Defining Our Terms

Atelier is a French word that translates literally as studio or workshop and is often used to denote a group of artists, designers or architects working collectively. Like atelier, there is a whole vocabulary of words associated with the art world. The following are some that you might encounter in your work with us.

Accession: one or more objects acquired at one time from one source constituting a single transaction between the museum and a source.

Accession Number: also known as Catalogue Number—a term predominately used for identification purposes of an object, specimen or documents.

Archive: traditionally an archive is a store of documents or artifacts of a purely documentary nature.

Catalogue: a file comprised of catalogue cards, one or more for each object in a collection; (2) a publication listing and describing objects in a collection; (3) the act of classifying objects methodically, including descriptive detail.

Cataloguing: assigning an object to one or more categories of an organized classification system.

Collection: for an individual: a group of objects having something of importance in common; for an institution: a group of objects, specimens, documents and data under a gallery or museum's care.

Collections: the collected objects of a museum, acquired and preserved because of their potential value (not only monetary, but historical and cultural), or as objects of aesthetic or educational importance.

Collection Manager: an individual that ensures the proper care and preservation of objects within a cultural institution. Climate monitoring, managing storage, conservation and record-keeping are a few roles of the collection manager.

Curator: an individual responsible for the care, research, exhibition and increase or improvements of a collection.

Deaccession: the process for removing objects from a museum’s collection.

Dispersal: the process of distributing objects to owners, this action relates to estate activities.

Inventory: an itemized list of objects. An inventory is often used for locating objects, accompanying loan documents, or organizing an exhibit.

Manifest: a list of passengers or an invoice of cargo fora vehicle (such as a ship, plane or truck), sometimes the term is used in place of an inventory list.

Registrar: an individual responsible for maintaining records related to objects in the collection. The registrar can also be responsible for developing and enforcing procedures as they relate to the management of the collection.

Registration: assigning a permanent number for identification purposes to an accession (i.e. object) and recording this number to a system.

Sources: Art Terms/Tate, Intro to Museum Work, Merriam-Webster, museumassociation.org, Registrars on Record