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Author Topic: The curse of Museums  (Read 4876 times)

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Offline cicerokid

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The curse of Museums
« on: September 26, 2018, 11:58:29 am »
How's this.
I asked the Museo Archeologico Nazionale d'Abruzzo – Villa Frigerj in Chieti for some information and photographs of their portion of the POGGIO PICENZE HOARD IGCH 2056.

I wrote to both e-mail addresses  which was the same person, both in English and then in Google Italain which is good enough.

NO REPLY!

They cannot deny not knowing what I am on about cos they have a specific numismatics department!

Even more so look at this photograph I found. Yes part of the POGGIO PICENZE HOARD on display.

Now this is just laziness or couldn't be arsed.
.
An attitude I know effects many museums

They got a job many would steal the contents for with a good salary and a good pension, but they have their own little world and they couldn't be bothered.

A bit like the fate of the Hierapytna Hoard from 1933 to 1975 in Athens.
Lazy Ignorant B****s
It's not difficult curators its only coins, even I can manage it without a PhD.
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Offline cicerokid

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Re: The curse of Museums
« Reply #1 on: September 26, 2018, 12:27:47 pm »

I have cracked up I have written to the Italian Embassy in London.

I am trying to get a response to 4 e-mails 2 each in English and Italian from this Cultural  establishment,

Museo Archeologico Nazionale d'Abruzzo – Villa Frigerj
  for for my research. They cannot deny having this information because I found a photograph ( but not in the style I need ) on the internet!
No doubt good British money as flooded into Italy via the EU since our accession and I want to see a return before our secession.

The job is not hard.

Go to the cabinet take out said coins and photograph  both sides eg Coin 1 Obv 1 Rev 1 etc.


I will then publish them on academia.edu in a paper I am writing on the "End of the New Style" But first I need a little co-operation.


Avanti Please

Grazia
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Offline museumguy

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Re: The curse of Museums
« Reply #2 on: September 26, 2018, 01:25:16 pm »
Don't you think you are being a bit harsh here Cicero?  As someone who has worked in and with museums for over 30 years I take your caustic comments about museums to be inappropriate.  I get it that you sent 4 emalsl to the same guy in this museum both in English and Italian and he/she did not respond or at least respond as quickly as you wish they would have.  Museums are places where mission is all about preserving, conserving and educating, and at least in the US are often understaffed, overworked and usually underpaid - not sure about museums in Italy.  Rather than berate all museums and the people who work hard to care for and interpret their collections to the public, you might try a different approach to getting what you want.  Maybe contact the Director, Head of the Library if they have one, other upper administrative staff or post a message on FORVM that simply asks the members if they have any ideas regarding how you might seek what you are looking for.  This post really serves no purpose other than to complain about museums and museum workers.  If I go to a restaurant and don't like the food does that mean all restaurants are awful.  If I hire a contractor to do some work for me and he messes up does that mean all contractors are lousy?  Of course not.  Please be a bit kinder to museums.  Remember, they are the places that house many of the world's great treasures and without them....well....need I say more?

Steve S.

Offline cicerokid

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Re: The curse of Museums
« Reply #3 on: September 26, 2018, 02:40:15 pm »
Was once thrown out of Fethiye museum for being there.
On another occasion I  asked if I could photograph both sides of the hoard of Athens New Styles in their hoards cabinet but no impossible they indignantly and frostily announced, No way where they going to open the cabinet for publication, no they want that privilege in around another millennium or so-maybe.

Shouted at in Herakleon museum for photographing a woman with snakes goddess thing that parallels the more famous one. OK I know it said. NO PHOTOGRAPHS NOT PUBLISHED or vice versa. And I shouted back IT's been excavated about 100 years ago get your  **** fingers out.( amongst dozens of similar not published info).

The famous BM makes rules on provenance for you....bought on e-bay eh well we cannot tell you what it is UNESCO 1970, but I know they bought coins since that time so it means if they bought the coins to their own counter they would have to refuse thenselves. One description has which modern hoard it came from ( second hand, of course).Meaning that I don't think that Turkey sells it's patrimony to the BM-but you would think so.

