Well, the year 2016 has closed and what a year it was! Here at the Worcester Art Museum, we were hard at work behind-the-scenes, assisting with various projects and tasks.
Every year, WAM continues to build on its internationally acclaimed collection of objects, and this past year did not disappoint. Most notably, was the purchase of a pair of paintings (one pictured below) by Philippe Jacques van Bree (French or Belgian, 1786–1871) titled Interior of the Studio of Van Dael and his students at the Sorbonne (2016.13) and a replica of the same scene done by the same artist (2016.12). The details of these particular works are most charming and deserve closer study, so check it out in the Daniels Gallery (Gallery 206) today! You can see the rest of the impressive new collection items that have been gifted to or purchased by the Museum on our online collection search page called New Acquisitions – 2016.
Not only did we have a healthy stream of acquisitions come through our door, but we also negotiated various exhibitions which pushed the boundaries of what museums can accomplish. Did anyone visit the various components of MEOW? Who else can say that they housed cats in a museum for a month?!
Between receiving new works into the collection and maneuvering a jam-packed exhibition schedule, it is important for museums to also reflect on their present collection holdings. Some time had passed since a thorough collection review had taken place, so this year action began in reviewing some of these holdings. By the end of the year, the end result was quite impressive in that we deaccessioned just under 1,000 objects from our permanent collection. Now, that’s not to say that these objects did not have any sort of value, but many were better suited in other collection holdings, such as historical houses or other museums with different historical/cultural focuses.
We at WAM feel that this information still belongs to the public and are openly sharing the first officially compiled list of deaccessions from 2016. Keep in mind this list does not specify where the object went, or who once owned the object before us. This is merely a “snapshot” of the object while it was under our care.
Here’s to what 2017 will bring us in acquisitions, exhibitions and deaccessioning!
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- Sarah Gillis, Assistant Registrar, Image Management
Image: Interior of the Studio of Van Dael and his students at the Sorbonne, Philippe Jacques van Bree (French or Belgian, 1786–1871), 1816, oil on canvas, framed: 145 × 177.5 × 11 cm (57 1/16 × 69 7/8 × 4 5/16 in.), Worcester Art Museum (MA), Stoddard Acquisition Fund, 2016.13.
