museum careers; museum international; vol.:xlv, 4;...

Museum International

No 180 (Vol XLV, n° 4, 1993)

Museum careers

No. 4, 1993 C O N T E N T S

3 Editorial

Dossier: M u s e u m 4 Museum careers: ever changing and ever growing careers Patiick J. Boylma

Caring for the community Diaian Finlay 8 Museum educator: the audience’s advocate Conaelia Bir;iiai~agbazks-Kia~~el 13 Museum careers in the United States: a non-system Jane R. Glaser 18 ~~ 1 0 1 6 : museum specialist Maîy Case 22 Profession: museum security engineer Seige Leî-ozlx 27 Outward bound: organizing travelling exhibitions Eileen B. Mott 31 The conservator: versatility and flexibility R. J. Baday 35 Coming to terms with change: the new curator Bridget Iiates 41 Museum guard: a peek at the past 46 Museum librarian: eveiyone’s partner Be& Egaard 48

ISSN 0027-3996, Mfrsenm Inlenza~ional (UNESCO, Paris), No. 180 (Vol. XLV, No. 4,1993) O UNESCO 1993

Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (Ur\) and 238 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142 (USA).

The triumph of the collector Robert Torday 52 Exhibition

Guidelines on disability in the United Kingdom Chris Newberry 56 Practice

Illicit traffic Etieme Clément

Professional news

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Features

0 UNESCO 1993

Editorial

The past twenty years have witnessed a quiet evolution - some might even say revolution - in museum work in response to changing expectations concerning the role of the museum as a public service. Quite apart from its scholarly purpose, the museum is now seen in terms of leisure, entertainment, tourism and frequently as a focus of community interest and involvement. Education, once considered a minor museum function, shares pride of place with the conservation of the cultural heritage.

The result has been a growing diversification of professional roles, with museum staff becoming proficient in a broad variety of disciplines. New specialists have emerged on the scene, bringing a fresh vision to their museums and transforming traditional ways of communicating with the public. Teamwork has become essential: specialist curators work hand-in-hand with educational experts on all aspects of exhibit design and presentation, to cite one example. New job categories have been created in many institutions in order to deal with the increased complexity of museum programmes and operations. These trends and their implications for both the museum and its public are the subject of this issue’s thematic dossier, which was prepared with the invaluable assistance of Patrick J. Boylan, a recognized authority in the field of museum training and management.

Further food for thought on new musem responsibilities is provided in Chris Newberry’s article on meeting the needs of the disabled visitor. And Robert Torday gives a behind- the-scenes look at an exciting venture in museum exchange.

M.L.

ISSN 0027-3996, Mzdseuin I~zte?-r2alio~ta~ (UNESCO, Paris), No. 180 (Vol. XLV, No. 4, 1993) O UNESCO 1993 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UIC) and 238 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142 (USA).

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Museum careers: ever changing and ever growing Patrick J. Boylnn

Pattick J. Boylan, Vice-president of the Internatioiznl Council ofMusei ~tns (ICOM), wns appointed Pt-ofessor and Head of the Department of Arts Policy and Manage- ment in the City Uniuersity, London, in 1990, following a career. of more than tweizty-six years in rniaeums, twenty-two of them as Director of Musenins and Arts first in Exeter, niad then Leicestershire (England). Apnst Chairman of the ICOM International Committee for the Training of Pessonnel, be bas researched and published wideb on the hiimaiz resources aspects of miiseutn nndgnlle ypolicy and management.

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The nature and structure of museum work vary greatly from institution to institution, and even more so from country to country: in employment practice as in so many other aspects of the cultural sector the end product - Culture - is very much determined by the national or local culture - traditions, values, national laws and so on.

in many countries there are only two - widely contrasting -models of the museum worker. First, there is the lowly security attendant or guard, who is the one member of staff that every visitor sees during the visit to the public rooms of the museums. Then there is the scholar-curator, working away mainly out of sight in a private office or the museum storerooms, on the development, care, research and in- terpreting of the museum’s collections within his or her field of academic expertise. This latter impression is not a fair one, since many scholar-curators are constantly involved both with their community and with their academic discipline outside the walls of the museum. However, the ‘traditional’ curator, working primarily with collections in just one academic specialization, such as art, anthropology, archaeology, history, geology or natural history, does still seem to be predominant in many parts of the world, judging by the results of my fairly extensive searching through the staff structures and staff lists included in the many recent annual reports of individual museums and galleries received by the UNESCO/ICOM Museum Information Centre in Paris.

Another indication of the continuing pre- dominance of those caring for collections among museum employees is the distri- bution of job specializations among the 9,000 members of the world’s official organization for museum professionals, the International Council of Museums

(ICOM). All ICOM members are entitled to declare their allegiance as ‘voting’ (i.e. full) members to any one of the organization’s 25 specialist international committees. Currently 46.7 per cent of those registered for international committee memberships have done so with one or other of the 15 curatorial subject committees (such as the Archaeology and His- tory, Costume, Ethnography, Fine Art or Natural History Committees). Another 18.9 per cent are in 2 other international committees concerned with the care and management of museum collections (the Con- servation and Documentation Commit- tees). Of the rest 13.8 per cent are voting members in the Education and Cultural Action Committee, 10.1 per cent in committees concerned with specialized services (Security, Design, Audiovisual and Exhibition Exchange), 6.3 per cent in the Theoretical Museology Committee and 4.8 per cent in the Management and Staff Training Committees. In other words, nearly two-thirds of ICOM’s membership across the world see their primary professional interests (and presumably therefore in most cases their own jobs) in terms of traditional care of collections. This position is reflected in the legal structure of museum employment in a considerable number of countries, especially where government-controlled museums pre- dominate, and where services other than traditional curatorial work, such as exhibition design, financial, premises and human resources management, and perhaps even specialized laboratory conservation, are frequently provided either by other branches of the government service or by independent practitioners and busi- nesses, rather than by direct employees of the museum.

There is nothing wrong with the view that museums are first and last about curatorship, but it is by no means a universal one.

ISSN 0027-5996. hlimirm Inter-iintional (UNESCO, Paris), No. 180 (Vol. XLV. No. 4. 199.3) d UNESCO 1993

I’ublished by Ulacl<well Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford. 0% 1JF IUK) and 238 Main Street, Cdmbriclge, M A 021& (USAI.

Museum careers: ever changing and ever growing

Some parts of the world (and indeed some types of museum, wherever they are located) seem to have very different percep- tions of the nature of museum work and hence require a far greater range of professional and technical skills on the museum’s staff. For example, as long ago as 1978 an extensive research study commissioned by the Canadian Museums Association identified more than twenty distinct museum positions and careers within the plethora of confusing job titles and job descriptions in Canadian museums,’ while the forthcoming Smithsonian study of the current United States situation by Jane Glaser and Artemis Zenetou analyses and describes no less than thirty distinct museum jobs in the United States alone.’

The position in the United Kingdom is similar: major official surveys over the past few years indicate among many other things that curators in the traditional sense now amount to no more than 14 per cent of the country’s total museum labour force,3 a percentage that should be compared with an estimated 35 to 40 per cent of the Workforce a quarter of a century ago. This may be (and probably ought to be) a matter for serious concern within the United Kingdom profession, and a reflection on the relative priorities of museums of all types and of their governing bodies, but it is a fact. It should be pointed out, however, that the number of curators in absolute terms lias in fact been fairly static over this period. What has happened is that curatorship lias enjoyed little or no part of the massive expansion in the overall number of museum employees in the country - this number has doubled or even trebled in parallel with the growth of existing museums and (especially) the creation of new ones. New curatorial posts have not been created on any substantial scale (except for positions for ‘generalist’ social history

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curators needed to run the greatly expanded number of small-scale local community museums). Currently therefore around 86 per cent of those working in United Kingdom museums are operating primarily outside the curatorial field. Even assuming that most people in top managerial positions in museums originally had a curatorial background, we still find that some three-quarters of all those working in museums have a primary responsibility (and perhaps professional allegiance) outside what we have until now rightly considered to be the central core of museums and museum work.

There are also major cultural and administrative differences between countries, and indeed types of museum, in relation to the duration of museum employment. In some countries, such as France, Italy and most of the provinces of Spain, entry to museum work is by means of a very tough public examination and competition for entry into what is usually a guaranteed lifelong career in the public service as a museum specialist. The same is true in many developing countries with administrative structures modelled on these lines, and this used to be the case in many of the socialist bloc countries (though the museum pro- fessions are in a state of transition here, as are of course most other aspects of working life).

In marked contrast, in countries following an Anglo-Saxon tradition of public administration, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, anglophone Canada and most other British Commonwealth countries, recruitment is usually to the individual museum (and probably to a specific position within it), even in the case of government museums. It is also clear that in the United Kingdom the considerable proportion of the museum workforce with skills and qualifications that are usable

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Patrick J. Boylnn

outside museum employment (such as administrative and managerial personnel, designers, educators, marketing and public relations experts) are likely to move in and out of several very different areas of work, of which museums will be only one, in the course of their working lives: they will expect to work with other public services, private professional practice and often the commercial sector too. Much the same pattern of changing career pattern seems to occur in the United States. (To give an example, in my own case I trained and started work as a graduate secondary school teacher, obtained a job with Hull City Museum as a curator and education officer, took the Museums Association’s curatorial diploma part-time before moving through three successively more important museum directorships with local authorities, but I now work in a university, teaching and researching arts and museums policy and management at postgraduate level.)

With such a wide range of museum careers, and such variations from country to country, and even from museum to museum, this thematic issue of Museum Znter- nationalis necessarily impressionistic, but in selecting contributors I have tried to give at least a reasonable indication of the different employment opportunities that museums around the world offer today apart from the familiar role of the scholar- curator. (However, because the traditional curator is the predominant type of museum position in so many regions of the world the examples are not as wide-ranging in geographical terms as would be desirable.)

Jane Glaser’s contribution demonstrates the extreme individuality and variability of the range of museum work in the United States, while Mary Case discusses a recent Smithsonian Institution initiative to inte- grate many dozens of specializations and

job titles across the field of collections management work in the United States Government Service into a single employment category and salary grade of ‘museum specialist’, thus offering the pos- sibility both of greater flexibility and of far more rational human resources planning and development. R. J. Barclay discusses the recent emergence of conservator/ restorers as one of the key positions in the worlds museum movement, while Bridget Yates shows how the role of the specialist social history curator at a rural branch museum of a large county council museum service in eastern England can evolve into that of a manager of more than twenty staff, offering a fully integrated service with decentralized local responsibility and autonomy.

Three contributors present their first-hand experiences with innovative approaches to the public service aspect of museums. Eileen Mott explains her role in the ambi- tious ‘outreach‘ programme of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, which takes high- quality exhibitions to the most distant and rural corners of that large state, while Diana Finlay (who herself joined the museum profession only three years ago after a career in teaching children with special educational needs) demonstrates how a major regional museum and arts service has been able to establish a wide range of initiatives for physically and mentally disadvantaged groups through active involvement in the United Kingdom’s new, and very substantially funded, Care in the Com- munity legislation. Cornelia Brüninghaus- Knubel, one of the world’s most experienced and best respected art museum educators, gives a wide-ranging insight into the contribution that the museum education specialist can make to the breaking down of artificial boundaries and barriers between museums and education, and between art and understanding.

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Last, but by no means least, every museum of any size nowadays needs a formidable range of specialized supporting services either among its staff or through some external service agreement or contract, frequently provided by professionals drawn from other areas. Two important examples are reviewed: the museum librarian, whose role is exam- ined by Berit Elgaard of the Danish National Museum, and the increasingly important security, safety and technical services engineer, whose vital work for the museum is described by Serge Leroux of the Direction des Musées de France. (Directorate of French Museums).

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Museum careers: ever changing and ever growing

Notes

1. Lynne Teather, P?-ofessioiznl Direcfioizs for bfusezini Work it? Cni~ada: An AncrIjsis of Mzisezini Joe and Museiinz Stzidies Trai?zi?zg Czii-ricziIcr, Ottawa, Canadian Museums Association, 1978, 411 pp.

2. Jane Glaser and Artemis Zenetou, ~/Cc??l?~i?g Museuni Careers (in press). See also Jane Glaser’s article, ‘Museum Careers in the United States: A Non-system’, in this issue of dfzisezwz Ititemzntioizal.

3. Patrick Boylan, ‘Centenary Presidential Address of the Museums Association’, nfzisezr?iisJoirilzaI (Dec. 1989)).

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Caring for the community Diana Finlay

Ili î99ODiamFinlqy was appointedas the first Community Care Officer-in the United Kingdom by theleicestenhire County Coiiiî- cil fiiilseiimsilrts nndk’ecords Sewice. Her zuovk focuses on ~nalzing midseiinis accessible and responsiue to those nieinbers of the comm rini@- the disabZed, disaduarataged andelderi), to name buta fmu- ruhonreall too ofleii neglected. She is ciirrently Vice- Chair of the Mtiseums and Galleries Dis- abilities Association.

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The term ‘community’ is difficult to define. W e seem to see it everywhere these days: the ‘European Community’, the ‘disabled community’ and even the ‘museum community’. I am not sure that I know what it means, but I know when I a m outside it. At a very basic level, it is about belonging or being allowed to belong. In my job I feel that I am outside much of the mainstream museum activity. The barriers that exist are organizational and cultural. It is not that my skills are unrecognized and not valued, and they are certainly not unique; it is just that historically they are not considered part of the activity of the museum professional. I raise issues that can make people uncomfortable because - like many visitors and non-visitors to museums - I question why things are as they are. I want to see profound changes in museums at every level. My job is about allowing people to enter the heritage that by definition is theirs. It is about access.

The term ‘Community Care Officer’ takes its name from the controversial United Kingdom Government legislation of 1990. The Care in the Community White Paper was concerned with breaking down barriers and improving the quality of life, particularly with regard to mental illness, disability and ageing. When applied to the arts, it was in many ways a natural progres- sion from the work done by the Attenborough and Carnegie reports, which still remain as the cornerstones of good practice in all arts activities. Yet, in the United Kingdom, museums do seem to have lagged behind other arts bodies in making changes in any fundamental sense. It is still all too common for collections to be presented in ways that alienate more people than they welcome.

In Leicestershire, the Museums Service successfully bid for a post to work specifically to increase access to the whole serv-

ice. It is the only post of its kind in any British museum as it is partly funded by the Social Services Department in recognition of its value to so-called ‘disadvantaged groups’. This year (1992/93) my budget was &5,000, of which just over a half came from Social Services. This represents a tiny portion of the annual overall departmental budget. In the two years since coming to the post, however, I have successfully raised over S70,OOO in grants, sponsorship and materials to support the work that I do. The opportunities For fund-raising for this kind of work are certainly there, but as there is only me out of a total staff of over 200, I have to spend a disproportionate amount of time on it.

If there is a ‘museum community’, then I do not belong to it. I consider that to be a strength because it enables me to provide a vital link to the outside world. I work in three broad areas. First, I act as an Access Officer for all the fifteen museums in Leicestershire.

Access

I am convinced that most, if not all, museums would like to improve access to their buildings. Everyone in the profession is acutely aware of the problems associated with historical buildings, but how often is a creative solution really sought to them? it may not be possible to rebuild an entrance or remove a spiral staircase, but does that mean that a minicom service cannot be provided? (A minicom is a text telephone that has been adapted for deaf people to use. It runs off ordinary phone lines.) Is it not possible to introduce small adaptations that increase access for so many people? I am thinking of improved lighting, or larger labels. Even something as basic as a chair for people to sit on can sometimes make all the difference. In 1993, the European Year

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Published by Ukdcitweil I’ubiisiiers. 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (Uh) and 238 Main Street. Cambridge, M A 021-t2 (USA).

Caring for the community

of the Elderly, I think that w e should have a campaign to provide seating for elderly visitors. Even fairly sophisticated materials such as tactile maps and reliefs can be produced rather easily if they are planned for.

A crucial part of the whole process of improving physical access is that it must be done in consultation with users. I think this is one of the greatest challenges currently facing museums because consultation can be difficult. The key point is to recognize that it requires time to build up a positive relationship with a group, whoever they may be, and to demonstrate that their advice is valued in a creative way. In June 1992 Leicestershire opened the largest purpose-built science and industry museum in the United Kingdom. Snibston Discovery Park is situated on the site of an old colliery and is over 100 acres (40ha) in area. As part of the planning process leading up to the opening of the museum, I held meetings with the 1ocalAccess Group. (Access Groups exist throughout the United Kingdom; they are groups of disabled people who seek to improve access to buildings and services in everyday life.) As a result of these meetings, I became aware of many aspects of O UNESCO 1993

design and interpretation that as an able- bodied person I would have missed. When Snibston opened, it had full access, a fleet of wheelchairs available, Braille labels and reliefs on some exhibits, plenty of chairs, induction loop systems in all meeting rooms, and a staff who had received disability awareness training as part of their normal training package.

