Valuing Your Collection A Practical Guide for Museums, Libraries and Archives

About this book

This book addresses the issue of valuing objects in cultural collections, ranging from high-value to low or no-value and featuring a range of collections including fine art, archives, science and photography. Practical advice is given on how to assign values and best practice examples are drawn from museums, libraries and archives.

The subject of valuation has always been challenging for museums and public collections and is becoming more urgent as monetary values of many items continue to break records. There is an increase in lending, with more loans requiring a value for insurance. Cultural collections and exhibitions are expanding to all corners of the world, while, at the same time, lenders are becoming more risk-averse. Valuing Your Collection will address the issues and offer some solutions.

Content covered includes:
- questions of valuing public and private cultural collections
- assigning values to individual objects or an entire collection
- legal and ethical considerations
- discussion of authentication and attribution
- the insurance business and valuation
- guides to valuing different types of collections
- a range of case studies showing valuation across multiple sectors
- sample templates with criteria for valuing different objects

Valuing Your Collection will be useful for curators of cultural collections, professionals in museums, libraries and archives, cultural heritage students, private collectors, those involved with art insurance, art business and anyone requiring practical guidance on valuation.

Contents

List of figures and tables
Preface
Acknowledgements

1. Introduction
2. The difficulty of valuation
3. Law and ethics
4. Insurance
5. Alternatives to insurance
6. Valuing your collection
7. Valuing an entire collection
8. Assigning a value

Case studies: valuing different types of objects
Templates
Appendix 1: UK Government valuation of cultural items
Appendix 2: European Report, Valuation of Works of Art for Lending and Borrowing Purposes
Appendix 3: Glossary
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Freda Matassa FRSA MA (Hons) DipAL DipEd is a well-known UK expert on collections management who advises, teaches and lectures internationally. Currently Director of Matassa Toffolo, a museum-standard art consultancy, former Head of Collections Management at Tate Galleries and co-founder of the European Registrars Conference, she is expert adviser on several European projects for museum standards and to the Minister of Culture on Immunity from Seizure. She was named one of the Top 50 Women to Watch in the arts and is the author of Museum Collections Management (Facet, 2011) and Organizing Exhibitions (Facet, 2014).