It might help if you shared your definition of the distinction between Fine Art and Decorative Art. Do you have a category of objects that are neither fine nor decorative?
Best
Robert
Robert B. J. Mason D.Phil (Oxon)
Royal Ontario Museum | World Cultures
100 Queen's Park, Toronto , ON Canada M5S 2C6
Associate Professor | Near & Middle Eastern Civilisations
University of Toronto | 4 Bancroft Avenue, Toronto, ON M5S 1C1
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From: The Museum System (TMS) Users <[log in to unmask]> on behalf of Sarah Gillis <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 01 June 2017 15:20:20
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Fine Arts V. Decorative Arts
Oh wise ones,
I have been deeply rooted in a re-classification of the collection for the past year, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! Well, I thought I could. Before everyone signs off on the new, expanded types of classifications for the collection, there is one conundrum that I need to sort out, Decorative Arts.
Here’s come context:
Previously, all non-fine art objects shared the same classification of “Decorative Arts,” with different assigned departments such as “Americas” “Europe” “Asian,” etc. Through collaborative meetings, a working group (containing both curatorial and non-curatorial staff) has come up with a new group of classifications, which eliminates the black hole of “Dec Arts” such as “Ceramics” “Metalwork” (with sub-classes) “Jades” and the like.
Previously you had to search “Classification = Decorative Arts” AND “Medium = porcelain, stoneware, ceramic, terracotta” to get anything under the new stand-alone “Ceramics” classification, and there would always be something that fell through the search gap.
It turns out, now that Dec Arts is on the verge of being eliminated, some of my colleagues are getting nervous about this and want it to stay at the root classification, with each new classification as a sub-classification.
At present, we do not have a department of decorative arts, and I’m not sure that is on the horizon.
SO, if Decorative Arts is being insisted to remain, then there needs to be an acknowledgement for what is considered Fine Arts. Since there is no Dec Arts department, is there a way to create groups of collections together within the database? From a tree perspective this would be in-between department and classification. I know in other databases you can, but wasn’t sure if this was a new feature for TMS (we’re having upgrade issues so I’m still stuck on 2012!). Ideally being able to assign a collection for Decorative Arts would solve the problem.
How have other institutions dealt with the Fine Arts v. Decorative Arts conundrum? It has been such a prevalent classification for so long in this institution, that my colleagues don’t know what to do without it.
Is there something that can be done in the backend that would accommodate database queries for “Decorative Arts”? I thought about adding it as an attribute, which might solve the problem.
Anyhow, I would love to hear anyone’s feedback on this.
Thanks!
Sarah L. Gillis assistant registrar, image management
WORCESTER ART MUSEUM / worcesterart.org<http://www.worcesterart.org/>
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Spanish and Portuguese Colonial Art from
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March 11 - July 9, 2017
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