Museum Press
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3,500 Years of Glass Beads Featured in Major Exhibition at The Corning Museum of Glass
Featuring for the first time nearly 200 of the most important beads and beaded objects from the Corning Museum’s collection
Corning, NY—Symbolizing power, enabling ornamentation, and facilitating trade, glass beads are miniature masterpieces that have played significant roles throughout time and across cultures. This summer, a major exhibition at The Corning Museum of Glass will explore glass beads and beaded objects made by various cultures, representing 3,500 years of human history. On view from May 18, 2013, to January 5, 2014, Life on a String: 35 Centuries of the Glass Bead will showcase, for the first time, many important works from the large historical glass bead collection of The Corning Museum of Glass as well as objects on loan from seven institutions.
“Glass beads are truly remarkable objects—they are the miniature masterpieces of the Museum’s collection,” says Karol Wight, executive director and curator of ancient and Islamic glass. “These works are important not only for their artistry, but also for the way they are used to convey social and political messages, and for the manner in which beading traditions have been carried on over many centuries.”
Jacqueline Irène Lillie, Neckpiece, 1992Life on a String will explore the use of glass beads for fashion and ornament, as symbols of power and wealth, as traded goods, and as objects of ritual, as well as illuminate the processes of beadmaking and beadworking. Curated by Adrienne V. Gennett and designed by noted industrial and product designer Harry Allen, the exhibition will present nearly 200 objects, many of which have never before been on display.
Highlights of the exhibition include early Venetian chevron and millefiori beads, Roman mosaic beads, West Africa bodom beads, Egyptian eye beads, Chinese horned eye beads, Japanese magatama beads, Bohemian beads imitating precious stones, North American beadworked garments, and contemporary beaded objects by Joyce Scott and David Chatt.
Joyce Scott, Three Graces Oblivious While Los Angeles Burns, 1992The size of glass beads often belies their importance. They can represent wealth, symbolize gender and family relationships, or indicate social status, all through meaning signified in their color and patterning. Economic and political relationships around the globe—especially during the period of European colonization—are embodied in the beads manufactured in Europe and distributed in Africa and North America. Their styles influenced indigenous bead production, and ultimately, beads made in formerly colonized lands followed a reverse course back to Europe.
Traded globally for centuries, glass beads are among the earliest attempts at glass production and have been found at ancient glass manufacturing sites in the eastern Mediterranean from the second millennium B.C. The beads in the exhibition demonstrate the variations in manufacturing techniques used to create beads and beaded objects through time. A loom for beading and molds used to make powdered glass bodom beads will be on display along with images of beads being produced around the world, to illuminate the vast and rich history of techniques for bead production.
A new companion book, Glass Beads: Selections from The Corning Museum of Glass, by exhibition curator Adrienne V. Gennett, former curatorial assistant of The Corning Museum of Glass, now assistant curator of collections and education at the University Museums at Iowa State University, with contributions by Tina Oldknow, the Museum’s curator of modern glass, will be available to purchase from the Museum’s GlassMarket (glassmarket.cmog.org) in May 2013. The book features fifty highlights of beads and beaded objects in the Museum’s collection.
Composite Eye Bead, Eastern Mediterranean, Carthage, 600-250 B.C.On Saturday, May 18, the Museum will offer free programs as part of the Association of Art Museum Directors’ (AAMD) Art Museum Day, coinciding with International Museum Day. Visitors are invited to take free guided tours of Life on a String with exhibition curator Adrienne Gennett and watch free flameworking demonstrations to see how glass beads are made. Participate in Art Museum Day from anywhere in the world via social media. Join online using the hashtag #artmuseumday, and see what others are sharing on Twitter at @corningmuseum.
During the run of the exhibition, the Museum will offer special narrated flameworking demonstrations to show techniques used to make glass beads, and visitors will have the opportunity to create beads in hands-on Make Your Own Glass experiences. On October 18-19, 2013, the Museum will host its Annual Seminar on Glass focused on glass beads and beadwork through time and from around the world.
Lenders to the exhibition include The Metropolitan Museum of Art, American Museum of Natural History, Eliot Elisofon Photo Archives at the National Museum of African Art, Rockwell Museum of Western Art, Fenimore Art Museum, Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University, and Longyear Anthropology Museum at Colgate University.
