Museum Data Bank Research Report: The Yogi and the Registrar

Abstract

IN THE COMPANY OF the research reports of this series, this article can claim only the status of an essay. It will attempt to survey, from the vantage point of the art museum administrator, the common ground between the registrar and the curator, and to determine whether the common ground, if any, justifies cultivation in the form of data processing. This investigation aims at no revolutionary conclusions, but it may help in clarifying the nature of some of the problems which characterize art museums and set them apart in the museum community. Most of these problems are traceable to the nature of the work of art itself. (In this article, “work of art ” will in general refer to a painting or work of sculpture; prints and the decorative arts will be considered incidentally and as secondary categories.) Insofar as its fundamental value and significance are commonly accepted as being intuitively apprehended, unquantifiable by any objective scale, and unique to the object, the work of art is the source of both pride and despair to the profession. The demonstration and assessment of value comes, ultimately, only from the response of the viewer, and all data that document this response are subjective in origin. At the same time, a very rare and highly acclaimed work of art may be worth millions of dollars on the market, so the primary or aesthetic value may be overshadowed by the sensational commercial value. There are, of course, a number of possible kinds of secondary value which may in turn be more or less objectively quantifiable-i.e., not only market price, but documentary value (biographical, iconographic, historical,

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