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Collecting the Newis the first book on the questions and challenges that museums face in acquiring and preserving contemporary art. Because such art has not yet withstood the test of time, it defies the traditional understanding of the art museum as an institution that collects and displays works of long-established aesthetic and historical value. By acquiring such art, museums gamble on the future. In addition, new technologies and alternative conceptions of the artwork have created special problems of conservation, while social, political, and aesthetic changes have generated new categories of works to be collected. Following Bruce Altshuler's introduction on the European and American history of museum collecting of art by living artists, the book comprises newly commissioned essays by twelve distinguished curators representing a wide range of museums. First considered are general issues including the acquisition process, and collecting by universal survey museums and museums that focus on modern and contemporary art. Following are groups of essays that address collecting in particular media, including prints and drawings, new (digital) media, and film and video; and national- and ethnic-specific collecting (contemporary art from Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and African-American art). The closing essay examines the conservation problems created by contemporary works--for example, what is to be done when deterioration is the artist's intent? The contributors are Christophe Cherix, Vishakha N. Desai, Steve Dietz, Howard N. Fox, Chrissie Iles and Henriette Huldisch, Pamela McClusky, Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro, Lowery Stokes Sims, Robert Storr, Jeffrey Weiss, and Glenn Wharton.

The stories behind the acquisition of ancient antiquities are often as important as those that tell of their creation. This fascinating book provides a comprehensive account of the history and development of classical archaeology, explaining how and why artifacts have moved from foreign soil to collections around the world.As archaeologist Stephen Dyson shows, Greek and Roman archaeological study was closely intertwined with ideas about class and social structure; the rise of nationalism and later political ideologies such as fascism; and the physical and cultural development of most of the important art museums in Europe and the United States, whose prestige depended on their creation of collections of classical art. Accompanied by a discussion of the history of each of the major national traditions and their significant figures, this lively book shows how classical archaeology has influenced attitudes about areas as wide-ranging as tourism, nationalism, the role of the museum, and historicism in nineteenth- and twentieth-century art.

Collecting has a long tradition in the Middle East but the museum as a public institution is relatively new. Today there are national museums for antiquities in most Arab countries. While in some cases the political and social climate has hindered the foundation of museums, with existing collections even destroyed at times, the recent museum boom in the Gulf States is again changing the outlook. This unique book is the first to explore collecting practices in archives and museums in the modern Arab world, featuring case studies of collecting practices in countries ranging from Egypt and Lebanon to Palestine, Jordan, Iraq and the Gulf, and providing a theoretical and methodological basis for future research. The authors are also concerned with investigating the relationship between past and present, since collecting practices tell us a great deal not only about the past but also about the ways we approach the past and present conceptions of our identities. Collections can be textual as well, as in the stories, memories or events selected, recalled, and retold in the pages of a text. As interest in memory studies as well as popular and visual culture grows in the Arab World, so collecting practices are at the heart of any critical approach to the past and the present in that region. The book will be of great interest not only to scholars and students of the modern Arab world but also to professionals in museums and collections in the region, as well as around the world.

Connections, circuits, webs, and networks: these are concepts that are overused in today's world histories. Working from a commitment to reflexive historicization, this paper points to one moment in the consolidation of these terms: the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century visual politics of “new imperialism.” Utilizing photographs, engravings, postcards, letters, and colonial documents, the paper argues that connection was mesmerizing and can still mesmerize the historian. Being connected became possible because of visual and infrastructural projects that allowed the production and consumption of lines that literally cut sea and land. At a time of high empire, and in accordance with the dictates of Imperial Geography, particular locales or “nodes” were thus positioned in the “global.” To mount this critique of our language, the paper focuses on the infrastructural development of the port of Colombo, alongside the thinking of Halford Mackinder, the building of breakwaters in Colombo, the arrival of mass tourism, projections of capitalist improvement for the business of transshipment, and the use of the port by Indian laborers on their way to Ceylon's highland plantations. By attending to the place where connection is wrought, its material workings, and its traces in the visual, intellectual, and capitalist archive, it is argued that connectivity's forgettings and displacements come more forcefully into view. If connection had an evacuating character and could be so imperialist, what of its status in our writings?

On Apr 19, 1952, a lively auction of ancient glass from the Sobernheim Collection took place at Stack's Galleries on West 46th Street in New York City. Several prominent glass collectors and dealers of the mid-20th century from near and far participated in the sale. Jerome Strauss (American, 1893-1978), a collector of glass drinking vessels, and Esteban Safani, a New York dealer, were both in attendance. At least 51 objects, representing 33 of the 381 available glass lots, have found their way into the collection of The Corning Museum of Glass, some directly from the 1952 sale and others indirectly via other collectors. The purpose of this note is to begin to document the history of this collection and its 1952 dispersal, in hopes that other researchers can fill in gaps in the pre-1952 history and identify Sobernheim pieces in other contemporary collections.

