In the last few days (it's getting really hard to keep up with everything that seems to be happening suddenly!) Ithaka S+R has issued two really interesting and useful reports.

The first is a survey of art museum directors, completed just before the pandemic started in March 2020, and doesn't take into account the effects of that or other subsequent events. Of particular interest to me are the comments about deaccessions works that are not "strategic" to institutional collections, which loom large in light of changes to the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) policies on deaccessions and decisions being made by various museums in response to both extreme financial pressures and desires to change the composition of their collections. These issues have important stewardship implications. See

Ithaka S+R Art Museum Director Survey 2020 - Ithaka S+R

Art museums serve a unique social role in that they operate between the public sphere, the academy, the art market, and the philanthropic sector. They are invaluable resources for scholars and also serve school children, adults, seniors while engaging broadly in the cultural life of their cities. Beyond these roles, they also have the responsibility to maintain and care for a collection of objects for future generations in perpetuity. The Ithaka S+R Art Museum Director Survey 2020 examines strat...

The second report deals with relationships between academic museums and libraries. This is an issue of long-standing interest to CNI, and in fact the report positions itself in the context of a series of meetings that started with an event hosted at the University of Miami in 2016, co-convened by CNI, the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries (AAMG) and the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) , with support from the Mellon and Kress foundations. It examines a number of recent case studies exploring these relationships and opportunities. See

Structuring Collaborations - Ithaka S+R

In 2019 Ithaka S+R received funding from the Mellon Foundation to study the structural relationships between academic museums and libraries. Ithaka S+R conducted interviews with museum and library directors, and in some cases other senior staff, at thirty universities. Based on these interviews, three institutions were selected for short case studies as examples of effective collaborations: University of Iowa, the Atlanta University Center, and Princeton University.

Clifford Lynch Director, CNI