Community Design Workshop Notes - Loans In

Owned by Megan Forbes
Last updated: Mar 12, 2009Version comment
3 min read

Initiating Loans and Exhibition Planning

  • loans start with curatorial research: what works do we need to bring in?
  • contacts at other institution, loan agreements, facility reports
  • loans aren't always initiated in this way; artists sometimes come to the gallery offering to loan works - some institutions embrace this, others try to avoid it
  • generally based on established relationships with artists
  • loans are usually made for an exhibition
  • very connected to the exhibition planning process
  • however, loans are occasionally done for storage, not exhibition
  • at some institutions, objects to be loaned have to be in the system already
  • there is a point in the loans process when this happens: after the agreement in principle is in place
  • sometimes records get entered into the CMS as part of the approval process for the show
  • but it can come at different points in the process
  • "Media Art Museum" keeps separate collections management systems for their permanent collection and for their exhibition plans and export/import between systems; however, this varies among institutions.
  • need for a system to help with both the workflow of exhibition planning and the loans process
  • want a system where curators can go directly into the collection system and start planning an exhibition with an established workflow and trust process
  • after the loan agreement and paperwork is done, there's a separate workflow for rights management (eg. photography, promotional use of images, etc.)
  • negotiation of legal terms for loans; whose paperwork: theirs or ours?

Shipping, Logistics, and Tracking

  • when the object is ready to actually be sent to the museum, there are other workflows:
    • packing
    • transportation logistics & care
    • unpacking
    • condition reporting
    • issue of receipt
    • registering it into the local system and assigning a loan number
  • if there is an accession number from the loaning institution, it's often used as a secondary number
  • separate classification numbers for loan types, duration of loan, etc.
  • existing systems vary in amount of detail for logistical tracking
  • down to the specific flight numbers and courier details - often managed in a spreadsheet, some systems have built-in support
  • in an ideal scenario, there would be a relationship and awareness between collections management software and scheduling/logistics
  • opportunity for sharing of logistical information between institutions
  • more work than it's worth for smaller institutions?
  • how to handle multiple parts of a piece or shipment? (eg. multiple projectors for a video installation)
  • need to know to ship it back exactly the same as it was shipped when returning
  • lots of photographic documentation to keep track of this
  • lots of collateral material that comes with a work and needs to be stored
  • e.g. installation instructions: how to put up a work
  • even craning and movement logistics for large works
  • would be great to be able to store digital versions of this information in the system

Condition Reports

  • desire to store condition reports in the collection management system
  • would be great to track condition over time with the object record itself and share it amongst institutions
  • concern about sharing this info electronically: it could be changed inappropriately
  • PDF or other more stable format might help
  • hard to standardize: so much of the condition information is narrative

Interoperability

  • ability to share data between collection management system and digital asset management system
  • ideal world would be service-based
  • one concern in switching to commercial software is having to throw out homegrown connectors between systems
  • the ability to import records from one organization's system to another
  • it would be great if electronic collection and tracking records were shipped along with the work itself
  • do any standards exist for this?

Sending Objects Back

  • most institutions retain loan records after the objects have been returned
  • would be great to be able to track the curator's plans and correspondences about the objects
  • need for separate history/snap-shotting of objects and loans, e.g. if an object was attributed to Rembrandt when it was loaned 20 years ago, we need to know that, but we may not want to reflect that in the collection management