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Art Collections: Cataloguing

Answer

The standards in cataloguing of art collections are maintained by the Government through the Museum Accreditation Scheme, which is administered by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.The accreditation standards scheme is open to all publicly funded or charitable museums in the UK. It was set up in 1988 and is administered by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA). The accreditation requirements for documenting collections in museums and galleries can be summarised as follows:"each item must be entered into an accession register which gives the item a unique number and records from whom the item was acquired;""sufficient information to identify it (in the case of a work of art this would be the artist’s name, title of the work, medium and measurements);""in addition, the accession register number must be marked on the item, there must be a security copy of the register and a record of the item’s location."If any of the requirements are not in place, the museum must provide a plan with dates for completing the work.Some 1,848 UK museums now participate in the accreditation scheme, including all art collections in public ownership. MLA’s research in 2001 indicated that the inclusion of documentation requirements in the scheme was an important factor in ensuring that work on improving documentation of collections continued to take place.Designation Challenge Fund (DCF)This fund, set up in 1999, is available to museums holding designated collections in England. The DCF is financed by DCMS and administered by MLA.About 61 museums have designated collections—of these 28 have designated fine or decorative art collections.Since 1999 approximately £6 million has been allocated to museums to enable them to improve the documentation of these fine/decorative art collections.The Public Catalogue Foundation (PCF) is a charity that is producing a photographic inventory of paintings in public ownership across the country. The MLA is working closely with the PCF and funding is being considered for an IT solution to the current glossy catalogue approach. The MLA and PCF are working jointly to work out how to create a web resource that will be widely accessible, using the latest digitisation technologies.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

3206; 677 c81-2WA

Session

2005-06

Subjects

Artworks Museums and galleries Standards Catalogues Collections

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk