[NHCOLL-L:286] Re: Value of Herbarium specimens

[Boylan P]

The basis of valuation is one of the issues we addressed in a recnt major
review of British practice on insurance & risk management for the Museums
& Galleries Commission, published by the MGC in August.  Though with a
different focus, there was a main programme session at the Los Angeles AAM
1998 Annual Meeti  ng on insurance valuation etc. and audio tapes are
available at a modest price ($10) from the usual AAM supplier (see the
regular adverts in Museum News). (One LA paper discussed the valuation of
one of the controversial art works now at the Brooklyn Museum - Damien
Hurst's "This Little Piggy Went to Market" - a pig cut in half
longitundinally and displayed in spirit in and over-grown museum jar. The
artists was quite open that he had done none of the work in creating this
himself - he'd simply given instructions to a butcher and some laboratory
technicians and paid them a total of $1,800 for the end result, which was
then immediately "valued" for exhibition insurance purposes at $500,000.)

Clearly, open market price is one basis of valuation, but there are other
approaches.  It's not at all uncommon for insurers to agree to indemnify
for the present-day value of the expenditure (including staff costs)
incurred by the Museum in field collecting, or the cost of e.g. mounting 
an equivalent excavation in the case of archaeological material of low
intrinsic value in open market terms.

A further approach is the value of the information contained, in terms of
reconstructing or reproducing a data archive if e.g. herbarium sheet 
labels and other data are lost - parallel to "Valuable Papers and
Electronic Data" insurance  -which every Museum ought to have, though in
fact hardly any of our sample (10% of all UK Registered Museums) had such
insurance.



Patrick J. Boylan  (Professor of Heritage Policy and Management) 

City University, Frobisher Crescent, Barbican, London EC2Y 8HB, UK; 
phone: +44-171-477.8750, fax:+44-171-477.8887;
Home: "The Deepings", Gun Lane, Knebworth, Herts. SG3 6BJ, UK;
phone & fax: +44-1438-812.658;
E-mail: P.Boylan at city.ac.uk;  Web site: http://www.city.ac.uk/artspol/