About The Corning Museum of Glass
The Corning Museum of Glass (www.cmog.org) is the foremost authority on the art, history, science, and design of glass. It is home to the world’s most important collection of glass, including the finest examples of glassmaking spanning 3,500 years. Live glassblowing demonstrations (offered at the Museum, on the road, and at sea on Celebrity Cruises) bring the material to life. Daily Make Your Own Glass experiences at the Museum enable visitors to create work in a state-of-the-art glassmaking studio. The campus in Corning includes a year-round glassmaking school, The Studio, and the Rakow Research Library, the world’s preeminent collection of materials on the art and history of glass. Located in the heart of the Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State, the Museum is open daily, year-round. Kids and teens, 19 and under, receive free admission.
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To access high-resolution images visit cmog.org/press.
For more information, please contact:
Yvette Sterbenk / Mandy Kritzeck
Corning Museum of Glass
607-438-5273 / 5239
sterbenkym / kritzeckms@cmog.org -
Retrospective of Influential Artist Richard Marquis at The Corning Museum of Glass
Corning, NY—The Corning Museum of Glass will present a special exhibition of the work of the influential studio glass artist Richard Marquis. One of the first American studio glassmakers to travel to Italy to learn historic Venetian techniques, Marquis is known internationally for his work in blown filigrana and murrine glass. Masters of Studio Glass: Richard Marquis, on view from February 16, 2013 through February 2, 2014, will feature 30 works spanning 45 years of the artist’s career from 1967 to 2012. This exhibition is part of the Corning Museum’s ongoing Masters of Studio Glass series, which presents in-depth surveys of artists represented in the Museum’s permanent collection.
“Richard Marquis has had an extraordinary influence on the development of contemporary studio glass in America and around the world,” says Tina Oldknow, curator of modern glass at the Museum. “As an artist, Marquis is admired for his understanding of color and form as much as for his offbeat humor and willingness to experiment. As a glassblower, he has influenced an entire generation of artists working in glass who aspire to his technical mastery and the originality of his vision.”
Highlights of Masters of Studio Glass: Richard Marquis include the unusual Potato Landscape Pitcher (1979), the densely patterned Marquiscarpa #26 (1992) from his series inspired by designs made in the 1940s for the Venini glassworks by the acclaimed Venetian architect Carlo Scarpa; Granulare Vase/Anvil (English Setter) (1997) which documents Marquis’ mastery of Venetian granulare, a difficult technique that Marquis himself researched and revived; and a tiny slice of a murrine word cane of the Lord’s Prayer. To make Lord’s Prayer (1971), Marquis bundled together and fused groups of glass rods, which can be infinitely stretched out when hot, reducing the words of the prayer to the size of a pinhead.
Born in Bumblebee, AZ, in 1945, Marquis has always been a maker and a collector of objects. He frequently uses his collections in the creation of his works, combining found pieces—such as a salt shaker, shaving brush, or paint-by-number painting—with glass elements. His work is often associated with the mid-20th-century movement known as Funk art, but his objects have multiple references, including the ceramics of Peter Voulkos and Ron Nagle, sculptures by Manuel Neri and James Melchert, the paintings of Giorgio Morandi, R. Crumb’s underground comic imagery, and the assemblage works of H.C. Westermann and Joseph Cornell.
In 1963, Marquis left his childhood home in southern California to attend the University of California at Berkeley. His introduction to glass came through the artist Marvin Lipofsky, who established a glass program at Berkeley in 1964. By 1968, Marquis had decided to pursue a master’s degree, and he applied for a Fulbright grant to travel to Venice to observe glassmaking techniques. Acting on the advice of another young studio glass artist, Dale Chihuly—who visited Murano on a Fulbright in 1968—Marquis ended up, in 1969, at the famous Venini glassworks on Murano. The Museum’s Stars and Stripes Acid Capsule #4 (1969) and small pink and white Mae West Cup (1969) were made during his time at Venini.
As one of the first American studio glassmakers to travel to Italy to study traditional Venetian techniques, Marquis learned about murrine, a canne and incalmo, processes that he would later teach to other American studio glassblowers at schools across the country, including Penland School of Crafts, Pilchuck Glass School, Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and the University of California, Los Angeles.
During the seventies, Marquis further developed his colorful murrine for one of his favorite forms: the teapot. The Museum’s Crazy Quilt Teapot #38 (1980) is a signature example of his murrine patterns based on traditional American crazy quilts, checkerboards, and Venetian pezzato or patchwork vases of the 1950s. The exhibition also includes Marquis’ more recent work with Bullseye color-compatible glasses. Dust Pan #04-6 (2004) is an example of Marquis’ work using a new technique that he calls “slab construction,” a term borrowed from ceramics.