Providing many vibrant details, the authors examine the intrigue surrounding the Dead Sea Scrolls and debunk many of the myths about them, including allegations of the Vatican’s involvement in hiding the texts from scholars, the possibility that they contained earth shattering revelations, and the actual status of the infamous international editorial committee who limited access to the texts. A fascinating account of international relations, religious negotiation, and scholars, Canada’s Big Biblical Bargain reveals another part of the fascinating tale of the Dead Sea Scrolls.

Despite lack of evidence regarding its antiseptic superiority over silver nitrate for preventing ophthalmia neonatorum, Argyrol was promoted so savvily by Albert Coombs Barnes that the revenues enabled him to amass a unique art collection reflecting his early appreciation of the African influence on European painters. He addressed social disparities specially through access for disadvantaged individuals to his iconoclastic foundation and collaboration with a local African-American university. Legal wrangling over complex management issues and distinctive display arrangements, led to fiscal anguish, cultural torment and local affliction over that trove which is currently relocating to downtown Philadelphia. (Afr J Reprod Health 2011; 15[3]: 9-14). Albert Coombs Barnes a développé et commercialisé l'Argyrol avec succès malgré l'absence de preuves sur sa supériorité antiseptique, par rapport au nitrate d'argent, pour la prévention de l'ophtalmie du nouveau-né. Les bénéfices de cette commercialisation intelligente de l'Argyrol lui ont permis d'acquérir une collection d'art, unique en son genre, qui démontre de l'influence africaine sur les peintres européens. Il s'est attaqué aux disparités sociales en donnant un accès préferentiel aux personnes défavorisées à sa fondation iconoclaste et en collaborant avec une université afro-américaine locale. Une querelle juridique, à propos de questions complexes de gestion et de la disposition des oeuvres d'art, a conduit à des problèmes financiers, à une polémique dans le milieu culturel et à une dispute de voisinage concernant ce trésor qui est actuellement en cours de déménagement au centre-ville de Philadelphie.

The family that owns the company that makes OxyContin is calling a Massachusetts' lawsuit false and misleading. This is the Sackler family's first court response to allegations that individual family members helped fuel the deadly opioid epidemic. Attorneys for the Sackler family say the claims must be dismissed. Massachusetts was among the first state government to sue the family as well as the company last year.

Whereas the academic discipline of the history of science has made enormous strides in half a century, ironically, recognition from without has often been disappointing. Private success has not been matched by public status. The work of the Science Museum in London as one of the few widely accessible windows into the discipline is therefore worth remarking upon here, and more detailed investigations are even now under way. The foundation of the British Society for the History of Science at the Museum, in 1947, symbolized a role that the Museum had already played for decades and plays to this day: the pre-eminent public space of the history of science. This distinctive role has of course been shared by other object-based museums attracting large numbers of visitors in places such as Manchester, Greenwich and Edinburgh as well as in Munich and Washington.

The core claims of this dissertation are that (1) the relationship between organizations and their external environments is historically contingent and (2) there are enduring effects of founding environments on organizations. I study the transformation of the US commercial banking industry in the twentieth century and examine how changes in institutional, technical and economic environments resulted in changes in banking organizations, and conversely how banking organizations influenced their institutional and economic environments. The dissertation consists of three empirical studies. First, I examine how legal and technical environments influenced the growth of the banking industry and the late-twentieth-century acquisition wave. I find that restrictive laws lead to smaller state-level banks and liberal laws have a positive effect on size and that both of these effects are accentuated as technical environments become more advanced and banks are able to grow by branching. Furthermore, I find that the legal and technical environments during bank founding have a persistent effect on later bank growth. Banks that were founded in locations where branching was legally and technically possible were more likely to subsequently acquire other banks. In my second paper, I examine the effect of banking organizations and external environments on whether or not states pass more liberal or more restrictive banking laws. I find that as state wealth and transportation infrastructure increase and the Federal government has a more liberal policy, the effect of multi-unit banks on liberalization increases. Conversely, for single-unit banks, the most important factor contributing to restrictive changes is the degree to which neighboring states have restrictive branching laws. In my third paper, I suggest that the founding of banks is a result of bankers' expressing their professional identity in the wake of acquisitions in their local community. My analyses indicate that in addition to local economic and ecological factors, the local population of finance professionals and the extent of free banking labor are also important to understand where and when banks are founded.