Open Forum

Do you include the donor information on your museum labels?   We always have but I know a lot of museum's don't, choosing to focus more on the content.  I'm just curious as to what others are doing.

------------------------------
Rachelle Meinecke
Director
Lowell D. Holmes Museum of Anthropology - Wichita State University
Wichita KS
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 4/27/2021 4:34:00 PM
From: Rachelle Meinecke
Subject: Donor information on labels

Do you include the donor information on your museum labels?   We always have but I know a lot of museum's don't, choosing to focus more on the content.  I'm just curious as to what others are doing.

------------------------------
Rachelle Meinecke
Director
Lowell D. Holmes Museum of Anthropology - Wichita State University
Wichita KS
------------------------------

When I started doing exhibits at the Logan Museum of Anthropology many years ago, I stopped including donor or collection information and I'm not sure my co-workers even noticed, let alone the visitors. My thinking is that it's interpretive noise and anyone wanting to know about donor or collection is probably savvy enough to know who to call and ask.

Dan

------------------------------
Dan Bartlett
Curator of Exhibits
Elmhurst History Museum
Elmhurst IL
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 04-27-2021 04:33 PM
From: Rachelle Meinecke
Subject: Donor information on labels

Do you include the donor information on your museum labels?   We always have but I know a lot of museum's don't, choosing to focus more on the content.  I'm just curious as to what others are doing.

------------------------------
Rachelle Meinecke
Director
Lowell D. Holmes Museum of Anthropology - Wichita State University
Wichita KS
------------------------------

At the Phila. Sports Hall of Fame's museum Preview Gallery, our exhibits consist of Hall of Fame sourced items as well as donated and/or loaned items.  We prefer to acknowledge anyone or any organization that contributed to a given exhibit but always ask if the donor or lender wish to remain anonymous.

Hope this helps, Ken

------------------------------
Ken Avallon
Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame
kavallon@phillyhall.net
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 04-27-2021 04:33 PM
From: Rachelle Meinecke
Subject: Donor information on labels

Do you include the donor information on your museum labels?   We always have but I know a lot of museum's don't, choosing to focus more on the content.  I'm just curious as to what others are doing.

------------------------------
Rachelle Meinecke
Director
Lowell D. Holmes Museum of Anthropology - Wichita State University
Wichita KS
------------------------------

As a former exhibition designer and executive director for over 25 years we always credited loans to either an individual or an institution.

Object donors, however, we generally did not put on interpretive labels. Most exhibitions we mounted had a separate "acknowledgement" panel that listed financial supporters, sponsors, loans and (sometimes) object donors.

Hope this helps.

------------------------------
Courtney B. Wilson
Museum Consultant and Retired Executive Director
Courtney B. Wilson & Associates, LLC
Saint Augustine, FL 32080
410-340-4226
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 04-27-2021 04:33 PM
From: Rachelle Meinecke
Subject: Donor information on labels

Do you include the donor information on your museum labels?   We always have but I know a lot of museum's don't, choosing to focus more on the content.  I'm just curious as to what others are doing.

------------------------------
Rachelle Meinecke
Director
Lowell D. Holmes Museum of Anthropology - Wichita State University
Wichita KS
------------------------------

I am interested in the thread of this question. For one thing, I wondered if Rachel meant simply, "do you use a credit line?", which I could not imagine not having, but we are an art and history museum, not an anthropology museum, which perhaps has a different label culture. So I wondered if the question was, "Does the story of the donation of the gift, or the donor's life (perhaps as a scientist collector), feature as part of the label's narrative?" That would be much less common in our labels, depending on the context of the display. For example, we just had our centennial, and several objects were highlighted throughout the year with labels that explained, among other things, some details of their donation.

We always include the credit line, unless it's an "found in collection" object and we don't know. Even if it was given anonymously, then we say that. We also have the year given. We used to stop there, but our current contact manager also puts the accession number in parentheses. I have to agree that it can be helpful, if only for our own institutional archives record, for some types of historical materials. For documentary photos, which may vary in title used according to context, it might be difficult for future curators to know exactly which one was used. Another example: we have a large cane collection from one person. If an old checklist just had the credit line, "Gift of Mrs. Witte, 1951," it might be hard to figure out which one they meant.

------------------------------
Laura Vookles
Chair, Curatorial Department
Hudson River Museum
Yonkers NY
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 04-27-2021 04:33 PM
From: Rachelle Meinecke
Subject: Donor information on labels

Do you include the donor information on your museum labels?   We always have but I know a lot of museum's don't, choosing to focus more on the content.  I'm just curious as to what others are doing.