Marquis has been honored with Lifetime Achievement Awards by the Glass Art Society and by the Art Alliance for Contemporary Glass. He has received the James Renwick Alliance Masters of the Medium Award, Smithsonian Institute, and he is a member of the American Craft Council College of Fellows. His works are represented in more than 50 international museum collections including Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; Finnish Glass Museum, Riihimaki, Finland; Glasmuseet Ebeltoft, Ebeltoft, Denmark; Museum Kunst Palast, Dusseldorf, Germany; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Musée du Design et Arts Appliqués Contemporains, Lausanne, Switzerland; Museum of Arts and Design, New York, NY; National Museum of American Art, Renwick Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; New Glass Museum, Tsukuba, Japan; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia; Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada; and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, United Kingdom.
About The Corning Museum of Glass
The Corning Museum of Glass (www.cmog.org) is the foremost authority on the art, history, science, and design of glass. It is home to the world’s most important collection of glass, including the finest examples of glassmaking spanning 3,500 years. Live glassblowing demonstrations (offered at the Museum, on the road, and at sea on Celebrity Cruises) bring the material to life. Daily Make Your Own Glass experiences at the Museum enable visitors to create work in a state-of-the-art glassmaking studio. The campus in Corning includes a year-round glassmaking school, The Studio, and the Rakow Research Library, the world’s preeminent collection of materials on the art and history of glass. Located in the heart of the Finger Lakes Wine Country of New York State, the Museum is open daily, year-round. Kids and teens, 19 and under, receive free admission.
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To access high-resolution images visit cmog.org/press-center.
For more information, please contact:
Yvette Sterbenk / Mandy Kritzeck
Corning Museum of Glass
607-438-5273 / 5239
sterbenkym / kritzeckms@cmog.org -
February 12, 2013
PRESS RELEASE
For immediate publication
Double feature exhibition at the Museo de Arte de Ponce
The Art of the Empire: Three Centuries of British Art
and Art in Response: Jorge Díaz Torres
will open to the public on Saturday, February 23
Ponce, PR—Museo de Arte de Ponce opens 2013 in a big way with a curated exhibition of British art entitled The Art of the Empire: Three Centuries of British Art alongside an installation of contemporary art titled Art in Response: Jorge Díaz Torres. The dual opening on Saturday, February 23 for the general public is not coincidental but rather reflects the museum’s institutional goals of catering to a wide range of interests and enabling audiences to have a common space to meet, discover new horizons, and begin new dialogues.
The Art of the Empire: Three Centuries of British Art
February 23–September 30, 2013
Eighty-four works of art—paintings, sculptures, art on paper, drawings, and photographs—comprise the exhibition The Art of the Empire: Three Centuries of British Art, which embraces a display of the museum’s British Collection presented in a never-before-seen manner.
This exhibition reflects the evolution and vitality of 300 years of British art, from the 18th century to our own day, showing the faces of its society, the landscapes that enthralled it, and the vision of the Pre-Raphaelites, a group of indomitable young artists who would transform English art forever. In the 19th century, England was the proud head of a vast global empire. However, for British artists this was a period of identity crisis and self-exploration: The country that had given Shakespeare and Adam Smith to the world, and was in the midst of the Industrial Revolution, still had not made a name for itself in the fields of painting and sculpture.
Organized by curator Pablo Pérez d’Ors both thematically and chronologically, this exhibition shows how, since the 18th century, British artists such as Thomas Gainsborough, Edward Burne-Jones, and Frederic Leighton dealt with the tension between an exploration of their roots and a fascination with the exotic, between finding their own voice and paying tribute to the best art from different times and places. “This exhibition includes works from a historical period when England was at the head of an empire on which the sun never set, when Queen Victoria’s word was law from the Caribbean all the way to India,” Pérez d’Ors explains. “But there was also a crisis in terms of art, there was a quest. ‘What is our voice?’, asked the artists of the time.” The selection also includes works by artists from the second half of the 20th century, when British artists were confronting the reality of a world in the midst of radical changes. We see this struggle in works by Gilbert & George, Damien Hirst, and Chiris Ofili.