The relationship with the Access Group has not stopped there, however. In the week before opening, between Press Day and Volunteers Day, we hosted an Access Day specifically to complete our evaluation of the facilities that we provided. Over 400 disabled people and community groups came to Snibston and we were able to gain valuable feedback on the success and failures of our efforts. As a result of our relationship with the Access Group, we now offer work experience placements to young adults with learning difficulties. I should like to see this extended into a positive programme of recruitment for disabled people in the service.

The Access Day enabled me to develop a programme of improvements for Snibston and helped to establish a minimum standard *

7 k comm?iit~~ care niiizibus is izozv sew all over Leicestershire. Pictured bel-e are two of the cb ildren whose desigm were painted oiz to the vehicle aspai-t of a cornpetitioiz.

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Diana Finlay

that we can aim for as a service. It also prompted the curatorial staff to look again at their displays and interpretation. One colleague introduced tactile drawings of several objects when he realized, through conversation with a visitor, that only some 4 per cent of people who are blind or have a visual impairment can read Braille. It showed me that ‘awareness-raising’ is best done not by sheets of statistics about (in this case] visual impairment, but through a basic contact, a communication with people. Of course, it is not always that easy. Snibston was a new, purpose-built building with full access, yet I fought some of my hardest battles there. What do you do when a designer tells you that a panel has to go on the wall at a certain height although you know that it is too high for a child or for a person in a wheelchair? Answer: you fight! It takes time to influence colleagues’ approaches, but Snibston shows that it can be done. This is in essence the second part of my work: training and raising awareness.

Training and awareness-raising

What I have to remember at all times is that other people approach this subject from different angles. I have found that my colleagues fail into one of two camps. There are those who leap at the chance to work in different ways. They attend every meeting I organize, they volunteer to help me during workshops or special events, and they do an enormous amount of work themselves to improve access and consultation with a wider audience. The others do not. I do not know why, but I think that there has to be a point where services such as the ones I offer are fully integrated into the mainstream life of a museum. At this point it becomes a straightforward management decision, but this simplifies a complex situation. It

requires commitment at a senior management level and it also needs to produce a significant cultural shift in an organization in which many components have never addressed the issues with which I a m concerned.

As a starting-point, every museum should have a policy on disability. This is an area that I ani currently working on. The Museums and Galleries Commission in the United Kingdom, in conjunction with the Museums Association, have recently published their Gitideliiies on Disnbilip foi- il.luseLcins and Galleries in the United Kingdom. These have been drawn up after a significant period of consultation and some years of campaigning by organizations such as the Museums and Galleries .Disabilities Association (MAGDA). The Guidelines are a valuable tool for any museum wishing to adopt good practice in this field. The problem is, who is going to do anything with them? Unless there are more posts like mine, then I fear that the Guidelineswill remain largely unused and a tremendous opportunity will be missed. Even with a policy, nothing automatically changes.

Raising awareness can be done in a number of ways, of which involvement in the planning and routine life of the museum is sometimes the most effective. Wherever possible, I urge curators andother colleagues to consult me. It is quite astonishing how difficult this sometimes is; it takes time and patience to change individual professional agendas. Then there is the general question of logistics and scarce resources. To my mind, every activity that a museum engages in should consider the visitor. Their needs (real or perceived) should be at the forefront, but I acknowledge that there is a debate here. Raising awareness is not simply about encouraging people to adopt acceptable terminology or considering levels of interpretation - it is about equating the

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Caring for the community

concept of quality with that of equality. So much these days is written about provision of quality services and quality exhibitions, but if certain sections of society are excluded from those activities, by accident or design, then quality has not been achieved. Much of what I seek to do is to encourage and promote good practice in all spheres of museum life and to be proactive in a creative and inspirational way. Until equality is placed firmly at the heart of arts activities, then by definition they will be the prerogative of an élite.

Awareness is wider than education. I do contribute to a variety of training programmes and co-ordinate specific training events from time to time. This is usually done in preparation for a particular workshop or project. In May 1991 I co-ordinated a series of workshops as part of National Deaf Children’s Week, which that year was celebrating ‘Art in the Lives of Deaf Chil- dren’. The workshops were led by staff who had little or no experience of communicating with deaf or partial hearing children and so a training session was organized beforehand.

Whenever I can, I use trainers who themselves have experience of disability and disability issues. Much of this work is about breaking down barriers and allowing consultation and dialogue. What constrains me most is fear and lack of understanding. There is a lingering academic snobbery in tlie upper echelons of the museum profession that needs to be changed. For example, to become an Associate of the Museums Association in tlie United Kingdom, it is still necessary to pass an object-based assessment. The qualification is a useful one, often vital, but it creates a hierarchy which effectively devalues the skills and expertise that other professionals can bring. I think it should change, and I believe it can be made to change.

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Outreach

So how do you change culture? The first thing you need is patience . . . not always my strong point! The best way to get people and organizations to change is undoubtedly to demonstrate the benefits of their doing so. The most successful innovation resulting from the creation of my post has probably been the emergence of an outreach strategy. Many places have these, generally alongside educational activities, but it is the status that it is given that is important. If I am honest, when I first took up my post I met some degree of hostility and certainly some wariness. it was clear that the concept of outreach work was equated with increasing work- loads and a dilution of existing activities. One colleague thought I had been employed as the driver of the fifteen-seater, wheelchair-friendly minibus that came to support the post. To say that the profession is not geared up to outreach would be to decry the many excellent individuals who #

All-zueatt!!erpatlx in the izattire trail area at Snibstoiz have ineant tl!atfirll access is amilable on the site.

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Diana Finlay

have worked alongside the local community for years, but in any organizational sense, such work was the exception rather than the rule.

My work in the community takes a variety of forms. I generally work on a project basis, often having to raise the funding from external sources, which can be very time-consuming. The National Deaf Children’s Week in 1991 was followed by a second project in 1992: a dance and mime residency at the Leicestershire Museum of Technology. I make great use of drama work. A series of three residences, each spread over six weeks, introduced the collections to profoundly disabled people in rural day centres. Leicestershire has a long-standing relationship with the Society for the Blind, due mainly to one of the field archaeologists who has a particular interest in this work. I regularly visit elderly people’s homes and day centres with parts of the collection and try to organize practical and creative experiences as a conse- quence. I do not organize any therapy sessions. I am often consulted by carers and group organizers who are trying to set up arts-based activities themselves, and I represent the museum on a variety of committees, statutory and voluntary, throughout the county. I am really a link

between the museum service and its actual and potential visitors. I aim to be a facilitator who allows the collection to come alive and to be accessible in the fullest possible sense.

if someone were to ask me to define equal opportunity, I would say that it is a cup of tea and a toilet. It may be only a starting- point, but in many instances it is as basic as that. I find it quite difficult to identify the skills that I bring to my job. I think that they are largely common sense and good practice. Museums all over the world should be encouraged to aim for minimum standards. These should stem from service provision and effective and meaningful consultation and policy. Every service or building should have policies on community involvement and disability. They should create channels of communication with their communities (at all levels) and they should accept their inherent responsibility to manage heritage and culture in a way that is as accessible as possible. I think that my greatest skill is the ability to take a step outside the museum world and to look at it critically and objectively. All I ask of the museum world is that it listen; it is doing so in Leicestershire, where my colleagues are increasingly attentive. In many other museums that is not the case! W

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Museum educator: the audience’s advocate Co melia Brün ingha W-K~ zu bel

71Je museuni edzicator, as descyibed in this article, is a jack-of-all-tiades who nizist be a master of maiiy. The autl3or is Head of Education at the Will~elni Lebnibrtick Museum Duisburg, European Centre of Modenî Sculptuye. She is fornier President of the ICOM Intemational Committee for Education and Cultural Actioii and has more than twenty years’ ercpeiierice in museuin educatioiz in a nuinberof German a?-t ~nusez&??is

It is still not easy to obtain detailed information about the career of museum educator. The public perceives thein as those people who give guided tours, especially for children. Even in the museum field itself such superficial and vague ideas are widespread. On the other hand, word has got around that museum educators contribute to a visitor-friendly museum or even help to increase ticket sales. Assessed in this light, museum education is accepted, but, at the same time, restricted to an overseeable area and then left to function on its own, parallel to but independent of other museum functions.

For the last twenty-five years museum educators have been fighting to overcome these boundaries and today, it seems, the

situation is finally starting to change - museum specialists, exhibition planners and museum educators are all beginning to work together. The reasons for this newly found teamwork lie in the increasing consensus that the social component, the responsibility towards the public, can only be achieved by means of a concerted effort. Besides, in times of dwindling financial resources, when it is increasingly difficult to fund elaborate exhibitions and new purchases, museum personnel are having to feature the existing collections in new ways. It is time to re-evaluate this occupation, its position in the museum hierarchy, its training, its qualities and its professional skills.

‘. . . an all-round talent with specific knowledge’

After the entrance hall and the ticket office, the telephone of the museum education department is the first link between the institution and the public. There, the first personal contacts take place which further define the relationship between the museum and its visitors. And, of course, this relationship must become a positive one. The museum educator is regarded as the person in charge of this task.

There are a number of other contact persons such as the museum attendants, and cloaltroom or shop personnel, who, although often called upon by the public to answer questions, are seldom acknowledged as a vital source of information. This, too, is changing: for

British ai-tist Tim Scott i?ztetpreti?ig modeni SC@ture though the dancer and museum educator Stlsaiiiie Martin at the WillJelni Lebnibmck Mziseunî Duisburg (Gernianj4, 1992.

ISSN 0027-3996, Mzrserrin hztenzational (UNESCO, Paris), No. 180 (Vol. XLV, No. 4,1993) O UNESCO 1993 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 238 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142 (USA).

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Cornelia Bi-iii?inghatis-Ki2tIbd

example, in the Tate Gallery, Liverpool (United Kingdom), and in Canadian museums. In our own museum, we have just completed the first training course for attendants.

A museum educator is under enormous pressure to be successful because, unlike school or work, the museum is not an obligatory institution and if the visitors are to return, they must come away with a positive impression. To achieve this, as a Dutch colleague once said, one does not need a ‘typical specialist but rather an all-round talent with specific knowledge’. The ideal museum educator is someone who is: first, a specialist and an expert in the many aspects of the collection as opposed to a curator who generally works with certain parts of the collection at a time; second, an educator, who can successfully transmit his or her knowledge, simultaneously keep up with the latest developments and present these results in a clever, witty and creative manner to an array of different groups; and, finally, a sociologist and marketing expert who, being familiar with the social strata and target groups, can develop appropriate programmes. Of course, all these talents should be coupled with personal charisma or magnetism (something like a cross between a hostess, a salesperson and a mother) so that the public is left with the impression that they are in good hands.

Strangely enough, most museum educators come close to this ideal. This is undoubtedly due to their backgrounds and their professional training, which reflects a great variety of qualifications. In most countries the museum educator has no fixed job requirements and no obligatorystudy programme; there is no agreed-upon list of necessary qualifications when filing a job application. None the less, there seems to be an empirical idea of what it takes to qualify.

if you were to ask many museum educators to describe their backgrounds, what they have learned, and what their special knowledge and capabilities are, you would be surprised at how varied their studies have been, how diverse their further education proved to be and how deeply involved they are in groups or associations organizing regular conventions. This clearly shows the important role that inter- disciplindrity and exchange play both for the museum educators themselves and for their careers.

Someone who has studied biology or art history, for example, is usually also qualified in pedagogy and vice versa. If possible, a degree in Museum Studies follows, or training in the necessary psychological techniques to help in group dynamics during work with staff as well as with visitors. I have met other museum educators who have studied or are very talented as artists, actors or dancers and can also work in a Science Centre. On the other hand, Heads of Education Departments are faced with an ever-growing requirement for managerial skills. A degree in economics or business administration can also be useful. It would be difficult to list all the qualifications a museum educatorpossesses. What is certain is that the ‘single-track’ specialist as a museum educator is outdated and the trend towards diversity should become the norm.

At several universities and colleges throughout the world, special Museum Studies programmes are offered. Museum education constitutes part of the programme but is not a programme in itself, being taught in conjunction with other museum functions. Most study programmes are postgraduate work, coming after an academic or an education degree has been completed. It is imperative that such

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Museum educator: the audience’s advocate

Tickey Pule, niuseum educatov at the Natioiial Museum of Botswana, di6?7iig an oritïeach pvoglwmnie in Takatokiumze, a uillage in the Kaiabnri, showing and expiai?zi?ag niuseiitti objects of Botsiua?za k heritage in th? classroom, 1.990.

degree programmes in museum education be offered on a wider scale to professionalize the communicative skills of museum educators, to help them reflect upon their work, and to allow methodical examination and publication. Academic competence in education and museum skills further enables museum educators to take a self-confident stance towards other museum employees, in that they are able to define educational questions and problems and draw conclusions for new museum strategies and policies.

All this would move the museum educators out of the niche, the cellar, the workroom, where they are all too often situated, and into the halls of the museums where their weight and presence can be felt.

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‘. . . the art of working with objects’

Although all museums’ needs vary, de- pending on their history, their collection, their environment and their goals, some general tasks for every museum educator can be defined. A ‘custom-made’ museum education programme can be outlined once the present condition of the museum is analysed and its goals (i.e. its communication policy) are defined. For these social and communicative aspects, the museum educator becomes the expert among the staff. Actual and potential audiences are the target groups towards whom museum educators direct their research and programming. By using their experience and research, museum educators must be familiar with and take into consideration all the expectations, needs and behaviour patterns of a host of different groups, from

15

A volunteer acting as n shopkeeper in Old StLirbridge Village, &lassachi~setts (United States), 3986.

pre-schoolers to seniors, from the illiter- ate on up to the professor, for ethnic minorities, as well as teachers, workers or women. Appropriate means and methods have to be developed to meet the different ways of learning and enjoying. This means that museum educators must be familiar with the various media which can be used in museums and constantly relate this to the collection; they must work closely with the directors and curators during display, labelling, and the production of print and audiovisual media for education and information. Other aspects of a museum educator’s work include providing educational material to be taken out of the museum such as education packages, kits, slides, introductions and learning material. Let us not forget all the recently developed new techniques of acting and role play, dance and physical expression, experiences for the senses, music and other different or non-verbal approaches

towards knowledge, appreciation and enjoyment. Graham Carter from Beaulieu (England) called this ‘the art of working with objects’ - serving the people to improve the quality of their museum visit.

Naturally, educators must be involved in the planning process for temporary exhibitions, although, in practice, this is often not the case -either because the curatorial departments and the museum educators are sepa- rately managed, or because of the heavy workload, the lack of personnel or funds. The concept of a museum educator as an audience advocate who acts as the public’s spokesperson in all decision-making processes of exhibition and programming was developed in the Smithsonian Institution in Washington and in Canada. The museum educator promotes the interests and needs of the audience, anticipates their attitudes and sets up relations to relevant groups, and so on. Until such close links are established within the museum, many educators prefer to organize their own didactic, educational, participatory, staged, hands-on exhibitions in their own wing, in the children’s museum, or in their own department.

Creating and developing education services of such quality also requires a good deal of management: first, objectives and targets have to be’ defined, priorities agreed upon and decisions about programming made. Then, selection and training of staff has to be carried out, with all prior effort to obtain funding and allo- cation for these jobs. The wide range of specialists in the education department makes it necessary to maintain their individuality and at the same time develop a strong sense of a common philosophy. Organizing the schedules for programmes, visits, staff and rooms is time-consuming but as essential as providing resources and finance.

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Museum educator: the audience’s advocate

Creating networks

Museum educators have not always been welcomed in museums with open arms; they have had to fight for their positions and are frequently located towards the lower end of the museum hierarchy. In the meantime, however, we have come to be irreplaceable links between the institution and the public. Typical of their job is the creation of a network between the object and the public, the public and the museum, and the museum and other groups in society.