------------------------------
Rachelle Meinecke
Director
Lowell D. Holmes Museum of Anthropology - Wichita State University
Wichita KS
------------------------------

I like this question - It made me think about what we actually do.  I also like the term "label culture" or perhaps "design culture."

For starters, our credit lines are linked to accession lots which are linked to objects.  This is particularly useful when an accession lot has over 2000 objects in it.
The credit line appears in virtual exhibits since the information pulls from the collections database. Credit lines also appears in Exhibition catalogues when we do them. In both cases, you get much more information about any given object than you do in an actual object label.

As for credit lines in live exhibitions, well that really depends on the designer and their vision versus the curator and their vision. Normally we go with variable size text panels and basic object labels without credit lines.  But we also have themes that require using credit lines if not on the object level, in a dedicated panel.  Examples:  The new acquisition case always credits the donor.  In addition, we have panels crediting and/or documenting  the Museum's archaeological or ethnographic expeditions.  If a significant portion of the objects come from one or two sources, they may be singled out for 'profiles.'

Chrisso Boulis
Registrar Records
Penn Museum


------------------------------
Chrisso Boulis
Registrar, Records
Penn Museum - University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia PA
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 04-29-2021 06:02 AM
From: Laura Vookles
Subject: Donor information on labels

I am interested in the thread of this question. For one thing, I wondered if Rachel meant simply, "do you use a credit line?", which I could not imagine not having, but we are an art and history museum, not an anthropology museum, which perhaps has a different label culture. So I wondered if the question was, "Does the story of the donation of the gift, or the donor's life (perhaps as a scientist collector), feature as part of the label's narrative?" That would be much less common in our labels, depending on the context of the display. For example, we just had our centennial, and several objects were highlighted throughout the year with labels that explained, among other things, some details of their donation.

We always include the credit line, unless it's an "found in collection" object and we don't know. Even if it was given anonymously, then we say that. We also have the year given. We used to stop there, but our current contact manager also puts the accession number in parentheses. I have to agree that it can be helpful, if only for our own institutional archives record, for some types of historical materials. For documentary photos, which may vary in title used according to context, it might be difficult for future curators to know exactly which one was used. Another example: we have a large cane collection from one person. If an old checklist just had the credit line, "Gift of Mrs. Witte, 1951," it might be hard to figure out which one they meant.

------------------------------
Laura Vookles
Chair, Curatorial Department
Hudson River Museum
Yonkers NY

Original Message:
Sent: 04-27-2021 04:33 PM
From: Rachelle Meinecke
Subject: Donor information on labels

Do you include the donor information on your museum labels?   We always have but I know a lot of museum's don't, choosing to focus more on the content.  I'm just curious as to what others are doing.

------------------------------
Rachelle Meinecke
Director
Lowell D. Holmes Museum of Anthropology - Wichita State University
Wichita KS
------------------------------

Yes at the Museum of Texas Tech University, just as they do in Chester County, we  include donor information on the labels. This is a very nice way to honor the donation and I think people like to be recognized for their contributions.  On our gift agreements the donor has the option to tell us how they would like the text to read and if they prefer to be anonymous

------------------------------
Marian Ann Montgomery PhD
Curator of Clothing and Textiles
Museum of Texas Tech University
Lubbock TX
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 04-27-2021 04:33 PM
From: Rachelle Meinecke
Subject: Donor information on labels

Do you include the donor information on your museum labels?   We always have but I know a lot of museum's don't, choosing to focus more on the content.  I'm just curious as to what others are doing.

------------------------------
Rachelle Meinecke
Director
Lowell D. Holmes Museum of Anthropology - Wichita State University
Wichita KS
------------------------------

At the Crocker Art Museu, in Sacramento, CA we do indeed put the donor's name on the label unless they ask us not to, then we say "gift of anonymous donor".  I think donors like seeing their names, and thus people are more willing to give us cool things. People like seeing their names and being seen. I can't say when and how that decision was made way back when, but I can say that it does help with our collection.

------------------------------
Matthew Isble
Exhibit Designer & Founder of MuseumTrade.org
misble@crockerartmuseum.org
Crocker Art Museum
Sacramento CA
misble@crockerartmuseum.org
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: 04-27-2021 04:33 PM
From: Rachelle Meinecke
Subject: Donor information on labels

Do you include the donor information on your museum labels?   We always have but I know a lot of museum's don't, choosing to focus more on the content.  I'm just curious as to what others are doing.

------------------------------
Rachelle Meinecke
Director
Lowell D. Holmes Museum of Anthropology - Wichita State University
Wichita KS
------------------------------