Ask Balkan Celts about his enquiries into the whereabouts of much of the coin collections in the Balkan museums and they are cold-war un-cooperative. The curators sold them on e-bay! The museum of Northampton had a masterpiece of ancient Egyptian art. Since it wasn't a shoe or a last the curators hid it in the reserve then had a vote and sold it. Fashions change I guess..

Museums are often the personal private fiefdom of the curators. Except  the Fitzwilliam and the Boston M F A and the ANS who strangely have been most co-operative. Maybe they are not pressed for time like the other places or maybe-horror-care.

Coins are easily identifiable, whilst geological half excavated specimens are often not but that is how museums treat their "stock".

Minutes of photographing the coins and I will match the Thompson obverse and reverse where I can and do a write up without weight or orientation, but no-unless it's been done already but they cannot be bothered to say.

Lazy ignorant B*****s.
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Offline JBF

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Re: The curse of Museums
« Reply #4 on: September 26, 2018, 07:18:47 pm »
You will catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.  (that does not mean, they are not flies).  From what I understand, museum property is not, shall we say, copyrighted.  They might be happy to sell you a photo, but they are not happy to let you photograph, unless you have an arrangement with them, that you are going to use it for 'x' book or article, the usage of that photo being limited and defined by copyright.  They are not interested in you just having a photograph for your files, because they don't know who you are (in the grand pecking order), and if such a photo gets out and published, they have no control of it as intellectual property.

I had a Japanese professor, who taught Japanese art and aesthetics, who had a slide library, having in some cases seruptitiously taken photos and various shrines without permission.  Now authorities are not necessarily worried about someone like that, a scholar who is just showing his photos in a class a year, but who says it couldn't have been someone putting together a book, or making postcards?  Shrines have to pay the electricity bills too, and so do museums.  Museums and shrines are not necessarily worried about what you are going to do with photos, but they are worried about what you _could_ do.  I mean, that is what happened to the Dead Sea Scrolls, an unauthorized copy was made, there was no agreement covering that unauthorized copy, and it was thus published.  Something that for most people was a good thing and long overdue, but for others it ruined a perfectly 'good' monopoly giving lifetime, multi-generational job security to a handful of Biblical scholars.

So, cicerokid, I am not sure you realize what you are asking, they're not willing to relinquish control unless they do it under formal conditions of recognizing copyright and intellectual property.  When the cat is out of the bag, it doesn't want to get back in.

You might look to the Greek cultural ministry.  Ask them 'How' do you get photographs 'just' for a scholarly article (or for whatever you want them for.'

Wishing you good fortune on your endeavors.

Offline cicerokid

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Re: The curse of Museums
« Reply #5 on: September 27, 2018, 04:29:02 am »
So JBF, what your saying is that the international cultural objects are really only a money making scam and that the museums are not remotely interested in RESEARCH.

No wonder the curators sell objects off. Then it only fair that they go on e-bay where some interested people can do the work that the professionals cannot be arsed to do.

Yep you said it!

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Offline cicerokid

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Re: The curse of Museums
« Reply #6 on: September 27, 2018, 04:42:31 am »


From "The BM, UNESCO 1970, coin collectors and me" by John Arnold Nisbet. Full article on academia.edu for free.

Below is a typical example of one of many coins from limited provenances that were bought well after 1970. They are well and truly hoisted with their own petard on this one example.

Museum number: 1987, 0648.1
Findspot: 
Excavated/Findspot: Miletus (hoard)
 (Asia, Turkey, Aegean Region (Turkey), Aydın (province), Miletus)
Acquisition name
Purchased from: A H Baldwin & Sons Ltd

Acquisition date
1987
•   Department
Coins & Medals
•   Registration number
1987, 0648.1
•   
Didn't know Turkey sold its patrimony. Well at least it's published!

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Offline cicerokid

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Re: The curse of Museums
« Reply #7 on: September 27, 2018, 06:13:15 am »
"She took every opportunity to visit the British Museum rooms. There, she eventually met E. A. Wallis Budge, who was taken by her youthful enthusiasm and encouraged her in the study of hieroglyphs"

Excerpt from Wikipedia on the life of Om Sety
 
This would not happen today.

