Topic: Cultural institutions

Today, Jennifer Frederick and I published findings from the inaugural art museum director survey, funded by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and conducted in partnership with the Association of Art Museum Directors and the American Alliance of Museums. The survey captures the perspectives of directors from a moment in time before the COVID-19 pandemic forced closures of museums in the US, and before the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor sparked major protests against police brutality…

As collecting institutions on campus, libraries and museums have a great deal to learn from each other. Libraries have excelled in adapting to digital environments, a development that has served them especially well during the COVID-19 pandemic. Academic museums have grown increasingly sophisticated as public spaces, serving as an access point for local communities and visitors of all kinds on otherwise exclusive campuses. In this way, notable competencies have emerged in the library sector towards breadth of access…

Are you passionate about higher education and the arts? Our work helps these organizations and their support providers—including libraries, publishers, scholarly societies, and museums— enhance scholarship, instruction, community engagement, and student success. Ithaka S+R is hiring for two new positions that will work on some of our most exciting research and advisory projects. Both roles will work collaboratively on research projects that lead to publications including grant-funded research…

With generous funding from the Institute of Library and Museum Services (IMLS), we are pleased to initiate an 18-month research project to examine and assess how digital preservation and curation systems (DPCS) are developed, deployed, and sustained. Because our cultural, historic, and scientific heritage is increasingly being produced and shared in digital forms, libraries, archives, and museums are increasingly dependent on digital platforms to support the curation, discovery, and long-term management of digital…

Today we are excited to announce a new project funded by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation that will explore how teaching and learning with cultural heritage collections and materials is evolving in response to the pandemic. Instructors who seek to use cultural heritage objects from museums, archives, and special collections face unique challenges when adapting to remote teaching. What is needed is deeper understanding of, and better support for these instructors in this current moment.  This…

Last week at the American Alliance of Museums Virtual meeting, Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole, Secretary Lonnie Bunch, and Lori Fogarty discussed the protests that have erupted across the country and around the world, in order to start a dialogue about the museum’s role in confronting structural racism in America. Since the reignition of Black Lives Matter protests by George Floyd’s murder, many museums…

Equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility have become buzzwords across the higher education sector with leaders at many institutions asserting these as strategic priorities and key values. In our most recent national survey of US academic library directors, conducted in fall 2019, we included new coverage of these important topics. And, now, as we face an academic year that will likely be shaped by budget cuts and re-prioritization, we wonder about the degree to…

The implications and consequences of the COVID-19  pandemic can vary greatly depending on demographic, political, social, cultural and economic factors.  Therefore the regional documentation initiatives–now being undertaken by cultural heritage institutions throughout the world–are essential to capturing local circumstances and experiences. This work is vital to help future generations understand the extent of the pandemic and its vast impact.  To this end, and in collaboration with several international preservation advocacy organizations, UNESCO recently made a public…

After one month of quarantining to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, the economic impacts of closing small businesses and cultural centers are becoming apparent. In the weeks and months to come, affected organizations will seek relief from numerous institutions for these sacrifices, which were necessary to comply with local orders, decrease the burden on the healthcare industry, and save lives in their communities. The form that relief will take remains to be seen. In cases where cultural organizations…

Museums are in trouble. Consider the three primary sources of revenue for museums: earned revenue from visitors, private support, and endowment income. The first is indefinitely suspended, advocating for the second is increasingly difficult to justify during a public health crisis, and the third has been dramatically reduced by losses in the market. The Met and MoMA are laying off hundreds. While the threats those museums face are not necessarily existential, many other museums with smaller budgets will…

The COVID-19 public health crisis gripping the world today has been a sprint for leaders over the past week or two, making urgent decisions about closing facilities, virtualizing the workforce, and providing services online. In the weeks and months ahead, we will face a full marathon, with colleagues, services, and in some cases businesses needing care and tending in a period of great uncertainty.  In a public health emergency, every organization must ensure it is caring…

Efforts to stem the spread of COVID-19 have fundamentally, and in many cases permanently, transformed the landscape of cultural consumption. As of Monday, March 16th, over 400 major US museums have closed their doors and ceased their traditional programming. While this is an essential part of collectively weathering a public health crisis that is likely to overwhelm the US healthcare system in a matter of days, these closures invariably introduce a deep degree of precarity for hundreds of…

When considering the themes of the art world in 2019, money seems to dominate the narrative, perhaps slightly more than usual, and from a few different angles. Jeff Koons reclaimed the title of most expensive sale of an artwork by a living artist at $90.2 million. Protests addressed the controversial philanthropy of Kanders and the Sacklers, among others. Museum staff unionized at the…

Today, Ithaka S+R is co-publishing, with Columbia University Libraries, a summary report about a roundtable held over the summer about Copyright Education in Libraries, Archives, and Museums. This is the latest step by a group of copyright experts and educators towards strengthening and sustaining copyright education for memory institutions and the research and educational missions they serve.  Ithaka S+R’s, in close partnership with Columbia’s Rina Elster Pantalony and Lyrasis’s Tom Clareson,…

This winter, we will field our first national survey of art museum directors in partnership with the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and with support from the Kress Foundation. This study builds on our previous work with art museums, including the Art Museum Staff Demographic Survey, case studies with eight AAMD museums, and research into the organizational structure of art museums, as…

Ithaka S+R is conducting a study on the relationship between academic libraries and campus museums, looking specifically at how they are governed and structured. With funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, we are in the process of inviting forty universities to participate, and over the Fall will interview the directors of both their museum and library in order to learn more about how these campus units operate in relation to the university and to one another.  …

In recent years, American art museums have faced a complex set of institutional demands, from scrutiny over ethical issues concerning donor relations, to hiring practices and efforts towards making the museum more accessible to the public. At the same time, museums enjoy a high level of public trust at a time when most American institutions are actively mistrusted. The sector produces over 700,000 jobs, adding over $50 billion to the…