, but
also contemporary photographs, videos, and sculptures-sometimes by the same
artists collected by the Photography and Modern & Contemporary department.
Our Latin American department collects prints, drawings, contemporary
paintings, and videos.  This list could go on and on.

 

I don't want to discourage the cross-department collecting, but while the
curators are only really concerned about their most recent acquisitions, I'm
concerned that twenty years from now, it's going to be strange why the same
artist has works that look identical in different departments.  Am I being
too uptight about this?  Does anyone have any similar situation or thoughts?

 

I'd appreciate hearing any comments any of you have.

 

Thanks,

David

 

David Aylsworth

Collections Registar

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

tel:  713-639-7824

fax: 713-639-7780