When museum educators work in a medium-sized museum, as I do, they have one advantage over those who work in a large institution: they are personally involved in all these aspects. The work is many-faceted: developing programmes, training co-workers, providing further education for teachers, planning exhibitions, looking after groups, obtaining finance, having co-determination rights during meetings and while planning exhibitions, and so on. This is one possible organizational structure for museum education, with the advantage of being well-integrated in the individual museum and hence less isolated from the internal network. The other possible organizational .structure is a large, central museum education service which looks after one or more museums, under the same administration. The advantage of this model is the independence in the decision- making process. Its power and responsibility lie within the institution, however; its influence if7 the museum is almost non- existent. Whether a small, integrated

structure or a large, independent organization, effective museum education can only be realized if: (a) permanent jobs which deal only with museum education are maintained to ensure continuity, because this work demands undivided attention and because time and patience are essential to establishing the many connections necessary in society: (b) a fixed budget is secured, to maintain what has already been achieved and to allow room for development; and (c) professional, specialized and regular further training is offered to co-workers.

These demands may seem self-evident but practice shows that many museum finan- ciers believe that museum education work can be handled on the side by curators; should cuts be necessary, our department is the first to be targeted. This only shows that our field is viewed as an additional service instead of an integrated part of the museum’s functions.

Museum educators themselves may be under the impression that their function is to confine their work solely to, for example, commenting on important museum events instead of playing a main role in museum politics, which implies an understanding of museum education as a field that should be actively formed and developed and where decisions are carried out independently. Museum educators must take this strong position if their work is to be of relevance and if they are to be full partners both within the museum and outside; they must develop their own programmes and carry them through to realization.

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Museum careers in the United States: a non-svstern

d

Jane R. Glaser

No ouerarching system of iniiseiims exists in the United States, rihere n high degree of indiuidtialiiy, independeiiceand~e~ibili~i prevails. The result, as Jane R. Glaser explains, has been n Ovoad uaviety of miiseiii?i stnictrires and jobs LL’IJich defies standardization and classification. Th author is Special Assistant iiz the Oflice of the Assistant Secretary for Arts auid the Humanities at the Smithsoninn Institiition in Washington. D.C.

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‘To exist is to change To change is to mature To matiire is to create oneselfendlessiy. ’ - Henri Bergson, French philosopher (1859-1941)

Museums in the United States have been endlessly creating themselves since they were founded in the eighteenth century. In similar fashion, positions in museums have continued a maturation process. No defini- tive museum job classification system has evolved, nor is it necessarily desirable to have one, considering the diversity of the sizes, disciplines and missions of the more than 8,000 museums in the United States.

My associate, Artemis Zenetou, and I have spent the past two years planning, researching and writing a twelve-chapter book entitled Planning MLiseum Careers, to be published in 1993. Having conducted almost one hundred interviews with museum professionals and several national surveys, having held hundreds of informal discussions with museum people, and with three nationally recognized museum leaders as authors of four chap- ters and an extensive literature search, many of my conclusions for this article will be based on that research, as well as on almost thirty years of personal observa- tions and experience in the museum field.

In the beginning. . .

The European origins of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Americans were reflected in museums by virtue of the emphasis on the adaptive role of curators as ‘keepep’ of collections, from the ‘cabinets of curiosities’ to the private art collections of citizens of means. Their methods of ‘keeping’ varied as much as the types and nature of the objects and artefacts in their care.

Since there were no relevant government authorities or controls, there were no national policies, rules or regulations, and certainly no uniformity in procedures. The early art museums had generally acceptable practices of aesthetics and connoisseurship, and academic judgements prevailed as to ‘collectables’ in history and the natural sciences. A museum position was more or less accidental, by self- appointment, or occasionally by a board of trustees. But there were no position descriptions, and certainly no written qualifications for the job. In fact, nineteenth- century curator Frederic A. Lucas of the Brooklyn Institute said: ‘I do believe a curator is born and not made. I do not believe you can train a man [and almost all at that time were men] to be a curator. He is the result of the combination of natural ability and circumstances.’

There were those who thought differently. George Brown Goode of the Smithsonian Institution (founded in 1846) was one of the first American museum leaders to suggest principles and standards for museum workers. In the late-nineteenth century he stated that ‘intelligence, a liberal education, administrative ability, enthusiasm, and that special endowment which may be called “the museum sense”, are all prerequisite qualifications’.

It was in this period, and the early twentieth century, that the first museum training programmes were introduced. At a 1910 meeting of the American Association of Museums (AAIvl), after a survey of museum leaders, Dr A. R. Crook of the Illinois State Museum of Natural History presented a list of fifty examination-type questions to determine the proper qualifications for museum work. They included such topics as general education, museum skills, museum history and philosophy, exhibition techniques, and a talent for museum

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Museum careers in the United States: a non-system

administration. Museum leaders, obviously of a natural science bent, added that a candidate should ‘be in good health, be able to handle a canoe, and be inured to the hardships of camp life and the work of exploration’.

As museums proliferated and enlarged, there was a need to manage them, and a curator usually became the director. Again, such people were without benefit of written duties and responsibilities, had little or no management or museological training, and were usually dependent on their own good judgement as well as that of the board of trustees.

Soon thereafter museums began to consider their missions, their basic functions, and their responsibilities both to the objects and to the public. It required responsible people who had the necessary time, commitment and qualifications. In the beginning, they were often volunteers who served on a part-time basis, developed on- the-job experience and skills, and followed ‘trkl and error’ procedures.

Then, in 1917, the AAM established the first committee to survey museum studies, which concluded:

It seems to this committee that museum work should be looked upon as a profession and that the standards of equipment and scholarship demanded of its members should be high . . . a good museum person is born and not made . . . and no amount of training will fit an individual w h o has not the inclination and the temperament to properly fill a museum position. W h e n w e find persons w h o have the gift, however, w e should train them.

Ah, the seeds for the perpetuation of ‘elitism’ in museums?

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Fortunately, there were others in the field who felt quite differently. In planning his course of study in museum education for museum workers in 1925, John Cotton Dana, Director of the Newark Museum, said that ‘workers now should be skilful, by reason of study and observation, in the practice of the arts of explaining, suggest- ing, stimulating and even, at times, in- structing’.

As museums proliferated in the twentieth century, it was apparent that there was a wide variance in infrastructures. Museums were so individualized that it was deemed undesirable and virtually impossible to have rigid requirements for positions in them. Patterns were emerging for titles, such as director, curator, conservator, educator, registrar and designer. But each museum defined those positions based on what the museum wanted to accomplish, its budget, and the inclinations of the director and the board of trustees.

Museums have had great flexibility and enormous possibilities for innovation within their operational structures. The variety of organizational charts is evidence of differ- ing management styles and assignment of position responsibilities. Titles differ greatly. Similar positions may be called deputy director, associate director, assistant director or vice-president. There may be a curator of education, a director of public programmes, an education specialist, or there may be no education department at all.

The number and variety of jobs depend upon a museum’s size and financial structure. Some positions exist only in large, well-funded museums with extensive and diverse collections. Medium-sized museums usually either omit or combine jobs in accordance with their resources. A small museum may have only a few people on

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Jane R. Glaser

the permanent staff who must be able to command a wide variety of skills, and must double or triple in brass. Such staff members may be referred to as ‘generalists’.

While there are no established, written standards for positions in museums, there are some commonalities of functions. Al- though United States museums resist standardization, recognizing commonalities has served well in the search for, and establishment of, first-rate standards, ethical behaviour, professionalism, and excellence in performance.

Among the factors that have contributed to these developments has been the AAM Accreditation Program, started in 1970, which is only for museums as institutions. It has caused museums to look inwards at their staffing situations. ‘Professional staff, as described in the accreditation process, means a ‘profession relevant to museology and to the museum’s discipline, and a capability for scholarship’. The existence and growth of the Professional Standard Committees for educators, curators, exhibition designers, registrars, public relations and marketing, development and professional training who have written, or are writing, codes of ethics has had an impact. The recently revised AAM Code of Ethics is further evidence of the matur- ing process in museums.’

The certification of individuals who work in museums has been discussed and de- bated for many years in the United States. (The American Institute for Conservation has taken a step in this direction by establishing qualifications as Fellows for member conservators.) A watchful eye has been kept on the few other countries that have tried it. Canada’s system failed, while the United Kingdom has struggled to formulate a system for years, and continues its efforts today.

There is no impetus for ‘diploma’ requirements for United States museum workers, and while standards and criteria have been written for museum studies programmes, they have never been officially accepted by the AAM. Most museum people are very grateful that there is no government dic- tum. Even the few museums that are subsidized by the government do not always adhere to the federal position classifications.

Thirty position descriptions (including requirements for education, experience, knowledge, abilities and skills) will be included in Planning Milseum Careers. Liter- ally hundreds of museum people in all the categories were polled, and while w e have reached a consensus on criteria, there is by no means complete agreement on all of the details. An independent and healthy spirit of creative individuality permea tes the field, while nevertheless demanding measures of professionalism among colleagues.

New identities, new jobs

Many of the positions described in Phn- ningMuseiiiia Ciireersare relatively new Co the museum field, having been recognized as discrete positions and included as museum staff only within the past ten or fifteen years. Employment practices are affected by societal changes, new technology, community awareness, public accountability, legislation, cultural diversity issues, environmental concerns, collections responsibilities, financial constraints, legal problems and an emphasis on professionalism. Among the examples of the newer trends in museum positions are information and media managers, attorneys, conservation scientists, development officers, exhibition planners, health personnel, marketing directors, collections managers and outreach and volunteer Co-ordina tors.

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Museum careers in the United States: a non-system

The relatively recent trend among some of the larger museums has been to hire corporate or university presidents as directors, the argument being that museums must be operated on a more businesslike basis. There is general agreement that businesslike procedures are necessary for accountability and sound financial practices. How- ever, there is very vocal resistance to this movement in the museum community. Most museum staff cling to the stance that a person trained in the discipline of the museum - albeit with management skills and with a second-in-command for financial management - is best suited to understand the purpose and content of the collections, respond to the museum’s public, lead, inspire and motivate staff, understand the museum’s inherent mission, represent the museum to the community and have the necessary vision for the future.

There are many unanswered questions as we enter a new century, with museums facing critical issues. Must we continue the debate as to whether or not there is a museum ‘profession?’ Do jobs make a profession? Do disciplines, literature and knowledge make a profession? Does it really matter? What are the truly important issues involved in a museum career? If, indeed, there is a ‘new paradigm of essential museum hnctions to preserve, study and communicate’ emerging, as Stephen Weil, Deputy Director of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Wash- ington, D.C., suggests, howwill that change museum practices, positions and careers?

It is likely that the United States will continue with no particular classification

scheme for museum positions, and no single entry route into the field. Perhaps job standards and parameters will be better defined in each museum, but the emphasis will be on ethics and professionalism, regardless of the position. There are general and essential skills, personal attributes and attitudes, and work habits that have an impact on effectiveness and professionalism. Certain qualities that are necessary for success in the museum field keep reap- pearing: commitment, dedication, and a passion for the purposes and goals of museums. These cannot be classified or systematized.

A new vision of the museum’s role in society has emerged, along with a renewed sense of responsibility to preserve and transmit cultural values to the community. The methods, skills, techniques and practices needed to fulfil these roles vary as greatly as the types, disciplines and sizes of museums in the United States. The diversity of museum goals, objectives and organization reflects the diversity of Ameri- can society. As interests, directions, information, technology, social concerns and activities shift, the character of the museum may shift as well. Museums are pliable educational and social institutions, and appear to move in several directions at the same time. They do indeed create themselves, and the careers within them, endlessly.

Note

1. See Robert R. MacDonald, ‘A Code of Ethics for United States Museums’, Mzlsezmz bztentatioiial, Vol. XLV, No. 1, 1993, pp. 5345. - Ed.

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GS 10 16: museum specialist Ma y Case

%e open-ended professional sitriation in the United States descdbed in thepreuiozis ai-ticle admits of one striking exception: staff of gouenameiit-szibsidized mtiseiim iuhose jobs are defined by federal civil service classification. With soine I, O00 gouenament employees, the Smithsoninn Institution in Washington, D.C., embarked on aproject to update the ciescriptiom and nomenclatirre used to define the United States Gouernnient standard for inuseuin collections management work. M a y Case is Chief Collections Officer of the Smithsoninn, where she manages the national collectioii of 138 inillion objects and specimens She is also a board member of the ICOM International Committee on Documentation CCIDOC).

Life in a capital city anywhere in the world requires an aptitude for the language of numerically controlled acronyms. United States Government employees in Wash- ington, D.C., pack metro, bus and rail lines each morning, destined for delivery at alphabet city - DOD (Department of Defense), DOE (Energy), DOS (State) and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Each and every one of the 1.9 million people throughout the world in the employ of the United States Government knows by heart his or her GS (government service) level and series numbers. Secretaries (GS318), computer programmers (GS3341, historians (GS170) and entomologists (GS414) all receive pay and promotion based on their knowledge, skill and experience as organized by OPNi (Office of Personnel Management).

In 1992 OPM and SI (Smithsonian Institu- tion) developed a Memorandum of Under- standing (MOU) that launched a project to revise GS1016: Museum Specialist, last published in 1961. GSlOl6 describes museum collections management and related research activities, exhibition development, and public service programmes. The work requires knowledge of museum operations and programmes, and discipline-specific knowledge related to the museum collection or research scope. Some 1,000 people do this work at the Smithsonian, which employs the majority of collections management practitioners government-wide.

This article is a status report on what is known at the Smithsonian as Project 1016. The language and definitions offered have been reviewed by the 1016 team and, while somewhat stilted by consensus wordsmithing, precisely describe collections management as implemented within this federal system.

Project 1016: how it works

Authorized by the MOU, Project 1016 team members include the Smithsonian Institu- tion’s Office of Human Resources (SI/ OHR) and representative administrative and collections management officers of the Smithsonian’s natural science, cultural history and art museums. As Director, Office of the Registrar (OR), I act as project manager. Each discipline area - science, history and art - has formed working committees to guarantee that the practitioner’s ideas and concerns will be heard and resolved.

A skilled position classification specialist, with a lifetime of successful government experience, has been hired to research the work (primarily through employee interviews) and draft the standard. The Project 1016 team reviews and improves the draft which is then routed to OPM. OPM then distributes the draft for government-wide review and revision. OPM will eventually publish ~ ~ 1 0 1 6 as the United States employment standard for museum collections management work.

Each employment series within the United States federal government system is unique. Each excludes all others. The boundaries of employment are drawn with precision, in so far as possible. Where confusion may exist, the drafters of a series specifically identify exclusions. Project 1016 excludes:

Consemators: positions primarily performing museum conservation work requiring specialized qualifications to perform technical or research work in the preservation and care of museum objects.

Curators: those with primary responsibility for the full range of acquisitions, research, exhibition and public service activity associated with museum collections.

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GSlO16: museum specialist

Museum aides: those primarily responsible for providing support to a single component or limited aspect of museum support work that requires direct application of standardized methods and procedures.

Exhibition specialists: those concerned primarily with the design, preparation, or construction of exhibitions.

Biologists, histo??am, physical OY social scientists, and art historinns primarily responsible for conducting research. These jobs usually require a Ph.D. as a condition of employment.

Museum directors retain authority for museum research, collection, exhibition and public service activities. They typically guide, make, or delegate decisions about: the subject-matter and scope of research; collection acquisition, loan and de-accession; exhibition content, frequency and design; and directions in public service and target audience.

O UNESCO 1993

The delegation of responsibility to museum specialists varies widely. Close control can be exercised by curators, researchers and administrators. Museum specialists often work in partnership with curators and researchers, however, rather than in structured supervisor/subordinate roles. As predicted by most management observers of recent years, authority moving out from central and hierarchical structures improves operational efficiency. This shift was demonstrated in the interviews throughout Project 1016.

MatJ’ Todd Lincohi’s iiiauguml gown Teceives yestoyatiojz atte71tionfoY ip7cli~siorl t/je Fi?st Ladies’ Gozu~zs’ &.hibit at t/je NatiolZal Milsei{m of Aijzet7cal7 Histor)), S?nit[jsolzian IIzstit~ltion.

~~1016: museum specialists - what they do

After substantive discussions, the Project 1016 team agreed that museum specialists conduct museum operations by:

Ptqaring and caiiizg for collectiom, including initial handling, object preparation, short- and long-term storage

23

&fa y Case

ïiie u6ale-rendering tank at the Smithsorzian ’s &fuseurn Suppoif Center is used toprepare the bones of whales and other large marine mammals for storage and research.

24

and exhibition; security, stabilization and preventive conservation of objects; planning and developing collections facilities; improving collections content and scope; and research pertaining to collections management.