Agustin Arteaga, director of the Museo de Arte de Ponce, notes that the exhibition The Art of the Empire: Three Centuries of British Art “showcases the best of our collection in a new and different way, allowing us to reintroduce our very finest selection and celebrate it with Puerto Rico.” The exhibition applauds the legacy to Puerto Rico of a collection of British art that stands among the great collections of the world. It was compiled by Museo de Arte de Ponce founder, Luis A. Ferré, starting in the 1960s. Its 68 major works are being shown together for the first time, along with an important loan of originals by William Morris, from the Casa del Libro in San Juan. Accompanied by rarely seen paintings, prints, and sculptures by Francis Bacon, Lucian Freud, Liam GIllick, Henry Moore, Raqib Shaw, and Mark Titchner, from private collections in Puerto Rico, the exhibit will show the solidity of a tradition open always to the new. “We are fortunate that in Puerto Rico there are great contemporary British art collections,” Pérez d’Ors pointed out. “We’ve brought in great figures both from the 20th century, with the beginnings of Abstraction in the United Kingdom, and the first years of the 21st century.”
The exhibition also marks the publication of the first volume of our new catalog for the museum’s British Collection. This catalog was developed with experts from the Tate Britain gallery in England, who were able to work with the works from the Museo de Arte de Ponce when the British Collection travelled to London.
Art in Response: Jorge Díaz Torres
February 23–May 27, 2013
Directed by associate curator María Arlette de la Serna, Art in Response is a program that invites contemporary artists to choose an art piece, or a period represented in the Museo de Arte de Ponce’s collection of European art, as a point of departure for the development of a piece or series, which in turn is exhibited later as a counterpoint to the original work.
“With programs such as Art in Response, the Museo de Arte de Ponce serves as a forum for a dialogue between traditional and contemporary creation. This time the museum has invited young artist Jorge Díaz Torres, who presents a contemporary sculpture that initiates a dialogue with the collection and the architectural spaces of the museum itself, the Edward Durell Stone building,” explained María Arlette de la Serna.
The work by Díaz Torres reminds us of the experimental spirit of Marcel Duchamp, with key aspects such as the use of everyday materials and the exploration of the frontiers between art and life. Díaz Torres’ work reflects the ephemeral material world and the overrated value placed on objects, in harmony with Auguste Rodin’s innovative practices (inspired by tradition, but rebellious in its idealized forms) and Duchamp’s truly innovative artistic reevaluation of everyday objects.
An essential part of the development of modern art is the evolution of sculpture that took place throughout the late 19th century and early 20th. In Art in Response, Díaz Torres portrays, in sculpture, urban elements, but outside their usual contexts. He re-positions them in a controlled environment, thereby creating awareness in the spectator of things that ordinarily go unnoticed. The artist also plays with the perception of what is real and uses his sculpture to stimulate emotions and bring us new ways to look at objects.
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Images accompanying this press release:
For the exhibition titled The Art of the Empire, we include two attached (lo-res) images. You may access the high resolution images via the following link: Click here to view El Arte del Imperio (Tiff).
Mandatory credits for these art pieces are as follows:
- Frederick Sandys, Isolda with the Love Potion, 1870, oil on canvas.
- John Everett Millais, The Escape of a Heretic, 1559, 1857, oil on canvas.
- Matthew Ritchie, We Sail Today,2006.Photo by: Ellen Page Wilson. Courtesy of: Andrea Rosen Gallery, NY.
- For the exhibition titled Art in Response, we include a photo of artist Jorge Díaz Torres.
CONTACT:
Marisol Navas
Communications, Marketing
and Public Relations Director
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QMA and Ashghal Commission Renowned Graffiti Artist to Embellish Salwa Road Tunnels
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SJMA TO SHOWCASE CONTEMPORARY CHINESE PHOTOGRAPHY THIS SPRING
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Reynolda House Exhibit Celebrates 100th Anniversary of The Armory Show
Reynolda House Museum of American Art Celebrates 100th Anniversary of Armory Show
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Sarah R. Smith
336.758.5524
smithsr@reynoldahouse.org
WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. (Dec. 11, 2012) – Reynolda House Museum of American Art presents “The Armory Show: One Hundred Years Later,” an exhibition celebrating the 100th anniversary of the original groundbreaking New York City show. The exhibition debuts in the West Bedroom gallery of the historic house Dec. 15, 2012.
The Armory Show originally opened in New York in 1913. The work of American artists like George Bellows, Robert Henri and John Sloan was considered progressive, but the work of European artists like Paul Cézanne, Marcel Duchamp, Pablo Picasso and Paul Gauguin truly shocked exhibition visitors. Despite the poor reception of the work by some members of the press and the general public, the work in the Armory Show went on to inspire a significant number of American artists.
