A critical analysis of contemporary art collections and the value form, this book shows why the nonprofit system is unfit to administer our common collections, and offers solutions for diversity reform and redistributive restructuring. In the United States, institutions administered by the nonprofit system have an ambiguous status as they are neither entirely private nor fully public. Among nonprofits, the museum is unique as it is the only institution where trustees tend to collect the same objects they hold in “public trust” on behalf of the nation, if not humanity. The public serves as alibi for establishing the symbolic value of art, which sustains its monetary value and its markets. This structure allows for wealthy individuals at the helm to gain financial benefits from, and ideological control over, what is at its core purpose a public system. The dramatic growth of the art market and the development of financial tools based on art-collateral loans exacerbate the contradiction between the needs of museum leadership versus that of the public. Indeed, a history of private support in the US is a history of racist discrimination, and the common collections reflect this fact. A history of how private collections were turned public gives context. Since the late Renaissance, private collections legitimized the prince's right to rule, and later, with the great revolutions, display consolidated national identity. But the rise of the American museum reversed this and re-privatized the public collection. A materialist description of the museum as a model institution of the liberal nation state reveals constellations of imperialist social relations.
In Museums for a New Century: A Report of the Commission on Museums for a New Century, leaders in the museum community explore and identify trends affecting the future of museums and describe the opportunities and responsibilities facing museums in the 21st century.
This book offers an overview of how to manage private art collections, providing essential insights on art wealth management, art investment, art governance, and succession planning for art assets. It offers practical recommendations on sound art collection governance, but also examines the background of art markets and price building, including the influence of fashion and trends. Throughout history, art patronage has played an important role in the wealth of ultra-high-net-worth families and led to private museums funded by philanthropist collectors in order to celebrate their own tastes and leave a lasting legacy. Today, as a result of the growth of art investing by a new generation of wealthy collectors, not only artists but also wealthy families, sophisticated investors and their close advisors now face a more complex set of financial and managerial needs. As such, the contributions in this book will be of interest to collecting families, family offices, and professional advisors seeking to integrate art into their overall wealth management strategy, and to scholars in the fields of cultural economics, art dealers, curators, and art lovers.
Wealth of an Empire tells the dramatic true story of a top-secret mission that changed the course of World War II: Great BritainÆs shipment of virtually its entire treasury across the treacherous waters of the North Atlantic to safety in the United States and Canada. Had the Germans captured or sunk the treasure-laden ships, the war could have been lost more than eighteen months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The British government authorized this immensely risky and long-running operation not only because of the obvious danger that GermanyÆs rising militancy posed but also becaus.
This is a multi-disciplinary study that adopts an innovative and original approach to a highly topical question, that of meaning-making in museums, focusing its attention on pedagogy and visual culture. This work explores such questions as: How and why is it that museums select and arrange artefacts, shape knowledge, construct a view? How do museums produce values? How do active audiences make meaning from what they experience in museums? This stimulating book provokes debate and discussion on these topics and puts forward the idea of a new museum - the post-museum, which will challenge the familiar modernist museum. A must for students and professionals in the field.
This book addresses the current challenges of sustainable development, including its social, economic and environmental components. The author argues that we need to develop a new concept of time based on inter-generational solidarity, which focuses both on the long- and the short term. The evolution of man's notions of time are analyzed from prehistory to modern times, showing how these concepts shape our worldviews, our ecological paradigms and our equilibrium with our planet. Practical approaches to dealing with the major medium- and long term sustainability challenges of the 21st century are presented and discussed. This is a thought provoking and timely book that addresses the main global socioeconomic and environmental challenges facing the current and future generations, using science-based analysis and perspectives. It presents an historical narrative of the advent of progress, economic growth and technology, and discusses the structural changes needed to co-create sustainable pathways. It provides hope for our future on Earth, mankind’s common home. António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations This is an amazing, almost mind-boggling book. The author takes a look at the true whole, i.e., the development of the human enterprise since its very beginning. This enterprise is evidently a possibility under the boundary conditions of cosmological dynamics and natural evolution, but evidently also a highly improbable one. It is all but a miracle that the Earth system in its present form exists and happens to support a technical civilization. Will this civilization last long, will it transform itself into something even more exceptional, or will it perish in disgrace? Santos dares to address these grandest of all questions, equipped with a unique transdisciplinary wisdom drawing on physics, cybernetics, geology, biology, economics, anthropology, history, and philosophy. And he dares to dive into the deepest abysses of thinking, where categorial monsters like time and progress lurk. Thereby, he takes us on fascinating journey, during which we perceive and grasp things we have never seen and understood before. One of the best essays I have ever read. John Schellnhuber, founding director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) and former chair of the German Advisory Council on Global Change