Registration, including developing policies and procedures; managing collections transactions related to acquisition, use, care, loan and disposal of collections; and establishing and recording object provenance and legal status.

Collections and yesearch informatiorz management, including creating information resources by gathering, syn- thesizing and capturing data into struc-

tured, standardized formats; defining functional requirements; developing automated applications; and developing subject or fimctional area data standards and controlled vocabularies.

Bofmionalsem’ce, inciuding object examination and identification; object loans, exchange and donations; fieldwork; data gathering and information research and analysis; and providing access to on-line information resources, library research or other investigatory procedures.

Research assistance: subject-matter research in support of museum programmes, which may result in publications or technical developments.

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GS1016: museum specialist

Publicand musezmseruice, including education programmes such as workshops, lectures and tours; responding to a wide variety of inquiries; and serving on committees, taskforces, etc., for the benefit of the lay public and to achieve museum goals.

Exhibition develop?nent aiidplanuing, including development of theme, content and presentation.

General nzancrgement, including budget planning, long-range programme planning, and development of policies and procedures.

Nomenclature

Precise language becomes essential when describing specialized work within a large system, such as the United States federal government. The ~~1016 standard care- fully defines some of the language of collections management.

Access: the opportunity for visitors, schol- ars and staff to take advantage of the resources of the museum provided through research opportunities, exhibitions, publications, educational and interpretive programmes, response to public inquiries, loan of collections and information management.

Accession: the formal process or procedure of recording an addition to the collection; the status assigned to the collection.

Accountability the cluster of activities that ensures physical care and control of collections.

Cataloguing: the act of classifying collections methodically, usually with de-

O UNESCO 1993

scriptive detail; systematically integrat- ing physically intrinsic and museum- generated operating information with aesthetic, cultural, historic and scientific information.

Collection: a group of objects or an amount of material accumulated for some purpose or as a result of some process; a ‘museum collection’ includes the physical collections (works of art, artefacts, antiquities and specimens) and the intellectual collection (publications, intellectual property rights, documents and data) which relate to the physical collection.

Collectiom mnnagernent: the deliberate development, maintenance, use and disposition of museum collections.

Exhibition: a public display of objects, usually meant to inform and educate.

Object: anything that is visible or tangible and is relatively stable in form. Parti- cularly in history and art museums, ‘object’ refers to collectable property. ‘Object’ is used generally in museum work to represent any kind of item, artefact or specimen.

Publicsewice: presenting collections or subject information in written or oral form to a public, academic or professional audience, including responding to inquiries and presenting lectures, demonstrations, tours and performances.

Register identifying an object or a collection and its legal status by creating an immediate concise and permanent record.

Registration: a cluster of policies, procedures and activities used to record and monitor collections transactions related *

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to the acquisition, use, care and disposal of museum collections.

In the past at the Smithsonian, people assigned to GSlOl6 used a wide variety of titles, including registrar, collections manager, data entry clerk, loans manager, inventory manager, exhibition co-ordinator, registrar for shipping, and restorer, to name but a few. In the future, the official title for all ~ ~ 1 0 1 6 jobs will be ‘museum specialist’. The term may be qualified according to the function or the discipline. For instance, conceivable titles include: Museum Spe- cialist, Registrar; Museum Specialist, Col- lections Manager - Botany; Museum Spe- cialist, Exhibition Co-ordinator - Crafts; and Museum Specialist, Fishes Data Co- ordinator.

effectiveness. It highlights the experience and strengths of seasoned professionals and documents their position in creative partnerships with other museum personnel. Federal museum employees benefit from flexibly defined employment requirements which allow human resources managers to attract qualified practitioners and promote them according to a rational structure. The new GSlOl6 classification standard will reflect the present-day responsibilities of collections management practitioners and serve as a touchstone as the profession evolves into the twenty-first century.

Readers interested in the forty-page ~~1016 document may contact m e at the Smithsonian Institution, A&I1410, Wash- ington, D.C. 20560 (United States). Tel: 202-357-3125. Fax: 202-786-2210. Internet: REGEMOOj@SIVM.

Project 1016 stands as a model of inter- agency and inter-bureau co-operation and

Mziseum specialist Twyln Thomas examines a meteorite specimen in the ‘clean rooni of the meteorite storage area in the Smithsoîiian’s &Iuseum Suppot? Center.

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Profession: museum security engineer Se?.ge Leyoux

?IJegrouith of all kizds of risk in miseutns calk for closet- ntteution to pToblenas of secutity and to the recruitment of conipe- tent specialists in thisfield. Serge Leroux is Head of tbe Techiiicai Unit at the DirectoTate of Freîich Museums mid a meniber of the Biwenu of tl~eIntertaatio?zal Goinnzittee for Museuna Seciirity of iC0kf.

After my general engineering studies at the École des Arts et Métiers in Paris, I joined the unit responsible for the equipment and operation of national museums in the Directorate of French Museums. M y job was to organize the maintenance of technical equipment, help with the planning of building work and alterations, and monitor the modernization of museums.

Fifteen years ago the technical equipment of museums was relatively unsophisticated. Few of them had alarm or technical control systems. Only four national museums, for example, had air conditioning and only five were equipped with automatic fire detectors.

At first it was often at the request of people lending works for temporary exhibitions that alarm systems against intruders were installed. For example, microwave sensors, known at the time as ‘radar’, were installed in the Grand Palais for the ‘Centenary of impression- ism’ exhibition and subsequently transferred to protect the Jeu de Paume Museum.

I have been involved in equipping various national museums, such as the Louvre, the Grand Palais and the Guimet, with alarm systems, particularly against fire and theft, and in projects conducted by the Directorate of French Museums for new ventures such as the Orsay, Orangerie des Tuileries and Picasso museums. i)

Le cambriolage (The Bzil;gln?y) by Alain Sécbns, 1990.

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Serge Leroux

Technicai progress in security

This period has seen great improvements in technical equipment, costs have tended to fall and museums have been able to take advantage of the expansion of the security market.

The following are a few examples of technical advances:

Developments in automatic fire detection: smoke detectors, linear detectors, control panels with microchip technology.

Halon-based automatic fire extinguishers, which have now had to be abandoned since halon is a CFC.

Intruder warning systems: control panels with multiplexing interior wiring and microprocessors, passive infra-red detectors, dual technology sensors, broken glass detectors, admission control by means of cards or codes.

Individual alarm systems fitted on works of art: infra-red screens, vibration-triggered proximity sensors.

Closed-circuit television: couple charge device cameras, video sensors, and switching matrixes on monitors.

Finally, and above all, changes in the methods of information management, storage and transmission: control by microcomputer, specialized software, transmission by radio and telephone, NUMERIS network, internal communication by walkie-talkie, public address systems, etc.

All these technical aids are now available. But they have to be adapted to the special needs of museums, including their financial resources and system of organization.

and they must be properly utilized and maintained.

Changing risks

Protection must be geared to risk. In recent years we have observed a marked increase in the risks faced by museums - both fire risk and risk of theft - owing to the cumulative effect of various factors: first, the rise in the number of visitors which, for example, makes stricter fire precautions necessary for buildings open to the public (number and size of emergency exits, stairways and corridors, etc.); and, second, the expansion of activities such as restoration work, temporary exhibitions, children’s workshops, cafeterias and restau- rants, larger shops, the organization of concerts, receptions, and so on, necessi- tates new systems of surveillance and methods of zone separation, monitored for longer hours.

Museums are no longer sealed off: exhibitions come and go, there are more and more ‘events’, not to mention alterations and maintenance work, all of which create risk factors with which the museum has to cope, often in the best of cases with the same number of attendants and supervi- sors as before. Lastly, changes in the market for art and the present value of certain collections have made museums the target of major gangs as well as petty criminals, increasing the risk of burglary, armed attack, thefts during visiting hours, thefts in areas closed to the public or outside opening hours, and so on.

Protection: how to provide it

In July 1990 a security group under Maurice Gravaud was set up within the Directorate of French Museums. It brings together

Q UNESCO 1993 28

Profession: museum security engineer

Closed-circ nzuseznîn.

zuit television system in a Paris

experts in various fields, including the police and their special section for works of art, the Paris fire brigade and a number of other professionals from banking circles, large department stores and the civil service.

A security committee holds regular meetings with curators and security officers in the major French museums. At these ineet- ings it is possible to explore a particular subject or problem more deeply, to spread the word about new techniques and to exchange practical experience.

The security team has to pay many visits to museums of all types, at the request of curators and the administrative authority. These inspections are used to develop plans of action in the event of fire or theft, but also to organize human resources in the interests of security. The team also works with architects to examine museum development or improvement projects and security arrangements for temporary exhibitions.

Teamwork and the pooling of individual experience are required in order to find practical and permanent solutions that are appropriate to the risks involved and that

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lie within the financial and organizational possibilities of the museum authority. How often have planning offices considered a piece of equipment without asking the vital questions: What will it be used for later, and who will be operating it? What is the use, for example, of installing numer- ous surveillance cameras if there is no one to monitor the screens and take action when necessary?

Apart from working with the security team as described above and accompanying it on its visits to museums, my job is to run the technical office of the Department of Architecture, Museography and Equipment. It involves the following.

Meetings with professionals - firms, planning departments and supervisory authorities - to learn about developments in equipment, regulations, the market and the profession. It is necessary to know which firms are interested, from a technical point of view, in the world of museums and can offer appropriate solutions.

Fostering the progress of specific studies for ad hoc protection or alarm systems, if necessaryby adapting existing equip-

i) 29

Seige Leiozix

ment (for example, the hanging of small paintings, individual proximity alarms for works on display, etc.). Sales representatives and inventors have to be given a hearing: how many times have I been told, on the telephone, of the discovery of a brilliant alarm or identification system that would be a sure way of discouraging thieves! One must be constantly on the look-out for technical innovations, which then have to be assessed so that the museum does not become a testing ground for shaky techniques.

Maintaining and improving the technical equipment already installed in national museums which do not have their own technical service for the purpose. This work, in the museums concerned, makes us more aware of the pros and cons and limitations of the equipment and its utilization by the staff, and so ‘keeps our hand in’. The range of national museums is enormous; alongside the major establishments are small museums, the homes of artists, modern art museums, and castle museums with all the constraints peculiar to historical monuments. To be able to give advice and design equipment it is useful, indeed essential, to be familiar with museum circles and their approach to works of art and the problems of maintenance.

Attending meetings and symposia such as those of the Security Committee of ICON1 - the ICMS - which makes it possible to compare the methods and techniques used by museums around the world; taking part in training and information activities for curators, security officers and technical services, etc.

Taliing advantage of equipment developed in the context of major projects, which boost progress in new techniques (for example, the Grand Louvre project has made it possible to develop technical solutions for monitoring emergency exits and the infra- red transmission of alarm signals, etc.). Some of these ideas can be ‘borrowed’ and adapted for use in smaller museums.

W e are frequently asked to work out safety and security standards needed by museums in the form of official guidelines. However, owing to the changing pattern of risks and the special features of each museum - its collections, the building in which they are housed, the immediate surroundings and the staffing system -too many parameters and coefficients, both objective and less objective, would come into play. I find it preferable to carry out a specific study in collaboration with those in charge of the museum.

I should like to close with one final thought: security often begins with the kind of simple measum that will always be necessary. W

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Outward bound: organizing travelling exhibitions Eileen B. Mott

The task of Uriiiging rmiseutn mt!!ibitiomto reinote aims ispart of the mandate of the Virginia Musezina ofFiiie Ails in the United States. A special Edmutiorz aiid Outreach Dizlision has created n miniber ofgroutid- breaking and iiiiiovative programnies to meet this challeîige. The author is Co- ordinator of the niuseim’s Travelirig Exhi- bition und Media Services.

It was the early 1930s. The Commonwealth of Virginia, along with other areas of the United States, was still wrestling with the economic devastation of the Great Depres- sion. Judge John Barton Payne (1855- 1935), who, in 1919, had donated his extensive art collection to the Common- wealth, offered a $100,000 challenge grant for the construction of a building to house the collection. In 1934 a forward-thinking Virginia General Assembly passed an Act providing for the construction, maintenance and operation of the Virginia Mu- seum of Fine Arts. The first state-supported art museum in the United States was close to becoming a reality.

When it opened its doors in January 1936, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts demonstrated an unusual partnership of private initiative and state government. The commitment to start a museum came from the passions of private collectors and arts supporters, but the administration, salaries, maintenance and general programmes of the museum became a state obligation. Today the museum continues to operate under the same private/state partnership and is the largest art museum in the south- east United States, maintaining a broadly based collection that spans 5,000 years of art and a wide diversity of cultures. Among its premier collections are one of the world’s largest displays of Fabergé decorative arts and an internationally renowned assem- blage of art from India, Tibet and Nepal. The museum maintains strong holdings in American paintings, sculpture and decorative arts; the internationally recognized Lewis Collection of art nouveau, art and crafts, art deco and later decorative arts; and the outstanding Lewis Collection of twentieth-century post-war paintings and sculpture. Nationally recognized holdings of ancient art include Egyptian, Greek and Roman art with a strength in south Italian Greek vases. Since 1977 the museum has

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also developed a strong holding of African art, primarily from West and Central Africa.

A formidable challenge

The 1934 legislative Act that provided for the creation of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts contained a formidable challenge. Not only was the museum directed to provide exhibitions and public programmes for its headquarters in Richmond, but it was also mandated ‘to stimulate and assist in the formation of new organizations, and to do such other things as it may deem proper to promote tin-oughout the Coniuionwealth education in the realm of art’. The state of Virginia has a population of over 6 million and its farthest western city is over eight hours’ drive from the museum in Rich- mond! It was the mandate to promote art education ‘throughout the Commonwealth’ that resulted in the Virginia Museum developing one of the most extensive education and outreach programmes in the United States, one that has brought the museum into national and international prominence many times over the last several decades.

The Education and Outreach Program lias developed along two integrally related paths. The inuseum in Richmond effects the traditional role as primary focus for the art collections, loan exhibitions and arts programming; it also serves as an operations centre for an extensive array of arts programmes, educational materials, and travelling exhibitions that are circulated throughout the State to arts centres, museums, universities, schools, libraries, retire- ment homes, day care centres, and even correctional institutions.

The segment of the Education and Outreach Division that deals principally with arts programming at the headquarters in Rich- mond is made up of several departments:

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Eileen B. Mott

The Outreach Program

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has been nationally recognized for its pioneering and substantive outreach programming efforts. The Outreach Program is divided into three separate yet philosophically joined sections: the Artmobile Program, the Affiliate Program and TEAMS (Traveling Exhibition and Media Services). All three departments have as their underlying premises the mandate to bring education in the arts to all Virginians.

Artmobiles are laige tractor-trailer vans specially rnodz3ed to seive as trnuelling art galleries.

Tour Services, Special Programs, Adult Studio Class Programs, and Youth and Family Programs. Tour Services is responsible for the annual training of over 170 docents on significant aspects of the collection and loan exhibitions, and the development of specialized tours of the permanent collection for groups with special needs, such as the physically or mentally challenged, or groups requiring foreign language interpretation. The Special Pro- grams Department organizes professional lecture series, symposia, music and dance performances, adult lecture classes, and many other public events designed to expand the educational potential of permanent and loan exhibitions. Adult Studio Class Programs offer a changing roster of classes led by professional artists in a multitude of art and craft disciplines, from photography and print-making to pottery, weaving and jewellery-making. Youth and Family Programs, the newest education department, operates the Children’s Art Resource Center, which offers gallery-related art activities for young children and organizes family ‘open houses’ at the museum, usually centred around a major loan exhibition.

In the museum’s first year of operation, an innovative loan service was established, designed to make boxed art exhibitions available to organizations throughout the state. By 1941, twenty such exhibitions were in circulation. Filmstrips, films and slide kits were added to the loan collection during the 1940s. Today, that resource loan service, known as TEAMS, has grown to be the largest of the museum’s Outreach Pro- grams, currently serving over 1,200 client organizations across the state and reaching nearly 400,000 Virginians annually. TEAMS makes available over fifty crated exhibitions of art, primarily works on paper (prints, drawings and photographs), which are specially mounted for travel according to appropriate conservation standards and are loaned to institutions capable of ensuring the correct security and environmental conditions. Its audiovisual collection consists of approximately 1,500 films, videotapes and educator’s resource kits on the visual and performing arts, making this collection, according to a 1988 survey by the Program for Art on Film, ‘the largest offered by any art museum in the country’.