Wallis-Budge could read both Hieroglyphs and cuneiform ( Babylonian) and a prolific author and collector. He is demonised at the BM Egyptology dept because he is the wrong sort of curatorial antecedents of today's curators...cf above post
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Offline cicerokid

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Re: The curse of Museums
« Reply #8 on: September 27, 2018, 08:23:52 am »
and finally,
Contacted the Cultural people at the EU


Your registered enquiry to the Europe Direct contact centre is as follows:

For my research I have enquired 4 times to the National Archaeology Museum Abbruzi..Museo Archeologico Nazionale d'Abruzzo in Chieti Italy.
Both in English and in Italian. I do not doubt this museum has had EU grants indirect and directly BUT THEY DO NOT REPLY. What I need is photographs of all the Athens New Style coins as Coin 1 ObverseReverse 1....etc from their portion of the Poggio Picenze Hoard IGCH 2056. The coins are on display in the numismatics dept. so it is no big deal to open the cabinet and photograph them. I repeat this is for my research. What is a museum for if not research? Otherwise it is Disneyland. A place where objects are held prisoner. Getting co-operation


I know Italy gets Cultural grants from the EU.
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Offline JBF

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Re: The curse of Museums
« Reply #9 on: September 27, 2018, 05:58:45 pm »
Do ya wanna fight?  Or do ya wanna dance?  If ya wanna dance, ya gotta sweet talk the gal, even if she looks like a horse.  If ya wanna fight, I think you can take care of that yourself.  mind you, I have no access to museums other than buying a ticket, so fighting with me won't take care of anything.  Museums have expenses, just like anything else, but yes, they either make money, or have public or state support or go under.  I would like you to be able to negotiate some kind of access, but again, more flies with honey than with vinegar.  You have no _right_ to access, especially for a foreign museum (unless it says so in their presiding documents).  I think it would be nice if you were allowed to play in their sandbox, but only if you can show you can play nice.  And remember what she said, "you can be wrong and sleep in the bed, or you can be right and sleep on the couch."

Offline PMah

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Re: The curse of Museums
« Reply #10 on: September 27, 2018, 11:32:10 pm »
You may want to reassess your approach. 

Usually,  museums and other cultural institutions expect to see quite a bit more than just an email to grant direct access to collection materials. At a minimum,  a letter of introduction from a known authority in the field, or some sort of  academic or institutional affiliation plus a project precis and time to review..  30+ years ago I needed a letter of introduction just to read in the Bodleian Library collections at Oxford.

You might want to read the American Numismatic Association website to get an idea of how a coin-specialist institution handles access and image rights. 

 Most institutions usually have a formal process for "access requests".  Depending on the project, it can be quite an undertaking.  For example:

http://www.britishmuseum.org/about_us/departments/conservation_and_science/facilities_and_services/collection_scientific_study.aspx

I would not expect any museum to give direct access to material without establishing one's bona fides and I'd still expect to have to wait until the project fit in the institution's staffing and security schedule.

Good luck with your project, it sounds interesting.
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Offline helvetica

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Re: The curse of Museums
« Reply #11 on: October 08, 2018, 06:22:16 pm »
Hey Cicerokid
During my Lydian researches I have had the most fabulous assistance from museums and national collections in getting images of really really rare bronzes which haven't been in trade since the early 1800s and which are nowhere online except as often vague descriptions (or even incorrectly described in the case of one modern book - the author didn't realise that a temple was seen in perspective, so counted the front and side colums together). These helpful museums include, but are not limited to Princeton, Prague, Glasgow and Vienna.

With one exception: : I have written to at least three different museums in Italy and none of them replied.

So Italy does indeed appear to be a problem as far as the "they are OURS and we're not going to share them" attitude goes.

Offline JBF

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Re: The curse of Museums
« Reply #12 on: October 09, 2018, 04:32:41 pm »
I know that the ANS, at least in the past, has published hoards.  Could there be an equivalent in Italy?  A numismatic association or society that publishes hoards.  I assume you have already checked, but I mention it for sake of thoroughness.  Perhaps you could contact an association or society that has published hoards and have them inquire (with them saying, if it hasn't been done already, well then it _ought_ to be done for the hoard you are interested in.)  It could be that there is a particular scholar responsible for the hoard, and they are (effectively) sitting on it.

Offline Joe Sermarini

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Re: The curse of Museums
« Reply #13 on: October 11, 2018, 06:10:20 am »
This discussion is about coins, not modern politics. Most of this thread complies but not all.
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