PROVIDENCE – The nationwide Museum Loan Network, established 12 years ago at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., is moving to Brown University’s John Nicholas Brown Center for the Study of American Civilization, the university said this afternoon.
The MLN Directory – an online database of some 20,000 cultural objects available for inter-museum loan – will be administered by the Brown University Library Center for Digital Initiatives.
“Brown is delighted to be able to continue and extend the MLN’s work in reconnecting cultural heritage to communities,” President Ruth J. Simmons said in a statement today. “It fits well with Brown’s public humanities initiative, which is building new links between the university, cultural organizations and communities.”
The MLN – launched with a feasibility study commissioned by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation in 1993, and grants from the Knight Foundation and The Pew Charitable Trusts in 1995 – was established to bring valuable art and cultural objects out of storage and into public view, enhancing installations at museums nationwide and enabling them to better serve their communities.
The network also has supported projects to widen the ways in which museums interpret artifacts, such as “Collecting Stories: Connecting Objects,” funded by The Nathan Cummings Foundation and Knight Foundation, which aims to engage communities by connecting oral histories with cultural objects; and “Energizing the Study of Early American Art,” sponsored by The Henry Luce Foundation, which supported the cataloging of hundreds of artworks and trained students in museum techniques.
“The MLN is a network not just of artifacts, but also of ideas and individuals,” said Steven D. Lubar, a Brown professor of American civilization and the director of the university’s John Nicholas Brown Center, who joined Brown in 2004 from the Smithsonian Insitution’s National Museum of American History. “We look forward to extending this distinguished history of the MLN as an institution that catalyzes a wide range of museum work.”
MIT was chosen as the network’s initial site because of its dynamic arts community and excellence in technology, the MLN said. But “Lee Hills, the late chair of Knight Foundation’s board and the visionary leader who inspired the Museum Loan Network would be pleased to see it find such an appropriate new home at Brown,” Alberto Ibargüen, the Knight Foundation’s president, said in announcing the change of venue.
At Brown, the program will continue its work of supporting collaborations between U.S. institutions and finding new ways of interpreting cultural artifacts. It also will launch a new program to connect museums with the next generation of museum professionals.
The university’s master of arts program in public humanities – the first in the nation – trains graduate students in interdisciplinary methods of work in cultural organizations. The MLN will connect the Brown program with museums and other graduate training programs in cultural heritage, providing a shared set of resources for study and exploration.
“For over a decade, the MLN has benefited from MIT’s technological expertise and supportive arts environment,” Lori Gross, the network’s founding director, said in a statement today. “At Brown University, the MLN will be able to expand its mission and influence the next generation of museum professionals while continuing its vital work with the museum community.”
The John Nicholas Brown Center – Brown University’s center for the public humanities, and the home of the university’s master of arts in public humanities program – examines the ways in which the humanities enrich everyday life and supports students and faculty who connect the public to history, art and culture. For additional information, visit www.brown.edu/jnbc.
To learn more about the Museum Loan Network, a nonprofit collaborative established to make objects of cultural heritage more accessible and understandable to the public by encouraging their sharing among member institutions, visit www.brown.edu/mln.