The challenge of bringing high-security art exhibitions to areas of the state where no exhibition facilities existed was met in 1953 when Leslie Cheek, Jr, then Director of the Virginia Museum, inaugurated the nation’s

0 UNESCO 1993 32

Outward bound: organizing travelling exhibitions

first Artmobile, a customized, self-contained gallery-on-wheels, that could bring specially designed art exhibitions to any part of the state. With consideration of conservation measures, the Artmobile has become more restrictive in carrying original works of art, thus posing a challenge for the museum to develop new ways of reaching the remote sections of the state. The Artmobile Program has now taken on a more educational orientation, and has expanded its offerings to include a com- prehensive educational package for rural communities. The package consists of an educator who travels with the exhibition and is available for on-board tours, in- classroom presentations, slide lectures and workshops, as well as an educational resource kit providing pre- and post-visit activity and study suggestions for teachers in each community.

The year 1961, the twenty-fifth birthday of the Virginia Museum, saw the establishment of the third segment of the Outreach Program: the Confederation of Virginia Arts Organizations, which has since come to be

known as the Affiliate Program. The original membership of eight organizations has today grown into twenty-six affiliated museums, art centres andart associations. Through these unique partnerships with the museum, Affiliates enjoy access to a wide and diverse selection of art loans, educational activities and technical assistance. Over the years, the Affiliates have upgraded their facilities to enable them to take high-security art exhibitions; specially designed exhibitions from the museum’s permanent collections are made available to those museums in the state that can provide maximum security and environmental controls. An annually changing roster of artist workshops is offered, providing affiliated organizations with access to professional artists of exceptional talent who present hands-on workshops within their communities. The Affili- ate Program also makes available a Speak- ers on the Arts lecture series, presented by a team of curators, educators and art historians. The museum also offers technical assistance to affiliated organizations, especially in the areas of protective and environmental systems, gallery design and lighting.

An artist in the ~nuseum’s Affiliate Program, stolyteller Len Cabral takes young listeners on jounzeys far and w a r as he shares his repelloire of Afiican folkloic and fables.

O UNESCO 1993 33

Eileen B. Mott

A wealth of opportunity

The Virginia Museum of Fine Arts’ i7EAklS Progmm cimilates exhibitions Of original art that are housed in specially designed andprotected crates.

Supporting all the Education and Outreach Programs is a Media Production Depart- ment. The staff of this department produce video programmes that support and expand the educational possibilities both of exhibitions at the museum and of those that are circulated statewide.

The broad-based, diverse programmes presented by the Virginia Museum’s Educa- tion and Outreach Division offer many challenging experiences to the staff of the various departments. Most staff members have B.A. or M.A. degrees in art history or art education; many are also practising artists. The skills demanded by positions in museum education are multiple; most staff members are extremely versatile and, by necessity, are very flexible in the types of tasks they can - and do - perform! As Co- ordinator of TEAMS for the past several years, I have done everything from balanc- ing a budget, curating an exhibition and previewing hundreds of films for purchase to painting the inside of an Artmobile, sewing muslin backs on to quilts and placating an agitated client whose film got lost in the mail! I have experienced the sheer personal joy of holding a Hiroshige print in my (gloved!) hands and have had the pleasure of seeing young children delight in experiencing an exhibition that I have developed or a film that I have purchased for the collection. The position of Art Museum Educator offers an ener- getic and creative individual the unique opportunity to participate in both the public and the private aspects of art. W

34 O LINESCO 1903

The conservator: versatility and flexibility

‘What does a cotzsewator actually do?: asks R. J. Barclay, SeniorCoi2seruntoriti the Ethnology Section of the Canadian Comer- uatiora Imtitute in Ottawa. His atzszuer ye- frects the gradaial evolution of a piinzat-ily tecl~~zicalpi~fession! iiato one that is at the beart of the museiim’s incwasitzgly inter- disciplina y vocation.

Conservation occupies a central position in the life of the museum, and the influence of the professional conservator is felt in almost every other department. Histori- cally, the prime focus of the museum has been artefacts, and as the conservator is dedicated to their well-being it stands to reason that he or she must occupy a key position. To define the title ‘conservator’ is not easy for two reasons: first, the word itself lias confusing connotations; and, second, redefinition by the profession itself has loosened the terms of reference. A conflict continues between the terms ‘conservator’ and ‘restorer’, a conflict largely engendered and certainly exacerbated by language. It was in an attempt to redefine the profession’s role in the museum laboratory and worlcshop that the term ‘conservator’ was first coined a generation ago. Only in English was there a distinction between conservation and restoration - an attempt to distinguish between the technical preservation of unstable and fragile objects, and mere beautification for display. This was an invidious comparison which unfortunately still draws a sharp distinction that exists nowhere in the real world. ICOM has adopted the term ‘conser- vatorhestorer’, which eases this artificial polarization to a certain extent, but one finds few members of the profession so describing themselves.

A further complication of terminology arises between the hands-on and the scientific disciplines of the profession. In recent years the title ‘conservator’ has been applied principally to the bench-worker, the one who treats the objects in the conservation laboratory, while the title ‘conservation scientist’ is used for those who conduct research less directly related to the day-to-day needs of artefacts. ‘Conserva- tion managers’ are also appearing as the profession diversifies and the emphasis shifts from the objects to their milieu. This

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has also resulted in the emergence of preventive conservation as a specialized discipline. (The element of tautology implicit in this title is glossed over.) Neverthe- less, the title ‘conservator’ is regarded by most people as the generic term which best encompasses the profession as a whole, at least in the English-speaking world.

But what are the terms of reference which make conservation difficult to define? What does a conservator actually do? A generation ago neither question would have been difficult to answer: the function was primarily the restoration of museum objects for purposes of enhancing presentability, function or stability. To some extent these purposes still provide the core skills of the conservator, but in the last 30 years or so they have been augmented by a wide range of other capabilities and areas of interest. Walter Angst, who was Furniture Conservator at the Smithsonian Institution for a number of years, identified over 150 divergent job skills which the conservator in his field was obliged to possess in order to master just that one discipline. Analysis might show that this is no exaggeration; it might, in fact, be even a little conservative.

Several new skills have been added to the traditional roles: analysis of artefact materials, elucidation of manufacturing techniques, research and testing of conservation products, monitoring of and research into the environment, packing and shipping, and education and training, to name but a few. The conservator’s commitment to the well-being of objects, together with the intimate knowledge often gained by having them in pieces on the bench, has forced a wide understanding of the structure and function of museum objects. In many cases this knowledge exceeds that gained by the curator or historian in more classical studies of artefacts. One of the finest exemplars of this is Herbert Maryon.

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R. J. Barclay

Whalebone scu@ture by Inuit niztist Hen& Eualîiardjiik, 1968.

He described himself modestly as ‘a backroom boy somewhere in the British Museum’, but through his long and close association with the treatment of metal objects he became a world authority on early metalworking techniques. His book on metalworking and enamelling has not been equalled.

Artefacts are indeed the raison d’êtreof the museum. However, as more and more museums tend to break away from this classical artefact-centred model, and rely

less and less upon material from their own collections, the focus in future may be found elsewhere. For the present, and assuming continuing life for the more classical model, conservation has a primary function, influencing all others. It therefore stands to reason that the staff member who takes daily care of museum objects ought, in an ideal situation, to play a central role. As professionals in other museum disciplines might be inclined to contest such a sweeping statement, there is a need to justify this point ofview. Perhaps the best way to examine the role of the conservator, and to highlight interaction with the policies and pursuits of the museum at large, is through a series of small case-studies or vignettes. In these we can examine the conservator as materials scientist, the conservator’s often essential assistance in exhibitions, and the conservator’s role in historical studies.

From jawbones to firearms

In order to treat materials successfully, for repair, stabilization or replacement, one must be conversant with their properties. It is necessary to know whether incipient problems within the material may manifest themselves only when it is manipulated, physically or chemically. In short, it is essential to be fully appraised of the presence of sleeping dogs. The sculpture shown in the illustration was carved from the fresh jaw-bone of a whale. Itwas not long before the sculpture became surrounded by an offensive aura of putrid whale oil. There was little need to place ‘Do not touch’ signs near the object; it soon became unexhibitable. Removal of the oil would entail the use of a large quantity of strong solvent, and the whole sculpture would probably need immersion. What effect would this treatment have on the struchire and stability of the bone? What changes

Q UNESCO I993 36


might take place on the surface? And would such a radical and technically difficult treatment prove effective? The conservator and his colleagues were obliged not only to answer all these questions, but to pose them in the first place. Although the curator or historian might have a reasonable end product in mind, the route towards that end and the questions that might arise on the way are the conservator’s province. A full understanding of the structure, anatomy and function of bone was a prerequisite of successful treatment.

Artefacts on display and in travelling exhibitions need very special attention. When an object becomes the property of a museum, the conditions under which it is handled, displayed or stored should obviously be aimed at extending its longevity. In many cases, it is necessary to create custom-made mounts or supports for objects which will either remain in the same position for extended periods or be trans- ported for long distances. An understanding of the inherent weakness of objects, and the materials from which they are made, assists the decision-making process.

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It is here that the conservator’s familiarity with materials can be especially important. Each one of the musical instruments illustrated has a custom-designed supporting mount, taking into account the instn- ment’s structure and load-bearing capability derived from close examination and analysis. The conservator’s expertise in the handling of materials can often be co- opted for assistance in mounting such displays, or for advising on secure and artefact-friendly techniques.

A inusical imtrument gallety, showing the wide rawge of mounting techniques used for secicl-epl-eseiztntio?~.

The gun shown in the illustration required conservation treatment, including stabilization and cleaning. It was thought by the owners simply to be a trade musket of British manufacture, andlittle else of histokal value was discernible. The conversion of the weapon from flintlock to caplock indicated that it had been valued sufficiently by its owner to continue in use long after its style was outmoded. During treatment heavy layers of corrosion were removed from the steel barrel, revealing the stamps of the English ordnance department and the crown of King George IV. Above them was a fox in a circle, the mark of the North West Tradin

37

R. J. Bnrclq

Company which came into being after the war of 1812. The barrel also had ‘London’ stamped on it. The lock, when also cleaned of corrosion, showed the maker’s name, Moxham. Thomas Moxham was a Birming- ham gunsmith who lived from 1762 to 1837. On the left side of the stock, stamped into the wood, were the initials ‘T.C.’. These were probably the mark of the maker of the stock and possibly the person who assembled the gun in Moxham’s workshop. The symbol of a boar in a circle, also stamped on the lock, appeared on all guns presented to Indian chiefs in North America. Further- more, a blackened plaque on the stock proved to be a silver cartouche bearing the bust of an Indian chief. The foresight also proved to be of silver. All these features taken together indicated that the weapon was a presentation gun, rather than one made simply for trade. The process of conservation treatment therefore enhanced considerably the curatorial information on the object, and increased its historical value.

The cases described briefly above indicate how conservation impinges to a greater or lesser extent upon other museum disciplines. As can be seen from the box on page 40, conservators are often asked to advise on handling techniques, new acquisitions, the museum environment, cataloguing and identification, storage practices, training of personnel, authenticity, and even the detection of forgeries. Because conservation laboratories are often adjacent to workshops, the conservator’s skills in fabrication may also be called upon. In reciting this catalogue of slrills and expertise, there is of course the danger of overlooking the fact that one person cannot be all things to all people. Implicit within the title ‘jack-of-all- trades’ is the rejoinder, ‘master of none’. Indeed, there is the very real danger of stretching interdisciplinary input and technical capability beyond their respective breaking-points. No conservator could boast

expertise on any but a small number of the above conflicting technical specializations, but the nature of the education, training and background required does often lead to a useful versatility.

A central conservation facility

So far, the discussion has centred on conservators working in museums where the personnel and the objects are in the same loca- tion, and the interaction demanded by long- term care of collections is guaranteed. Where a central facility exists for a conservation service over a wide geographical area, the situation is very different. The Canadian Con- servation Institute (CCI) is a case in point, being a federally operated body which must service the museums of a very large and diverse country. The CCI’s mandate is to address conservation research, specialized treatment strategies, seminars, workshops, and the development of information systems such as publications, computer networks and electronic and written consulta- tions. In many ways, such a dedicated central facility provides the museum profession with a wide-ranging and specialized resource unobtainable in all but the most well-endowed national museums. The staff of an institute like the CCI naturally do not have the direct, everyday contact with the well-being of individual artefacts that the museum conservator enjoys. Although such intimate contact is not normally required, there are cases where artefacts which have undergone time-consuming and complex treatment must be monitored after being returned to their place of origin. In these cases the staff of the central facility must make an extra effort to establish closer and longer-lasting contacts with their clients. Isolation from the day-to-day concerns of the museum provides an obvious trade-off to the staff of such an institute in a freer development of specialization that is impossible in the miiseiim context.

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s: .; ~.. --

The development of the conservation profession over the last few decades, and its fuller integration with the professional museum functions, has resulted in a heightened awareness of the museum object in its context, an increased focus on maintenance, and an emphasis on the generation and dissemination of information. Taken together, these trends have undoubtedly resulted in more and more conservators doing less and less

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interventive treatment or, at the least, to treatments being generally of a minor nature consistent with preparation for display or storage. In this regard, the centralized conservation facilities have their place in undertaking more complex work which can only be performed with special facilities and expertise.

Details of a British tin& musizet enhamed in bistoiical value aftw co~zseruatiolz tYeatll2ent.

Perhaps the key features of the conservation profession as a whole are versatility

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R. J. Barclay

and flexibility: the capacity to embrace new technical and philosophical directions and to react positively to change. Conservators are anything but conservative. Even so, the greatest challenge is yet to come: the twentieth century can be characterized by the widespread use of synthetic materials in the creation of artefacts and works of art coupled

with an abandonment, or at least a subjugation, of traditional techniques. These two facts together will oblige the discipline of museum conservation to face wider and more diverse demands in the next century - provided, of course, that the artefacts of our material culture continue to occupy centre stage in our museums.

The conservator’s chief areas of responsibility in the daily operation of the museum and their primary or secondary nature. (The close working relationship with all other disciplines is evident.)

Conservation function

Preventive: environmental monitoring, condition surveys, inspections, preventive actions

Treatment: major treatment of objects (restoration, repair, stabilization);

Examination: (condition, authenticity, materials of fabrication, technique of manufacture)

Training and supervision: museum staff, interns, contractors, volunteers

Management advice on acquisitions, budgets for department, supplies

Exhibitions: mount-making, environment monitoring and control, handling, minor treatment, condition reporting, packing and shipping

Primary Secondary responsibility responsibility

Conservator Conservation technician, curator, collections manager

Conservator Curator, conservation technician

Conservator

Conservator

Conservation technician

Director, curator, all other staff

Display technician, Conservator, conservation curator, preparator, technician registrar

40 O UNESCO 1993

Coming to terms with change: the new curator Bridget Yates

Bridget Yates bas beeii Curator of the Notfolk Rural Life Museuin in. the United k'iilzgdonzsiizce 1976. ShedescîibesI~ouiJJer wol-k has changed signlfican fly froin cnr- iizg for objects to caring for people and points out that this new role isshared by an iizcreasiiig nunzber of curators of sinall local museiims.

The Norfolk Rural Life Museum at Gressenhall is in many ways a typical example of a local United Kingdom museum which is funded by local government for the benefit of local people. It has a clearly defined aim: to express the history and identity of the rural community in a particular area, the county of Norfolk. The 100,000 objects contained in the collections are not especially old or especially rare, nor are they particularly important in national or international terms; they exist in the museum because they help to define a sense of place, a sense of regional identity and a sense of history. Rural communities in the United Kingdom, as elsewhere in the world, are undergoing a period of rapid change and development when many of the long-held assumptions which used to underpin life in the countryside have been set aside or diminished.

To illustrate the changes, I will give a couple of examples: in the local village school of 120 children, only 1 child is now from a farming background whereas 50 years ago it was rare to find a child who was not; in 1910 a local farm employed 74 people to help to gather the corn harvest but in 1990, when the museum commissioned a photographer to revisit some of the farms shown in historic photographs, there were 4 people working on the harvest. My job at the museum is not only to ensure that these changes are recorded and documented but to help people to understand their significance for rural culture, to make a contribution to the quality of rural life today, and to enable people to come to terms with change through an increased understanding of development and continuity. I am also concerned with the proper interpretation of rural life for people who are increasingly separated from it even though they may live in the countryside or visit it at weekends.

