I have a lot of fun in museums (duh) and enjoy a range of games whenever I go, particularly in art museums. One of the more popular ones is “Has this artist ever seen a baby?” and you can swap baby for cat, horse, human, whatever is prevalent in the art. I played this in the Louvre a bit. But ever since my museum classes and internship at Huguenot street, one of my new favorite games is spot the accession number. In my internship, I learned how to properly put on accession numbers to a wide array of materials, through sewing, tagging, and marking on the object (to name a few). Since most of the items I was working with were in a historic house, I also learned how to best hide the accession number from the viewer. And now, I am that annoying museum visitor walking all the way around a statue to see if I can spot the accession number. The best accession number placement I’ve found so far was in the Louvre and it was hilarious (stay tuned to the end to see it. I promise it’s 100% worth it).
Quick crash course on numbering objects (if any of this is wrong, please don’t tell my museum professor or internship advisor). I can’t go into all of it here (nor are you that interested, I’m sure) but the general idea is that you want to be able to match the object to its record quickly and easily. Look at the item, find the number, and be able to find it in the database quickly as a result. For something like a very distinct statue or painting (ex: Mona Lisa) this is easier. When you’re staring at seven spoons that all look the same and were accessioned each with a different number, it’s much harder. So with the spoon example, you might use something like B-72 Clear Lacquer to paint onto the spoon, then write its accession number on top of the lacquer. You want to do the least damage and be the most accessible in presenting the number, so for a table with no clear or easy spot, you might use a tag, or with a textile, a sewn tag. However, standards are always changing and so older items that were accessioned early in a museum’s history might have different methods. I’ve seen duct tape numbers (oh my god yikes) and writing straight onto the object with a sharpie, among other heart-stopping methods.
The Lourve had many sculptures I could see all sides of, which made this game ideal! Here are some of my favorites (and some good examples of different numbering techniques, because hey, I can now claim this is vaguely academic). See if you can spot the number!
These are some of the first ones I spotted! Egyptian wing. I suspect the numbers are written on lacquer.
This one is one of my favorites, mostly because I love the deep blue Egyptian artifacts. It’s also a very visible number. Might have been better on the back of this statue so it would be even less noticeable but this is a good place, especially if there are decorations on the back or other issues.
This one is fun because it has an accession number AND what might be a maker’s mark or an owner’s mark.
This one was pretty cool too! Kinda creative spot on the back of the dress. Also, note the change in this one and the previous one’s lettering. It has differed from the Egyptian wing artifact’s AF, the sculpture being MA and this little statue appearing to be BR. It’s likely part of their cataloging methods, a way to distinguish different collections from each other.
Here’s an interesting case. These scissors (?) are double numbered. The number that’s written on might have been wrong, or there might be updated information that had to go on the tag. The other item-stabby-thing would likely be too skinny to legibly write a number, which means a tag makes sense. Also, these items also have a BR as part of their number!
Tiny jewelry can be really hard to number, but it’s super important because they can easily become separated from their set, or look very similar to another piece. Here you can see tiny tags with the numbers for each item of jewelry! I thought the pink ribbon was an interesting choice.
Good, unobtrusive numbering, and you can see the lacquer here- it’s the shiny part around the number! With wood like this, it makes sense that the staff chose to put it on top of the base instead of the side, as the wood seems to be splitting on the sides a bit.
But what do you do with the tiny objects that don’t have a hanger or easy place to put a tag? It’s not the best, but using bags and boxes like this makes sense for those objects. You can also kinda see the number on the circle object above the boxes.
This one is blurry but do you see the number? I love this placement.
And finally, my absolute favorite discovery. This is the winner of “Most Interesting Number Placement.” I must have looked very interesting taking this photo. I really just want to talk to the worker who decided right below the butt was the BEST place for this number…
