Author: Weil, Stephen E.

Publication Year: 1982

Media Type: Report

Summary:

Abstract:

If American museums once were islands, separate from the turmoil of the surrounding world, their situation is very different today. Difficult questions face them at every turn:

• Who will provide the resources for the museums of tomorrow?
• How can museums mediate between their traditional mandate to serve the future and the insistent demands of the present?
• By what mechanisms can museums management be strengthened without compromising basic museum goals?

These are but a few of the issues that Stephen E. Weil addresses in the first section of Beauty and the Beasts, a collection of nineteen essays and speeches written since 1971 and updated where necessary by a series of after-words written especially for this edition.

In the second section Weil turns his attention to museums and the law. In clear and concise terms he traces the process by which museums have become enmeshed in a web of regulation that now touches on virtually every aspect of their operation. Explored at length are the relationship between private governance and public accountability and the need to establish professional standards as a benchmark for trustee and staff performance.

The final section of Beauty and the Beasts discusses the ways in which the visual arts themselves have become increasingly linked - an unnatural coupling, Weil calls it - to legal considerations that affect the rights of artists and private collectors. He carefully examines the possible adaptation to American conditions of such European devices as moral right and artists' resale royalties. Weil also takes a wry look at the art market and examines some of the mechanisms used to measure its fluctuations.

Although intended primarily for museum trustees, staff and volunteers, Beauty and the Beasts will also interest artists, collectors, dealers, museum-goers, and all those varied sources - foundations, corporations, state and community arts agencies, and private donors, upon which museums are dependent for their continued funding. (Jacket)

CONTENTS
Acknowledgements.
Introduction.

Museums:
     The multiple crisis in our museums (1971).
     An inventory of art museum roles (1972).
     Toward greater museum integrity (The Snodgrass sermon) 1974.
     MGR: A conspectus of museum management (1982).
     The Filer commission report: Is it good for museums? (1976).
     Review of The Endangered Sector by Waldemar A. Nielsen (1981).
     Museums and the law: No museum is an island (1980).
     If men were angels.... (1976, 1977).
     Vincible ignorance: Museums and the law (1979).
     A checklist of legal considerations for museums (1981).
     Custody without title (1977).
     Breaches of trust, remedies, and standards in the American Private Art Museum (1982).

Art, the law and the market:
     Beauty and the Beast (1975, 1977).
     Some thoughts on Art Law (1981). 

Resale Royalties:
     Nobody benefits (1978).
     The moral right comes to California (1979).
     Prices - right on! (1972).
     Review of money and art: A study on the Times-Sotheby Index by Geraldine Keen (1971).
     Review of The Economics of Taste: Volume III, The Art Market of the 1960's by
     Gerald Reitlinger (1972).

Arts & Intersections:

Categories: Legal Issues, Cultural Facilities