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I began working at Gressenhall in 1976 as its first Curator. It was a new museum, so my job at that time was fundamentally different to that of today. Then I was primarily concerned with the collections, with gathering, storing and documenting objects and establishing the first displays. I had a staff of two, although Gressenhall - then as now - is part of a wider Museums Service for the county of Norfolk, which has fourteen museums. Now I have a staff of twenty-two, fulfilling such diverse roles as Documentation Officer and Farm Man- ager, Education Officer and Sales Assistant. A great part of my time is now devoted to enabling the staff to do their job well, raising funds and providing staff with the appropriate resources, training in such matters as customer care and disability awareness, managing a large historic building and a farm acquired in 1989, and ensuring that visitors are provided with a level of service from the shop and tea room which they have a right to expect. My title has not changed - I am still the Curator - but the whole emphasis of my job, in common with many similar posts in the United Kingdom, has shifted radically. I have been in a continually changing role and I am very fortunate to have been able to undertake training in many of the new areas now demanded by my job, such as fund-raising, publicity and staff management. My opportunities to handle objects and to study them are few and far between!

The range of my present duties can best be described by giving some examples of the activities in which Gressenhall is now involved. W e have always had an important educational function here, and each year approximately a quarter of the school population of the county visit us between April and October. Our work with the children touches all areas of the curricu- lum, not just history but music and technology, language and ecology. About eight

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Bridget i’ntes

years ago, we decided that we should also encourage very young children between the ages of 5 and 5 to visit the museum in their playgroups. The playgroups are run almost entirely by parents on a voluntary, co-operative basis and provide a broad pre-school experience. W e wanted to bring the children to the museum not only because we felt that they would enjoy it, which indeed they do, but also because the opportunities for many rural mothers to take part in ‘cultural’ activities with their children are often severely limited by factors such as transport. W e provide a room with a wide range of activities, from dressing up in replica costumes to games and puzzles, from exploring a treasure box of objects from the collections to painting. The activities are sometimes directly linked to a special exhibition in the museum, but they often have themes such as ‘circles’ which can be explored throughout the museum and ‘the farm’ without needing the ability to read! Visiting the museum provides a social occasion for all concerned. The children’s activities are devised in collaboration with the playgroup leaders and with some of the mothers, which enables them to have some direct input into the museum.

At the other end of the age spectrum we aim to provide many educational opportunities for adults: from study days and craft courses to making objects and photographs available for use in elderly people’s residential homes and hospitals for remi- niscence therapy. As part of my job, I will talk to old people’s clubs about the museum and its collections; this is always an enjoyable and rewarding experience which adds to my knowledge of the area. Many of these clubs visit the museum as one of their annual outings and members benefit greatly from being able to indulge in their memories together.

A fair, a festival and a forum

Throughout the period when the museum is open, from April to the end of October, we organize a number of special weekend events in order to attract repeat visits from residents in a comparatively sparselypopu- lated rural area and to cover more activities and enthusiasms than can be seen in the permanent displays at the museum. These events might be demonstrations by local craftsmen and women, exhibitions by local societies, or working demonstrations of the vintage machines. on our farm for harvesting or seed sowing. Many different people of all ages and slulls take part in these events; all the participants feel that in some way they are closely involved in the work of the museum, and that they have a positive role and contribution to make to the development of Gressenhall.

The museum is also used as a venue for exhibitions by local groups for activities as diverse as tractor rallies, lace-making, bee- keeping and postcard collecting. One of the most positive benefits for the participants is the interaction with other visitors, who will give more information or add to their collections. Part of my role as Curator is to maintain contacts with these groups and to encourage them to continue to use our facilities to further their interests which, after all, are largely shared by us. Because they come to the museum on different weekends, however, they very rarely have contact with each other in order to share ideas and exchange information, so one year we planned a large gathering under the title of the Norfolk History Fair in conjunction with an umbrella group of local history societies. Approximately 100 organizations, all concerned with preserv- ing some aspect of the past, came together over two days in a series of marquees and display areas where they put on exhibitions of the activities nf their group from

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Coming to terms with change: tlie new curator

battle re-enactments to eighteenth-century dancing, and from village history to prehis- toric tool-making. Over the two days 10,000 people visited tlie fair, and tlie societies were able to increase their membership and supporters quite dramatically in some cases. However, we felt that the real success of the event was that it brought people together who in many cases did not even know that the other groups existed! Smaller societies, such as the village history societies, were able to exchange ideas and problems and find reassurance that their difficulties were not unique. History Fairs have subsequently continued in Norfolk on a biennial basis, but now they travel to a different part of the county each time.

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The fair was followed by an almost equally successful Countryside Festival which popular activity, with public brought together environmental groups and amenity societies.

Stemn tt!!reshing at the museum farm - a

pmticipatioi2fiona yoz~~zg and old.

I am seeking to develop this role for the museum in other areas and to explore the possibilities of using Gressenhall as a focus and a forum for a range of cultural, historical and environmental concerns. W e are already used as a performance base by a number of local theatre companies, both amateur groups and professional touring companies, and for a few years we actually had our own community theatre group based at the museum which developed plays and musicals related to the themes

b 43

Bridget I'ntes

covered by the collections. Unfortunately, the group folded through lack of funding (it was never funded by the museum) but efforts are now being made to revive it and to work on a musical play concerned with the experiences of young Norfolk girls who left their villages to work as domestic servants in the large houses and estates. Research for the play will involve recording the memories of older people and inviting them to share their experiences with the cast. W e use these plays as just another way of exploring objects and helping the community to understand and enjoy their history.

Helping the helpers

Many of the local history societies who came to the History Fair run their own museums on a voluntary basis. These museums are usually concerned with quite a small area, such as a market town or village, but they may also focus on specific subjects such as gas-making or steam engines and in many instances they hold collections of considerable importance. These museums are open to the public and in order to encourage such museums throughout the United Kingdom to develop in a more professional way, the Museums and Galleries Commission, a government-sponsored department, has established a registration scheme for all museums. This scheme lays down for the first time minimum standards for documentation, storage and conservation and requires every museum to be properly established, with a constitution and with policies for the collection and disposal of objects. Members of the public giving items to registered museums can do so confidently, knowing that their donation will be properly cared for. Where museums have no professionally qualified curator, they must appoint a curatorial ad-

viser who can attend all the board meetings and be available to give advice on any matters relating to the care of the collections and the operating of the museum. I act as an adviser to three museums in Norfolk run by volunteers; for each of these, I will attend three meetings in the evenings or at weekends and visit the museum two or three times a year. I am also on the end of the telephone line to give whatever help I can and to discourage activities which may not be professionally sound. This work requires considerable tact and diplomacy, but it can be extremely rewarding to work with such enthusiasts and to see the progress made by their museums for a relatively modest input of time and experience. The majority of the some sixty private museums in Norfolk have formed themselves into a self-help group called MING - Museums in Norfolk Group - for mutual support and encouragement. In common with other colleagues from the Norfolk Museums Service, I participate in training courses Prganized on topics such as education, display and conservation.

In the summer of 1992 we took our first international step,i at Gressenhall when we collaborated with the British Associa- tion of Artist Blacksmiths to host an international working meeting of blacksmiths at the museum. The idea was to bring together blacksmiths from as many different countries as possible to work together on a single project over three days: the making of a 3-metre-high pair of wrought steel gates for the entrance to the museum courtyard. The event was expensive to organize as w e naturally hoped to make a significant contribution to the fares and expenses of our overseas guests. Raising the necessary sponsorship was one of my functions, as well as organizing all site facilities and arranging accommodation.

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Coming to terms with change: the new curator

At the end of August, seventy blacksmiths from Australia, Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Germany, Ireland, the Nether- lands, the Russian Federation, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States assembled at Gressenhall. W e had installed portable forges and power ham- mers in the courtyard so that our visitors could watch the progress on the gates and, of course, talk to overseas guests. It was inspiring to watch so many men and women working together on a single project, regardless of language problems or cultural differences. For the United Kingdom blacksmiths it was an unforgettable opportunity to see and learn different skills and techniques; at the end of each day’s work, they held forums to discuss recent projects and ideas and to exchange professional information.

The gates are magnificent and are admired by all our visitors. Somehow a small corner of rural Norfolk now has links around the world. W e hope to be able to continue to develop international co-operation even in a small way, as w e feel that one of our roles

at the museum is to bring people as well as objects together to explore their common and disparate interests and humanity. W e also hope that a Polish basket-maker will be able to visit us for a few days to share some characteristic Polish techniques with local basket-makers and to study one or two Norfolk techniques.

My experiences at Gressenhall have led me to the belief that, although my museum is concerned with the collection of objects, farm tools, domestic equipment, craft tools and industrial relics, it is fundamentally about people. My role thus includes not only the care of the objects but the use of the objects as a means of bringing people together in the furtherance of mutual understanding and as an expression of regional identity. It is a role and a belief that is shared by many curators of local museums with profound roots in their communities throughout the world, and it is a role which will have a growing importance in a world of rapid change and increasing complexity. Small museums can make a big difference to people! 1

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Museum guard: a peek at the past

Readers of a turn-of-the-century French satirical journal were treated to a somewhat unorthodox image of the profession of museum guard. The drawings are the work of Maurice Radiguet 0866-19411 and appeared in the issue ofL 'nssiettenu bezmedated 19 September 1911 under the title, 'Messieurs les gardiens du Louvre'. While Mirseirtn Intenzntionni does not share the artist's point of view, we nevertheless wished to share his unmistakable talent with our readers . . . and to assure them that today's guards bear no resemblance to Radiguet's unsavoury characters!

'JI illustrations O Kharbine-Tapabor, Paris

LE GARDIEN S'AMUSE

ISSN 0017-3996, Mfrseiiin i~zterwntional (UNESCO, Paris 1, No. 180 Wei. XLV. No. +, 19931 0 UNESCO 1993

I'iiblishrd hy Ulackwrll Piihlishers. 108 Cowley Road, Oxford. 0x4 IJF (UK) and 238 Main Street, Cainbridge. M A 02142 (LISA).

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Museum guard: a peek at the past

O UNESCO 1993 47

Museum librarian: evervone’s Dartner J

Bedt Elganrd

A miiseum library is a library with a dgference, m Bent Elganrd explains. 7%e author is Secretary of the ICOM Inter- national Committee on Documentation (CIDOCI.

On 5 June 1992 the Danish National Mu- seum, Denmark’s largest cultural-historical museum, opened its doors to the public after undergoing three years’ remodelling and refurbishment. The museum exterior now has an entirely new look, and most of the exhibitions have either been rede- signed or are being worked on. New facilities have been added, such as a 1,000 m’ hall for special exhibitions, an audito- rium for lectures, film and theatre, as well as five new classrooms for teaching purposes. Located directly off the large glass- roofed foyer - an enclosure of one of the museum’s former courtyards - are the Media Gallery, the Museum Gift Shop, a restaurant and café and, lastly, my work habitat, the Main Library.

Most museums have a library in some form or other, ranging from a few shelves with reference materials to large, well-stocked special collections attended by trained librarians. The principal task of such libraries is to assist their host institution fulfil its objectives, which in the case of the Na- tional Museum includes ensuring acquisitions, cataloguing, conservation, research and public educational activities. In some instances the libraries simply serve the museum staff; in others, they act as a resource for staff while also serving the public. In a few cases, however, libraries have been established which are specially designed for public use.

The library system at the National Museum comprises the Main Library, which is a joint technical-administrative unit, together with 14 department libraries and a newly established Visitors’ Library and Reading Room. The museum’s stock numbers over 300,000 volumes and approximately 1,600 periodi- cals. It is staffed by 7 trained librarians, 5 library assistants and 1 trained bookseller, in addition to a number of freelancers with various backgrounds. Department librar-

I

ians serve the departments’ researchers, staff and other users with special needs, for example students from different fields. The Main Library is responsible for accessions, cataloguing and lending as well as for the administration and human resources management on behalf of the majority of the department libraries.

The Visitors’ Library

In order to accommodate this structure and to allow for the fact that the museum’s libraries have vastly different locations, plans were made to establish the Visitors’ Library and Reading Room in connection with the remodelling project. Here, the stock is naturally of a more popular nature than is the case with the department libraries. To my knowledge, the few libraries of this sort are found primarily in the natural sciences. In the field of cultural history, however, museum libraries designed for the public are virtually non-existent, at least as far as Europe is concerned. In other words, w e have had little experience to draw on concerning user-groups or research and scientific standards. In order to define our future user-groups w e have based our ideas on a number of surveys made in the mid-1980s that have focused on users of the ‘new National Museum’.

Our main objectives in the Visitors’ Library and Reading Room are to assist the users in consulting reference materials and carrying out on-line searches, as well as to answer telephone inquiries on general museum topics. To accomplish this, along with establishing a stock that meets the public’s needs, w e have joined forces with the museum’s curators, whose professional fields include history, archaeology, ethnology, ethnography, numismatics and conservation technology. The curators have recommended a main core of literature

48 ISSN 0027-3996, Miseum Intenzntionnl (UNESCO. Paris). No. 180 (Vol. XLV, No. 4,1993) O UNESCO 1993

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Museum librarian: everyone’s partner

that we now either own or are in the process of acquiring. In addition, we have procured various interdisciplinary reference books, directories, etc., as well as a collection of professional journals.

Another new and important objective for the Visitors’ Library and Reading Room is to supply literature for the various courses at the museum, both at school and adult education levels. The Danish National Museum organizes a wide range of courses related to the collections - topics include the Viking age, North and South American Indians, Greenland whalers, and the Mongolians’ everyday life and religion. So far, we have acquired literature pertaining to these course topics. In the long run, however, the collection will be expanded so that pupils and students doing research papers on museum topics will be able to draw on our resources. W e have therefore contacted elementary and high-school librarians in order to draw on their experience with students’ needs and learning levels.

The museum’s collection of ethnic music has been placed in the Visitors’ Library and Reading Room. Here, it is also possible to listen to the recordings sold at the Museum Gift Shop. In addition, there are plans to establish a video and sound tape collection of various TV and radio programmes deal- ing with the museum and museum topics. A complete collection of the museum’s own publications is available, and in the future all publications by museum staff will also be found here.

The Library of Museum Science - Den- mark’s only library for literature on the subject - is housed in the Visitors’ Library and Reading Room. The collection belongs to the Danish Museum Training Institute (Museumsh0jskolen), but due to lack of suitable space, it has been placed at the National Museum.

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W e have not yet made any major effort to promote the Visitors’ Library and Reading Room, primarily because the collection has still to be fully expanded. It also remains to be seen which areas of the collection will elicit most inquiries, and consequently, which areas we will need to expand. W e are, however, preparing various marketing initiatives that will be implemented in 1993.

Our anticipated ‘user-profile’ has proved to be reasonably accurate, judging from the first six months in which we have been open to the public. W e now have a relatively clear idea of where the public’s interests lie. ‘Ordinary’ museum visitors are typically interested in topics like the Vik- ings, Greenland and the Eskimos, coins, peasant costumes, churches and the dating of antiques. Should we be unable to accommodate an inquiry satisfactorily, or if a specialist is required, the user is referred to the relevant department library or curator. At this point, however, w e can see that the Visitors’ Library and Reading Room serves as a buffer for the department libraries, and that it consequently relieves the department libraries and curators of the more routine inquiries. Certain patterns are also emerging regarding our function as an educational resource library. Many students - high-school students in particular - come here for help in seeking literature for term papers. Likewise, groups of pupils preparing presentations of special topics use our library. Finally, we see a number of schoolteachers who wish to acquaint themselves with a particular subject.

The Danish Library system is government- financed, with each library receiving separate allocations. Museums, on the other hand, receive a blanket sum from which expenditures for library operation are taken. It is therefore up to the individual museum to decide how much will be set aside for library budgeting.

b 49

Berit Elganrd

The Librarian by Giuseppe Arcimboldo, c. 3565.

Establishing a new library is costly, both money-wise and in terms of human resources. The Danish National Museum has therefore allocated the means for the initial stages as well as for the operation of the Visitors’ Library and Reading Room. W e have been allotted one new full-time position and a book acquisition budget of 400,000 Danish crowns (approx. $65,250). (The annual book acquisition budget for the entire National Museum Library amounts to approx. $80,000 and for the Visitors’ Library and Reading Room to $17,000.) This may sound meagre, but combined with donations and surplus copies from other department libraries, we have been able to

stock a collection of encyclopedias and handbooks numbering some 3,000 titles, whereas our ultimate goal is some 6,000 tities. The Visitors’ Library and Reading Room is a reference library, that is, the books cannot be loaned for use outside the library.

