Published in 2007
167 pages
Nancy Moses is an author, nonprofit planner, and former museum director. She currently serves as Chair of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, appointed by Governor Tom Wolf.
Moses’ books and articles explore change in the nonprofit sector, equity for women, and critical issues cultural property. She is the author of Stolen, Smuggled, Sold: On the Hunt for Cultural Treasures (2015) and the award-winning Lost in the Museum: Hidden Treasures: Buried Treasures and the Stories They Tell. Moses was the first Guest Editor of the online Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal, and a columnist for Philadelphia Business Journal. She was a contributor to the textbook Social Innovation and Impact in Nonprofit Leadership (2014), and was profiled in Thriving in Retirement: Lessons from Baby Boomer Women (2017). Moses is Creator of “Sisters in Freedom” produced by History Making Productions.
Moses began her career at the National Endowment for the Humanities. She served on the executive staff of WQED Public Broadcasting, and the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Greater Philadelphia. As Executive Director of the Atwater Kent Museum, Philadelphia’s history museum dramatically expanded attendance and revenue.
What is this book about?
Few beyond the insider realize that museums own millions of objects the public never sees. In Lost in the Museum, Nancy Moses takes the reader behind the employees only doors to uncover the stories buried along with the objects in the crypts of museums, historical societies, and archives.
Moses discovers the actual birds shot, stuffed, and painted by John James Audubon, America’s most beloved bird artist; a spear that abolitionist John Brown carried in his quixotic quest to free the slaves; and the skull of a prehistoric Peruvian child who died with scurvy.
She takes the reader to Ker-Feal, the secret farmhouse that Albert Barnes of the Barnes Foundation, filled with fabulous American antiques and that was then left untouched for more than fifty years.
Weaving the stories of the object, its original owner, and the often idiosyncratic institution where the object resides, the book reveals the darkest secret of the cultural world: the precarious balance of art, culture, and politics that keep items, for decades, lost in the museum.
