What Does a Credit Line for a Art Museum Fund Mean
When I bring visitors to the museum, they usually take questions about the artworks.
"How old is information technology?" "Who's the artist?" "What's information technology made of?" "How much is it worth?" I tin always answer the first iii thanks to the label that accompanies each and every piece on display. (The answer to the final is usually "whatever someone is willing to pay.")
A label is a good starting identify to learn about a piece in our galleries; it packs a lot of information into a small infinite. The works on brandish are wonderfully various, but the labels that describe them all follow a template to aid convey information clearly and efficiently.
Permit's look at the label for Faith Ringgold's painting Bessie's Blues.
Faith Ringgold
Each characterization includes sure basic information virtually the work of art that answers the "W's" of journalism:
* Who made it? This could be an individual, a team of business or creative partners, an unknown artist within a cultural group or community, or a combination of these. Some labels emphasize the maker(due south) past listing them kickoff; others stress the title.
* Where is the creator from? and/or Where was it made? When the maker's identity is known, the label usually includes their nationality and life dates. In other cases, the label identifies the geographic region where the object originated, or an associated culture.
* What is it called? This information appears in bold on every label. A maker frequently provides a title that is finer part of the artwork itself and may help us translate it. If a work doesn't have this kind of championship, sometimes curators create a descriptive championship tied to the object'due south function or appearance.
* When was it made? This might exist a particular date, a span of time, an educated guess, or an acknowledgment that the work is still in progress.
* What is it made of? The materials (or media) used to brand the object are listed in descending order of prominence. Remember of information technology like the list of ingredients on a diet label.
* Who currently owns information technology? This is function of what'due south known equally a credit line. In the museum'south permanent galleries, y'all can assume that the Fine art Institute is the owner of an object unless another one is named. The works presented in special exhibitions may come from many sources, so all of the labels specify the institutions or individuals who lent the works.
* How did they come to own information technology? This is usually the 2nd part of a credit line. It describes how the current owner of an object obtained information technology: through a gift, by purchase, and then on. Some donor names crop upwards repeatedly, showing an individual'southward or a family's commitment to the museum. You lot may share the taste of a particular collector if you lot proceed noticing their name on your favorite works.
* An accession or object number: This is a reference number typically assigned by the museum or collection that owns or is caring for the work. At the Art Found and many other museums, the starting time four numbers of the credit line e'er point the year that the work was accessioned—that is, officially became function of the collection. It tin assist you and others await upward the specific object even when yous're not standing in front end of it; for instance, there may be many paintings titled Landscape, only there'southward just one fastened to this unique identifier. The accession number as well helps museums go on track of collections as pieces motion in and out of storage or are lent to another establishment.
Museum staff refer to these elements collectively (and maybe morbidly) as a tombstone ; the most stable and factual statements about a work. This phrase is a bit misleading, though, since tombstone data is occasionally revised to reflect further research. For instance, an archivist may notice a 16th-century sales receipt showing that a painting was made by studio administration, non the artist who signed information technology. Or Deoxyribonucleic acid analysis may reveal that what we thought was monkey fur on a mask made in Côte d'Ivoire is really goat fur. Nonetheless, a tombstone provides a quick only detailed sense of how we're currently fitting a work into art history.
Here'south another instance: a label for a large gold ornament made in Republic of ghana.
Asante
Some object labels, such as this one, also include a brusque text known as a "chat" that addresses the "how" and "why" of the artwork. The contents of chats can vary as widely as the works themselves and, similar the residuum of the label, are crafted by museum professionals at the Art Establish. They interact to create engaging displays in which the arrangement of both fine art and data helps visitors connect with what they encounter and learn about how it fits into stories ranging from the personal to the global and historical. Whatever the focus, the chat aims to provide readers with a launchpad for thinking, talking, learning, and writing about the work—and, above all, to prompt closer looking at the art itself, encouraging you lot to look again and again and encounter more each time.
—A. Robin Hoffman, editor, Publishing
Topics
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Source: https://www.artic.edu/articles/872/how-to-read-a-label
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