A special challenge

Is there a difference between working in an ‘ordinary’ research library and working in a museum library? In some respects, particularly in the library-technical areas, there is little or no difference. But unlike the work situation in most libraries affiliated to research institutions, librarians and curators have many commonworking methods. One example is in the area of documentation, where librarians’ substantial experience of information analysis, item description and the provision of access points allows them to help in establishing cataloguing standards, structuring vocabularies and making authority files of subjects! names and places. As museum documentation becomes increasingly computerized, it will be all the more important that librarians and curators work closely together, particularly since it will soon be common practice to link object databases with bibliographic databases.

Another obvious area for co-operation is that of the museum’s public education activities. Museum librarians often complain about not being involved on this level even though communications and public education activities, broadly speaking, form one of the cornerstones of Library Science. From my experience, it is up to the librarians themselves to make the museum aware of their potential in this area. The fact that the Visitors’ Library and Reading Room has now become a highly visible part of these activities is due in part to a number of ‘open- minded employees in user-oriented posi-

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Museum librarian: everyone’s partner

tions, but it is no less due to the library’s insistent and assertive public education efforts.

Another essential difference is, or rather was, the lack of co-operation between museum libraries in general. The Danish research library network has a long tradition of being a well-developed and highly operative entity. This network, however, was virtually non-existent in the case of cultural-his torical museum libraries. Thanks to the increasing degree of coinputeriza- tion, there is now greater co-operation between the museum libraries, both nationally and internationally. Here in Den- mark, the first conference for museum libraries was held in Copenhagen in 1991 in conjunction with the annual meeting of the International Committee on Documen- tation (CIDOC). Likewise, a Scandinavian conference will be held in Copenhagen in 1993. On the international level, museum library conferences are now held in conjunction with CIDOC’s annual meetings.

As is the case with all types of jobs, certain professional qualifications must be met. When I started at the National Museum just over four years ago, my main tasks were to mod- ernize and computerize the working methods and organizational structure, which included establishing an on-line catalogue and the Visitors’ Library and Reading Room. My background is in the research library system, where I have worked on modernization processes and building up libraries in such widely different areas as technology, business science and psychology. But apart from a brief period at one of the large university libraries, the humanities were relatively unknown territory to me as a field of work. As far as the museum world was concerned, I knew next to nothing, other than that I liked visiting museums. Here, though, I was given the opportunity to combine my professional training as a librarian with a university degree in history, so in essence, this

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was a dream job. Museum librarians are not required to have supplementary degrees in history, ethnography or a related subject, but it is clearly an advantage -especially in the case of reading room librarians - to have a more-than-average interest in the different areas covered by the museum. By the same token, it is essential for the librarian to be sufficiently acquainted with the museum’s collections and, in general, to be well- informed about all the museum’s activities. Moreover, a job at the Reading Room demands a friendly and accommodating nature. In short, being ‘at the counter’ is a very visible and demanding position.

Working in a modern museum environment such as the Danish National Museum is exciting, inspiring and at times very hectic. But I wholeheartedly agree with Esther Bierbaum’s comment in her study of museum libraries:

The message for librarianship is that museums are a mission field. For the practitioner, there are opportunities for professional involvement and vital projects, particularly in bringing a collection from an informal state to one commanding the respect of the museum staff. For library educators, there is the challenge of preparing professionals w h o understand museum philosophy, w h o know museum methods and are able to work with museum administrators and staff in developing facilities and collections which will support the mission of the museum and enrich the lives of the people in the community it serves.’ rn

Note

1. Esther Bierbaum, ‘The Museum Library Revisted‘, Special Libraries, No. 75, April 1985, p. 113.

51

The triumph of the collector Robert Torday

A historic exchange of antiquities between Switzerland and the fornaer Soviet Union h a been mmtemzinded by the collector George Ortiz, who hm spent a lifetime acquiring apriceless raîige of work of afl, tnany of which haue neuer been seen in public. Robert Torday eqlains how thzk unicxuzl example of international cidtuval co-operation came about. The author is a journalist specializing in arts and antiques and h a worked for The Burlington Maga- zine, Connoisseur and the Hong Kong- based Artention mngazine.

52

The George Ortiz Collection is considered to’ be the finest collection of antiquities in private hands, with over 1,000 works of art spanning 30 cultures from the Neolithic age to the late Byzantine period. The man behind this formidable collection possesses - not surprisingly - both a dynamic enthusiasm for his chosen field and remarkable powers of persuasion. While attending the Vienna Bronze Congress in 1986, Dr Mikhail Treister of the Pushkin Museum in Moscow suggested to Ortiz that he exhibit his famed collection at the Pushkin, and from this initial idea grew the extraordinary cultural exchange which took place in spring 1993. Characteristically, Ortiz expanded the original plan, and by 1988 had set up meetings at the highest levels with officials at the Ministry of Culture of the then Soviet Union. What resulted was a historic agreement whereby the Ortiz Collection would be shown at the Pushkin and Hermitage Muse- ums (with a further projected tour of London and Japan); in return, Ortiz would personally choose an impressive exhibition of some 170 similar objects culled from many of the major museums of the ex-soviet states, to be shown at the Kunsthaus, Zurich.

Born in 1927, George Ortiz began collecting during the summer of 1949, prompted by a trip to Greece. Here, Ortiz’s personal belief in the overwhelming power of man’s artistic endeavour found affirmation at every turn. Without specialist knowledge or archaeological study, Ortiz relied solely on his instinct, developing a rare visual intui- tion which led him to acquire some remarkable objects. Over the past forty-three years the collection has been transformed into a cohesive whole, but as early as 1954 Ortiz was making his first important contribution of eight loans to a scholarly exhibition at Harvard University; since then he has lent to nearly forty major archaeological exhibitions worldwide, including ‘The Age of Spirituality’ at the Metropolitan

Museum of Art in New York (1977-781, ‘Europalia’ in Brussels (1982) and, most recently, ‘Circa 1492’ at the National Gal- lery ofArt inwashington, D.C., commemo- rating the encounter of the Two Worlds.

The Ortiz Collection spans some 30 cultures from the Neolithic to the Byzantine and the aim of this selection - subtitled ‘Antiquities: Ur to Byzantium’ - was to cover a time span similar to that of the ancient cultures that existed throughout the former Soviet Union. Over 300 exceptional items were chosen, and the sheer scale and quality of these’ exhibits was to have the most enormous impact. One of the most exceptional pieces to be included in the exhibition was a large silver-gilt Rhyton fashioned in the form of a superb stag’s head. The workmanshi; is typical of the style of metalwork associated with the Thracians or their neighbours, in the area of the Propontis or Black Sea - in present- day southern Russia. This magnificent drinking vessel dates from the fourth century B.C. and is enriched with gilt decora- tion, in particular the intricately chased frieze of warriors embellishing the rim. Dating from the same period is a splendid bronze figure of Alexander, thought to be by Lysippos, one of the most renowned sculptors of the late Classical period. Clearly aiming to immortalize Alexander’s fabled bravery, the figure is caught in heroic pose, one arm raised as he spears his prey. One of the earliest pieces is a striking alabaster figure of a Sumerian bull-man from Umma, dating from the third millennium B.C. and not discovered until the 1930s. Probably a cult object, this mythological figure may have been part of a temple lamp or incense bowl and would originally have carried elaborate inlays of lapis lazuli, shell, gold and silver. Proof of the sheer quality of this astounding collection, only one other alabaster figurine of this period is known, housed in the Iraq Museum in Baghdad.

ISSN 0027-3996, Mifseunz Internntional (UNESCO, Pdrisi, No. 180 (Vol. XLV. NO. 4.1993) Q UNESCO 1993

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The triumph of the collector

The story covering Ortiz’s selection of objects from what was the Soviet Union is more complex - a fascinating insight into the realities of major political change, especially when it involves such a huge area and so many different national interests. Up to now it has been usual for exchange exhibitions of this kind to be confined to one or at most two museums, normally the Pushkin or the Hermitage, but George Ortiz was determined to pull together as representative an exhibition as possible. He realized that until the Revolution in 1917 every new museum acquisition was automatically housed in the Hermitage, but after this date regional museums gained the right to display new archaeological finds. This meant that regional collections over the intervening sixty-five years had become immeasurably enriched. Side-step- ping the advice of Dr Popov, Director of Exhibitions of the Ministry oflulture of the Soviet Union, and Professor Boris Piotrovski, Director of the Hermitage, as well as a host of others, Ortiz turned his energies to the many republics where he knew choice objects were to be found, his aim being to give the broadest overview of the extraordinary wealth these lands had produced. ‘From the Treasuries of Eurasia’ was designed to give specific emphasis to the regions encompassing the ‘Urartu Empire’, whose decendants reached as far east as Siberia, to highlight the close relations between the Greeks and the Thracians and Scythians, and to celebrate the art of Samaria. The chosen objects range from the Stone Age period, through Egyptian, Greek, Scythian, Etruscan and Roman cultures to the Byzantine era.

The problems were immense, with many changes of personnel at every level of museum bureaucracy - directors, curators and restorers alike. Each republic sported a Ministry of Culture and an Academy of Sciences, and in many cases former posts

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had been reshuffled and individual over- tures had to be made to a series of new people. in addition, Ortiz decided not to restrict his choice to works of art found only within the Soviet Union, but also wished to include important examples that had been tsarist acquisitions, private donations or simply confiscations. In this category are several pieces from the Greek and Roman collections of the Hermitage and the Pushkin, as well as the entire Egyptian sections of both these museums.

In the late spring of 1989 Ortiz visited the museums and institutions of Kiev, Odessa, Rostov-na-Don, Azov and many more, accompanied by representatives from the Hermitage and the Pushkin: the proposed exhibition was eventually met with enthusiasm and everything seemed to be going well. Then in May 1992, Ortiz - accompanied by Dr Baumann, Director of the Kunsthaus in Zurich where the exhibition had its first showing - travelled once again to Kiev in the Ukraine. Unfortunately, they now found a situation typical of the changing attitudes prompted by the collapse of the former regime. For various reasons, objects previously promised were now no longer available, but despite these frustra- tions the resulting range of the exhibition was formidable. From the Paleolithic- Neolithic period came a female idol carved in mammouth tusk, loaned by the Museum of Archaeology and Ethnography in St Petersburg, while the Hamza Fine Arts Institute in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, lent a splendid Dalversine-Tepe head. In addition, the Museum of Historical Treasures of the Ukraine together with the Archaeologi- cal Museum of the Academy of Sciences - both in Kiev - lent two outstanding recent finds: a gold helmet with a fine decorative relief depicting Scythians and a gold phial decorated with six horses in high relief and repoussé work from the kziigaiz of Bratoliubowski (Kiev). A similar piece is a

\

53

Robert Torday

Winged lion (with human bitst). Bronze and stone. Urartu, eighth/ sixth centu y B.C. (The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg; on loan to the Kunsthaus, Zitrichj.

Comb (with fighting Scythiansj. Gold. Grneco-Scythian. First half of the fourth century B.C. ( n e State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg; on loan to the Kttnsthaats, Zurichj.

Graeco-Scythian comb from the Hermit- age. One of the highlights of the show was the magnificent winged human-faced sphinx, on loan from the Hermitage for the very last time due to its extreme fragility. Perhaps for similar reasons, the Egyptian Curator of the Pushkin was adamant in her refusal to lend certain key items -two 18th-Dynasty wooden figures, a Fayum portrait and a great shroud. O n the other hand, the greatest single Egyptian work of art in Russia is the granite bust of Amenemhat III of the 12th Dynasty, and he had been promised by the Pushkin.

It is true to say that this exhibition was unique - a word often bandied about, but in this case wholly justified. Fifteen different institutions lent objects representing eighteen different cultures, many of them never before shown in the West:

54 O UNESCO 1993

The triumph of the collector

Egyptian works of art, Greek vases, sculptures and bronzes, Etruscan objects, Ro- man sculptures, cameos, rings and gems, and the exhibition’s entire Byzantine section. Many of these last-mentioned were to have formed part of the greatest Byzantine exhibition ever mounted - ‘The Age of Spirituality’ at the Metropolitan Museum (1977-78) but were withheld at the very last minute.

George Ortiz conjured up something of a sensation - two major exhibitions that richly illustrate humankind‘s enormously varied heritage of artistic creativity, both brilliantly assembled so as to thrill specialists and the uninitiated alike: a triumph indeed. w

Note

‘From the Treasuries of Eurasia, Masterpieces of Ancient Art’ was shown from 29 January to 2 May 1993 at the Kunsthaus, Heimplatz 1, 8024 Zurich (Switzerland). A 300-page catalogue accompanied the exhibition. ‘The George Ortiz Collection, Antiquities: Ur to Byzantium’ was shown from 17 February to 11 April 1993 at the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg and from 6 May to 27 June 1993 at the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow (Russian Federation). Venues in London and Japan are as yet unconfirmed. For further information: Sue Bond Public Relations, 5A Bramber Road, London ‘$714 9PA (United Kingdom). Tel: 071-381 1324. Fax: 071-610 1890.

Rh-yton (stag’s head). Silver, partially gilt. Allegedly front the region of the Black Sen. Local work under Greek influence, early fourth centu y B.C. (The George Ortiz Collection; on loan to the State Hemzitage Museum, St Petersburg and the State Pushkin Museuni, Moscow).

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Guidelines on disability in the United Kingdom Chds Ne wbeny

Making milseums accessible to disabled people is an euer-growing concern. Several countries have taken concrete steps in this direction through policy and legislation, training and concerted efforts to increase professional awareness of the issues involved. One such example comes from the United Kingdom and is described by Chris Neuibeny, Deputy Director of the Museums and Galleries Commission, where he has been responsible for major reports on mil- seim professional traini?ig and local gou- ernment and museum development. H e is also in charge of the Commission’s stand- arcls deerielopmeizt programme.

Low-leuel displauvs enhance accessibilitv.

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The 1992 Annual Conference of the United Kingdom Museums Association’ (MA) saw the launch of new guidelines for museums on disability issues. Compiled and issued by the Museums and Galleries Commis- sion ’ (MGC) with the formal endorsement of the MA, the Guidelines on Disabili& for Museurnsand Galleries in the UnitedKing- dom aim to help museums meet the needs of all their users (both actual and potential), visitors and staff. Disabled people comprise over 10 per cent of the United Kingdom population, and the MGC takes the view that they should have the right to derive the same benefit from museums as other visitors.

Before describing the guidelines in detail, some information about their genesis may be helpful. In 1985 the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust published the report of the Committee of Enquiry into the Arts and Disabled People (the Attenborough Repot?). The report recommended that the ultimate target must be to enable and encourage disabled people to play the

fullest part in the artistic life of the community. The subsequent Carnegie Council Review (AfterAttenboroiigh: Arts and Dis- abled People, 1988) emphasized the need for all sectors - government, corporate, voluntary and public - to work towards this end. In order to stimulate activity in the museum field, the Carnegie United King- dom Trust offered the MGC a grant of 610,000 towards the employment of a disability adviser for museums. Although no additional money was forthcoming from the government, the MGC managed to find sufficient funds within its own budget to make an appointment on a two-year part- time basis, starting in March 1989. The contract was subsequently extended for a further year.

From the outset, the main task of the disability adviser was to prepare ‘best practice’ guidelines for museums and galleries. This task could not be accomplished in a vacuum, however, and a considerable amount of ‘consciousness-raising’ and advice about disability issues was urgently

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Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX+ 1JF (UK) and 238 Main Streer. Cambridge, MA 02142 (USA).

Guidelines on disability in the United Kingdom

required. This is well illustrated by a survey of twenty-eight large museums undertaken in March 1990 which asked questions about policies concerning disabled people. There were seventeen replies. Of the nine museums which said they had an officer with responsibility for advising on disability issues in relation to service users, seven were in personnel departments, had no relevant training and made no input into the presentation of collections. Four museums had established a working party to look into the subject. As a result of this general lack of awareness about disability matters, the work of the disability adviser fell broadly into three categories:

Advice and information to museums, local authorities and individuals on all aspects of senrice provision, fund-raising and liaison with local disability organizations.

Organizing and running training sessions, undertaking advisory visits to museums, writing articles and presenting papers at conferences.

Liaison with agencies within the museum profession and with arts, heritage and disability organizations in order to co-ordinate work, initiate joint action and disseminate information.

All this activity helped the disability adviser to formulate a first draft of the disability guidelines which was considered by Com- missioners in December 1990. After substantial alteration they were then circulated to key museum and disability organizations and central and local government for comment. All but one of the respondents welcomed the guidelines in principle, although concerns were expressed about their prescriptive tone and the cost implications of implementing them. Noting these reservations, Commissioners suggested fur-

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ther amendments at their meeting in July 1991 before finally adopting the guidelines.