The Reynolda House exhibition includes works from Reynolda House and private collections by artists who participated in the original 1913 exhibition. The show will be on view through June 23, 2013, and will feature important works by Bellows, Henri and Sloan, along with Mary Cassatt, Childe Hassam, Alfred Maurer, Maurice Prendergast and others.
Managing Curator Allison Slaby will present a gallery talk on the date of the Armory Show’s 100th anniversary, Feb. 17, 2013 at 2:30 p.m. The talk is free with museum admission.
Reynolda House Museum of American Art is one of the nation’s premier American art museums, with masterpieces by Mary Cassatt, Frederic Church, Jacob Lawrence, Georgia O’Keeffe and Gilbert Stuart among its collection. Affiliated with Wake Forest University, Reynolda House features changing exhibitions, concerts, lectures, classes, film screenings and other events. The museum is located in Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the historic 1917 estate of Katharine Smith Reynolds and her husband, Richard Joshua Reynolds, founder of the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Reynolda House and adjacent Reynolda Gardens and Reynolda Village feature a spectacular public garden, dining, shopping and walking trails. For more information, please visit reynoldahouse.org or call 336.758.5150.
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Dining Out: A Chronology Of American Menus
Dining Out: A Chronology Of American Menus
October 30, 2012 – May 5, 2013
New York, NY— Dining Out: A Chronology Of American Menus opened October 30, 2012, at The Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden and will remain on view until May 5, 2013. This is the first in-depth exhibition of the Henry Voigt Collection of American Menus. This three-part rotating exhibit illustrates not only what Americans ate in the 19th century but also the evolution of American culture.
Part I, “Early American Menus,” features over 30 historic menus, dating from 1841-1876. Menus on display include those from the famed Tremont House in Boston and the Delmonico Hotel in New York City. This first installation closes December 30.
Part II, “The American Excursionist,” opening January 9, 2013, features menus from resort hotels, trains and ships, dating from 1870-1900. This installation showcases the emergence of a variety of American vacation destinations in the post-Civil War years from Martha’s Vineyard to Niagara Falls to Yosemite National Park.
Part III, “New York City During the Gilded Age,” opening in March 2013, highlights menus from such historic establishments as the Central Park Casino, the New York Hotel, and the Dorlon Oyster Saloon, dating from 1876-1900. Included in this installation are handcrafted menus from Dempsey & Carroll and Tiffany & Co., the leading society stationers of the era.
An opening reception with a lecture by Henry Voigt will be held on January 9th at 6:30pm at The Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden. Mr. Voigt will discuss his menus from the second installation, “The American Excursionist”, and the insights they provide about 19th-century American travel.
Henry Voigt is a menu collector and culinary historian. His collection reflects his interest in food, art culture, and history. He also maintains the blog The American Menu .
The Mount Vernon Hotel Museum building was constructed in 1799 as a carriage house and converted into a “day hotel” in 1826. Today the museum transports visitors back to that Mount Vernon Hotel, a 19th-century country resort for New Yorkers escaping the crowded city below 14th Street. The Museum’s mission is to preserve and interpret travel, leisure, work and play in diverse antebellum New York.
Visitor Information: The Mount Vernon Hotel Museum & Garden is open Tuesday through Sunday, 11am to 4pm. The exhibit is open concurrent with Museum hours and is included with admission. The Museum is located at 421 East 61st Street between First and York Avenues. It is easily accessible from 59th Street/Lexington Avenue on the 4, 5, 6 or N, R, Q. For further information call the Museum at 212-838-6878 or visit www.mvhm.org.
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PRESS RELEASE
For immediate publication
“Bosco Sodi: Croatia” at the Museo de Arte de Ponce
November 25, 2012, PONCE, PR. —The exhibition Bosco Sodi: Croatia opens at the Museo de Arte de Ponce on Sunday, December 2, at 5:00 pm. Artist Bosco Sodi (Mexico City, 1970) is known for his large monochromatic paintings, rich in texture, that explore materiality, color, and the beauty of raw nature. Bosco Sodi: Croatia consists of six large-format paintings whose cracked surface brings to mind a land burned by the sun and invites us to contemplate the complexities of the aesthetic experience. The exhibition is scheduled to run through March 4, 2013, and will be open to the general public from Wednesday to Monday from 10:00 am to 5:30 pm.
Sodi’s work is an adventure into the unknown; it is driven by the unpredictable, the accidental, and the unique simplicity that is found in the natural landscape. With his hands, Sodi builds up layers of material endemic to nature—pigment, natural fibers, sawdust, and fragments of wood—on the canvas. He continues this process, which he carries out spontaneously, without plan, for one or two days. In time, the surface cracks and solidifies like lava when it cools, creating a suggestive field of color and texture that reflects the exuberant energy with which it was created.
