View Single Post
Old 20th April 2012, 02:57 PM   #24
Dmitry
Member
 
Dmitry's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 607
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Matchlock
Sorry, Dmitry,


That's my opinion on the basis of your image.
Again: I can and will defend all my statements concerning 14th-17th century 'military' firearms but I have never claimed being an expert in related fields.

I guess we all should take it for granted that there is a manifold basis in judging historical pieces of weaponry.
In my eyes, the Philly, housing the Kretzschmar von Kienbusch Collection, have never tried to rethink their outdated inventory descriptions - which is true for almost any museum worldwide. Take the Met! Take Graz!

Any advanced study in weaponry, after all, seems to have been taken over by - and readily left to - a couple of internationally engaged private enthusiastic collectors - at their own expenses ...
It seems to me that a few of them are united here on the forum which might be a first humble step in the right direction!
The academic 'ivory tower' society formed by the established museuns has been looking down upon them from the very beginning - and has excluded them. That's exactly what I have experienced for some 35 years, in spite of my academic career. Well, you cannot graduate in weaponry, after all!
My $.02.
This is a compounded issue. One one side, there's the "old boys club" relic mentality. After all, these people created the whole museum wings by donating significant numbers of weapons and armors. So the old tags are still in place.
On the other, art museums, uniformly governed by the liberal elites, eschew weapons, in fact, hate them, and would like them to go away. Some have removed weapons from their public displays, probably forever.

I will say though that in the past couple of decades, at least in the Metropolitan Museum, the curatorial staff has been doing a phenomenal job in attributing the pieces in their collection, some of which have been attributed wrong for decades, or were composites. The curators at the Met publish a number of fine research papers from time to time, which, unfortunately, seem to go out of print quite quickly.
Dmitry is offline   Reply With Quote