The guidelines

There is insufficient space to reproduce the guidelines in full, but the following description attempts to cover the main points. The guidelines begin with some notes about their terms of reference and objectives. For example, the guidelines use the social definition of disabiiity - that society disables people by putting barriers in their way. These range from physical and communication barriers to those of attitude. It is pointed out that the guidelines provide a basis on which evely museum, in the light of its circumstances, can develop a policy on disability and decide the actions required to give effect to that policy. There is also a reference to the availability of a resource directory which provides information to help museums undertake work set out in the guidelines.

The first main section of the guidelines deals withpolicy crnclp~ocedzil-e. Key points are as follows:

1. The museum should prepare a written disability policy (based on the following guidelines) together with an action plan.

2. The disability policy and action plan should be endorsed by the museum’s governing body, and disabled people should have equal opportunities for appointment to that body.

3. Work in preparing, implementing and monitoring the disability policy and action plan should be co-ordinated by a designated senior member of staff, working (except in small museums) with a staff working party which is fully representative of all the museum’s functional areas.

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4. There should be regular consultation with disabled people and disability organizations.

5. Information about the disability policy and the implementation of the action plan should be provided in the museum’s annual report or equivalent publication.

The second section of the guidelines concerns employment and training. It is suggested that the staff involved in preparing the disability policy and action plan should receive some initial training about disability. But beyond that it is recommended that allstaff andmembers of the governing body should receive training and refresher training to ensure that they are aware of their responsibilities in fulfilling the policy. The importance of training for ‘front of house’ staff is particularly stressed. The guidelines also draw attention to the importance of disability equality training for those involved in all stages of recruitment, job appraisals and careers development. This is linked to the need for the museum to establish written procedures to ensure that there are equal oppominities for the employment of disabled people.

The third section of the guidelines refers to collectio~andprem~es. It is recommended that ways should be sought to enable disabled people to achieve intellectual, physical and sensory access to the collections as well as shop, lecture room, cafete- ria and toilets. For collections, this can be achieved by means of an alternative or supplementary method of presentation. But it is pointed out that segregated provision should be avoided except where disabled people prefer it. The guidelines also suggest that the museum should seek to provide e+al opportunities for disabled people to mount exhibitions and hold events on museum premises.

The fourth section concerns iizfomntion. It recommends that all publicity, information and advertisements should, wherever feasible, give details of addresses, opening times, travel and parking arrangements, charges, precise information to help with different types of disability, and a telephone number for specific inquiries. At the entrance to the museum and at inquiry points it is suggested that there should be a check-list of information available for staff, setting out the facts on physical access, equipment and provision for disabled people. This should be backed up by adequate signs in and around the museum.

The fifth section deals with lirzB with the community. Museums are urged to develop links with other agencies in the community such as arts, leisure, education, social services, health, transport and disability organizations in order to promote initiatives that will benefit disabled people. It is also suggested that community outreach programmes should be devised to introduce disabled people and their companions to the museum, its collections and facilities.

The final section of the guidelines refers to responding to policy changes. The important point is made that legislative changes, especially in areas of building design and use, social services and special educational needs, should be monitored for their implications for museum services.

It is obviously important that everyone in the museum community should be aware of the guidelines, so in addition to being printed in the Museums Associa- tion’s Yearbook, they are being mailed free of charge to all museums in the United Kingdom. Copies are also being sent to disability organizations, local authority associations and relevant departments of central government.

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Guidelines on disability in the United Kingdom

I have already mentioned the existence of resource material to help museums devise disability policies and action plans. The directory is in a loose-leaf format and contains valuable information about such matters as legislation, codes of practice, types of disability, employment, training, promotion of the museum service, transport, building design and sources of funds for disability projects. It also includes examples of good practice in museums, a bibliography and addresses of useful organizations.

Implementation strategy

W e are anxious that our disability initiative should be seen in a wider context. Some recent MGC publications ex- emplify our approach. In our publication, Forward Plnwriing- A Handbook of Busi- ness, Coqomte and Development Plan- ning for Musezims and Galleries (19911, there is a chapter on provision for disabled people written by the MGC Dis- ability Adviser. The MGC’s Guidelines for a Registration Schenie forMuseunis in the United Kingdoin (1989) make reference to access facilities for disabled people in the public services section of the document. Participation in the registration scheme is voluntary, but museums are not eligible for MGC-derived grants if

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they are not registered. When the registration guidelines are updated in 1993/94 w e will be making specific reference to the MGC’s new disability guidelines. The MGC has also been publishing standards in the care of different types of collection. Standards in the Care of A?’cbaeoiogical Collections (19921, for example, contains a section about standards for access which states that ‘inquirers with impaired mobil- ity, sight or hearing, must have, as far as possible, as ready access as any other inquirers’ .3

The MGC operates a number of grant schemes which are geared to raising standards in museums through the support of ‘one-off projects. Wherever appropriate, the criteria for the grant schemes include a reference to disability issues. The Capital Grants Scheme, for example (which is principally aimed at supporting projects which provide proper environmentally controlled housing for collections), insists that ‘applicants should demonstrate that, where practicable, the needs of disabled people, both as visitors and employees, have been taken into account’. The notes for applicants make reference to both the MGC’s disability guidelines and the Disability Resource Directory.

The MGC works very closely with the ten Area Museum Councils (AMCs) which

Ramp from exhibition galleiy education space.

to

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cover the United Kingdom. The AMCs are essentially museum ‘co-operatives’ which provide advice, services and grant-aid to their members. They all receive funds from the government, the seven English AMCs through the MGC. Their principal assistance to the MGC disability initiative so far has been in the field of in-service training. Most of them have offered one- day training courses for museum staff which aim to raise consciousness about disability issues; the South-West England AMC course entitled ‘Removing Barriers: Enhancing Accessibility’ is a good example. Some ANICs provide touring exhibitions and the needs of people with disabilities are increasingly being taken into account. The West Midlands AMC, for example, is planning an exhibition which will provide enjoyment and access to information for people who are blind or have a visual impairment. With the publication of the MGC disability guidelines we trust that the AMCs will take an even more proactive stance on disability issues.

There are many other organizations which can help the MGC in implementing the guidelines, such as the Museums and Gal- leries Disabilities Association and the Mu- seums Association Equal Opportunities Committee. I have mentioned these two bodies in particular because they are in a good position to lobby the government for additional resources to make our initiative

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as successful as possible.

Notes

1. The Museums Association is the professional body for museums and galleries.

2. The Museums and Galleries Commission is the officiai adviser to the United Kingdom Government on museums and galleries. It also has executive functions, including the operation of grant programmes. Address: 16 Queen Anne’s Gate, London SW1H 9AA

3. See also: Fondation de FranceACOM, &fuseurn Without Bnm’ers, LondodNew York, Routledge, 3991, 214 pp., illus. -Ed.

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Illicit traffic Theft, pillage, vandalism and illicit traftïc Cambodia takes steps with the help of UNESCO

Cambodia is facing a veritable haemorrhage of its cultural heritage. Statues, bas-reliefs, stone sculptures and entire lintels disappear each day from the famous monuments of Angkor and other lesser-known sites. Thieves attack by night and day, selling extremely valuable objects to unscrupulous traders who will pass them on through a number of hands before they end up gracing the shelves of private collectors in Europe, Japan and North America.

Having ratified the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, Cambodia became the first signatory State to call upon UNESCO to assist in laying down a series of measures to combat a traffic which might deprive the country of its exceptional cultural heritage, the history of which is still largely unexplored. These measures were presented in a broad programme which was submitted in March 1992 to members of the Supreme National Council of Cambodia, presided over by H.M. Prince Norodom Sihanouk.

In order to define the steps that would have to be taken in co-operation with the appropriate national authorities, UNESCO organized in July 1992 in Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, a national workshop on the following subjects: education, public information, legislation, site and museum security, export controls by police and customs authorities, and preparation of inventories of cultural goods. There were over 120 participants, representing several components of the Supreme National Council as well as the United Nations, Interpol and the International Council of Museums (ICOM). High-level civil servants, police and customs

officers, educators, journalists, jurists, conservators and students thus familiarized themselves with specific techniques and participated in short training sessions. Several government ministers took part in the workshop and in the small group sessions.

The workshop ended by elaborating an action plan in four major target areas: training, communication, legislation and education. Wholly financed by UNESCO, the meeting paved the way for a series of measures which began immediately afterwards with the preparation of legislation for the protection of cultural property which was adopted in February 1993 by a decision of the Supreme National Council.

Action was also taken to strengthen security against theft in museums and storehouses, and an ICOM expert advised officials of the Museum of Phnom Penh on the organization of a security service and the use of mechanical security devices. Security at the conservation storehouse at Angkor was also reinforced; however, the armed attacks on the building in February and April 1993 demonstrated that much more stringent measures are urgently required.

These recent events and the general situation in Cambodia at the time of writing (May 1993) make it all the more imperative to pursue public information campaigns and to improve the level of awareness and the training of local agents in a variety of disciplines. To this end, a number of initiatives have been undertaken. A poster competition was organized in co-operation with the University of Fine Arts and the prize- winning posters will be distributed nationwide to various audiences: the general public, students and tourists. Tourists will also receive brochures warning them against the export of cultural goods without appropriate export licences.

L ISSN 0027-3996, Musezrtn International (UNESCO, Paris), No. 180 (Vol. XLV, No. 4,1993) O UNESCO 1993 Published by Blackwell Publishers, 108 Cowley Road, O.xford, OX4 1JF (UK) and 238 Main Street, Cambridge, MA 02142 (USA)

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Professional news

UNESCO has also conducted a far- reaching information programme which has thus far included 120 Cambodian customs officials, 24 Cambodian journalists, 450 Cambodian police officers responsible for guarding the monuments of Angkor (these same officers are to receive practical training in co-operation with the French police in October 19931, and a number of police officials of the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC).

Alongside these measures UNESCO has supported the efforts of several institutions to compile inventories of movable cultural property, a costly and time-consuming effort for which large- scale funding is being sought.

It must be recalled, however, that the traffic in cultural goods cannot be stemmed simply by taking measures in the countries victimized by this practice. Because the trade is international, action must also be taken in the receiving countries, and in particular those with flourishing art markets. This is, of course, the purpose of the 1970 UNESCO Convention, and in order to make its provisions better understood, a regional workshop was organized in Thailand in 1992 for fifteen Asian countries, including Cambodia.

On this occasion the Thai authorities announced that they were prepared to return to Cambodia cultural goods seized in Thailand. Discussions are under way with Thailand and France to encourage their ratification of the 1970 Convention. The assistance of States parties to the convention has been requested, and Australia and the United States have responded with offers of co-operation. UNESCO, for its part, continues to inform the international media, and programmes and articles have appeared on Radio-France, the BBC, Australian television and in the Thai press. Most recently, the Organization spearheaded a worldwide information effort concerning the head of a statue stolen in Cambodia in February 1992 (see Ilhisetiîn International, No. 178, 1992 - Ed). The example of Cambodia, which must simultaneously confront a difficult political situation and the threat of losing a large part of its cultural heritage, clearly demonstrates the need for a genuine mobilization of the international community. Museums have a major role to play in this effort.

.

Editor’s Nok: Etienne Clément, author of this article, is a programme specialist in UNESCO’s International Standards Section in the Division of Physical Heritage; he has organized a number of the training and information sessions described.

Professional news Computerized information services

VIDEOMUSEUM is a computer data bank with an associated videodisc which collectively contains the descriptions of twentieth-century fine art in French public collections. Some 100,000 works are catalogued, including paintings, drawings, sculptures, design, photographs, objects and prints. The

initial aim is to make available an exhaustive inventory of France’s twentieth-century museum heritage; plans are under way, however, to extend the service to other countries. Intended for professional use in the art world, this computerized visual catalogue may be consulted in museums or cultural institutions (there were 23 in France at May 1993); similar systems for public

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Professional news

information will be developed. An annual update integrates acquisitions and collections of museums that join the project.

The Clearinghouse on Art Documentation and Computerization is an international resource collection and database housed in the Thomas J. Watson Library of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It provides information on a variety of fields and disciplines related to art museum and library informatics. The Clearinghouse maintains a database consisting of two interactive files: a bibliographic index to documents; and an information directory of projects, agencies and other activities. It ,houses special collections of museology material such as museum data dictionaries and compendiums of descriptive practices as well as descriptions of information standards initiatives involving objects, images and text. Requests for information come from museum curators, visual resource and art librarians, registrars, archivists, art historians and researchers. In-depth surveys, directories and bibliographies on special topics may also be provided on request.

For further information: VIDEOMUSEUM, Centre Georges Pompidou, 19 rue Beaubourg, 75001 Paris (France) Tel: (33.1) 42.71.61.39 Fax: (33.1) 42.71.62.90

The Clearinghouse on Art Documentation and Computerization, Thomas J. Watson Library, 1000 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10028 (United States) Tel: (1.212) 570-3935 Fax: (1.212) 570-3847

1994 conservation congress

The fifteenth international congress of the International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC) will take place at the Ottawa Congress Centre (Canada) from 12 to 16

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September 1994. The title of the congress is ‘Preventive Conservation: Practice, Theory and Research’. The congress will provide a broad overview of the fundamentals of preventive conservation, with an emphasis on current theory and practice as well as new areas of research. Sessions will cover: general approaches to preventive conservation in both the northern and the southern hemisphere; techniques for supporting and handling objects; lighting, temperature and humidity; atmospheric pollutants and other contaminants; and pest management.

For further information: The International Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works (IIC), 6 Buckingham Street, London WC2N 6BA (United Kingdom) Tel: (44.71) 839.5975 Fax: (44.71) 976.1564

Getty Grant Program

Individuals and institutions in 28 countries received 121 grants in 1991/92 from the Getty Grant Program. Approximately $5.3 million were awarded to provide support for scholarship in the history of art, conservation of art and architecture, and advancement of the understanding of art. Especially noteworthy were 34 grants worth $545,000 to Central and Eastern Europe to provide new opportunities for research and professional exchange and to help preserve cultural heritage in the region during its period of transition. Other important grants included one to the National Museum of Carthage (Tunisia) for the creation of didactic materials, and another for the conservation of late-nineteenth-century Native American sketchbooks in the collection of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Also awarded were a grant to the Louvre Museum in Paris for a computerized catalogue of Attic red-figure cups, and an architectural conservation grant for work on the main cloister of the

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former Augustinian Monastery of Dürnstein (Austria).

For further information (including brochures, applications and guidelines): The Getty Grant Program, 401 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 1000, Santa Monica, CA 90401 (United States) Tel: (1.310) 395-0388 Fa: (1.310) 451.8750

New publications

Excellence and Equity: Education and the Public Dimension of Museums

The first major assessment of the educational role of museums to be issued by the American Association of Museums, this twenty-eight page report is part of an ongoing effort by the AAM to raise the public’s awareness of the importance of museums in the nation’s educational and cultural life. It recommends actions that individual museums can take to strengthen and expand their ability to carry out their primary educational mission.

For further information: American Association of Museums, 1225 Eye Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20005 (United States)

ILVS Review A Jo~trnal of Visitor Behavior, Vol. 2, No. 2, 1992

Published by the International Laboratory for Visitor Studies (ILVS), the review covers such topics as professional standards of visitor research and evaluation, significant issues in museum audience research and how computers stimulate visitors in an art exhibition.

For further information: Exhibit Communications Research (ECR), Inc., ILVS Publications, The International Laboratory for Visitor Studies (ILVS), P.O. Box 11827, Shorewood, WI 53211-0827 (United States)

The Zebra’s Voice

This quarterly publication of the National Museum, Monuments and Art Gallery of Botswana provides a lively overview of the country’s active museum life. Recent articles describe permanent collections of the gallery, the lost monuments of Botswana, the National Museum radio programme and the visit of local museum educators to Sweden.

For further information: National Museum, Monuments and Art Gallery, Private Bag 114, Gaborone (Botswana)

Visite guidée

A bi-monthly newsletter (in French) devoted to museum developments in France, Visite guidée addresses such topics as visitor services, sponsorship, exhibition financing, restoration and commercial practices. Each issue will publish news of major exhibitions, including statistics on visitor frequentation.

For further information: Suko Editions, 39 rue Chaptal, 92300 Levallois Perret (France)

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museum careers; museum international; vol.:xlv, 4;...

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