Although the series is titled Croatia—the artist was traveling in that country when he envisioned the series—Sodi produced the six paintings simultaneously in his studio in New York. He imagines these works as “blood brothers with different personalities,” born at the same time with the same materials, but each one completely different from the others due to the unpredictability of the process. Sodi’s work falls within the twentieth-century Abstract avant-garde, and reveals echoes of Antoni Tàpies’ pinturas matéricas (matter paintings, in which non-“artistic” materials are incorporated into the paintings) and Mark Rothko’s color-field work. They explore the contemporary dilemma of what painting is and what it will be in the future.
The idea of bringing this exhibition to Puerto Rico arose during a visit the artist made to the Museo de Arte de Ponce last year. This visit was the beginning of a collaborative alliance between the museum and the Galería Hilario Galguera in Mexico City and the Pace Gallery in New York, the world-renowned gallery that represents Sodi. Before its opening in Puerto Rico, the exhibition was shown at the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso and the Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños, both in Mexico City.
The public is cordially invited to the inauguration of this exhibit. For further information, contact info@museoarteponce.org, go to www.museoarteponce.org, or call 787-840-1510.
CONTACT: Marisol Navas
Director of Communications,
Marketing, and Public Relations
PO Box 9065642
San Juan PR 00906
787-641-3129
mnavas@museodeponce.org
IMAGE: Bosco Sodi (Mexico City, 1970)
Croatia I, 2011
Photo: Kevin Kunstadt, New York -
Eleanor Antin’s 100 Boots in front of MoMA (?)
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AAM | After the Flood: Emergency Stabilization and Conservation Measures
After the Flood: Emergency Stabilization and Conservation MeasuresPreservation Assistance Division, U.S. National Park ServiceAfter the flood waters begin to recede, the focus of relief efforts becomes returning things to normal. During this phase, many historic structures and properties are needlessly lost and damaged through hasty clean-up procedures. The best way to help a historic district, property, or structure prevent additional damage and maintain its integrity and character during these times of duress is with the use of proper caution and concern.While the water is receding, plan the future steps to rehabilitation and restoration carefully. Each decision made today affects future decisions which will need to be made tomorrow. The following areas of concern should be addressed during planning.Personal Safety: The First Priority- Return to the area only after it has been declared safe by local emergency management officials. Follow all emergency rules, laws and regulations.
- Identify potential hazards and solicit expert advice and assistance to minimize the dangers. Report and stay clear from loose power lines or damaged utilities.
- Turn off all utilities associated with the historic property to prevent further damage and minimize future hazards.
Documentation: Developing a Condition Assessment Report- Prepare a visual record showing the scope of the disaster and the damage to the historic fabric. This is best done through annotated photographs, and narrated videotape taken before the cleanup actually begins.
- Create an inventory of found items, dislodged architectural features, decorative fragments, furnishings, collections, etc. DO NOT THROW AWAY MATERIALS AT WILL. Many items may prove their value as the surrounding restoration or rehabilitation projects proceed.
- Use the gathered information to have a team of preservation professionals develop a prioritized plan of stabilization, repair, and restoration.
Read more about what to do after a flood in this technical leaflet from Conservation OnLine.Do You Know What Your Community Enjoys About Your Museum?Museum staff often focus most of their attention on exhibits and programming—core parts of mission delivery that consume much of our attention. However, people often value museums for much broader reasons. They may like hanging out on your grounds, or taking friends to lunch in your café. They may appreciate the business you bring into the neighborhood. They may simply like the architecture of your building. It is important to understand and value the full range of benefits people in your community feel they get from the museum, to ensure you don’t accidentally take away something they appreciate. Also, you can build on these positive feelings to deepen relationships. It is important to understand what you do, or don’t do, to make people comfortable. Even the best visit to a museum will be cut short if the visitor gets tired, hungry or frustrated.
The Community Engagement MAP assessment walks you through these questions and many others to help you better understand your community engagement.
Here are some more tips for understanding what your community enjoys about your museum:- Apply now for the upcoming Dec. 1 MAP deadline
- Invite members of the community in and ask them questions
- Create a survey both on paper and electronically. Put a QR code by the survey so visitors can fill it out later
- Go to Yelp and read comments from visitors
MAP is administered by the Alliance through a cooperative agreement with the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). IMLS-funded MAP grants provide $4,000 of consultative resources and services to participating museums.
