Resumen de Valuing Your Collection

Colleen Barrett (res.)

• Following her previous publications, Museum Collections Management and Organizing Exhibitions, Matassa here presents a straightforward guide to approaching the often tricky but necessary valuation of various materials housed in museums, libraries, and archives. As a past head of collections management at the Tate Galleries and the current director of the art consultancy firm Matassa Toffolo, Matassa began this work in 2011 at the request of the European Commission’s Workplan for Culture. The request followed her report (coauthored with Dr. Cornelia Dümke) entitled Valuation of Works of Art for Lending and Borrowing Purposes, which exposed high insurance costs as a major hurdle to collection loans and uncovered a lack of best practices for training curators that would enable them to value their collections. This work begins solving the problem of establishing value in both public and private institutions, through an example-filled exploration of issues and possible solutions