# An Exhibition History Is Written in the Name the Museum Had at the Time > One hundred and eighty exhibition entries in this archive use 143 different venue strings for about 112 institutions. Museums are renamed, dissolved and merged, the venue field is free text, and an exhibition history therefore cannot be counted. > The Study - 2026-09-02 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/an-exhibition-history-is-written-in-the-old-name/ ## Key points - This archive holds 180 exhibition entries across 56 of its 223 published records. Those 180 entries use 143 distinct venue strings for roughly 112 institutions, so the same museum is routinely recorded as several different places. - The Metropolitan Museum of Art appears under six different venue strings and the Cleveland Museum of Art under seven. Neither is an error in the entries; each records what the source actually said. - Two objects here were exhibited at the South Kensington Museum in London in 1862. The museum's own history dates its beginnings as the Museum of Manufactures to 1852 and the foundation stone of the present building to 1899, so a search under the modern name returns neither object. - The sickle-leaf carpet was exhibited three times by the Corcoran Gallery of Art, which ceased to exist as an independent institution in 2014, and was labelled the Corcoran Throne Rug in a 1976 show. - Its holding museum in Doha published a curator's account of the carpet on 3 March 2026 calling it the Bacri-Clark Sickle-Leaf Throne Carpet and naming no previous institution. Sotheby's had given the whole published provenance as one line, Bacri Freres, Paris. - The venue field also swallows tours. One entry in this corpus records three American museums and a season in a single row, so the count of exhibitions and the count of venues cannot both be right. ## An exhibition history is a list of names, not a list of institutions ## One hundred and eighty entries, one hundred and forty-three names ## The South Kensington Museum is the Victoria and Albert Museum ## A carpet exhibited three times by a museum that no longer exists ## The object's own name moves with its owners ## The field also swallows tours ## What actually fixes this, and what does not ## Why this archive is free to read An exhibition history is the most reliable evidence an object record carries and the least computable, and those two facts have the same cause: every line is a faithful copy of what somebody wrote at the time. Keep it that way. Record the venue as the source gave it, resist the temptation to modernise a name for the sake of a cleaner index, and add an identifier alongside rather than editing the string. The gap between 180 entries, 143 names and 112 institutions is not untidiness in this archive's data. It is the shape of a century and a half of museums changing what they are called, and a corpus that hides it would be easier to query and worse at telling the truth. ## Questions **Why can an exhibition history not simply be counted?** Because the venue is free text recording the institution's name on the day of the show, and institutions are renamed, merged and dissolved. In this archive 180 exhibition entries use 143 distinct venue strings for roughly 112 institutions. **What happened to the Corcoran Gallery of Art?** It ceased to exist as an independent institution in 2014, the year after it sold the sickle-leaf carpet. Three lines of that carpet's nine-entry exhibition history name the Corcoran as venue, and a fourth names it inside another museum's exhibition title. **Why do the same objects appear under both South Kensington Museum and the V&A?** They do not appear under both. Objects shown in 1862 are recorded under the name in use then, and the museum's own history dates its beginnings as the Museum of Manufactures to 1852 and the foundation stone of the present building to 1899, so a search on the modern name silently returns nothing. **Should old venue names be updated to current ones?** No. An object exhibited at the South Kensington Museum in 1862 was not exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum, and rewriting the string asserts something false about the show. The correct fix is to keep the historical string and add a persistent identifier beside it. **Why does an object's name change over time?** Because names accumulate from the people and institutions that hold it. The same carpet has been labelled the Corcoran Throne Rug in 1976, sold as the Clark sickle-leaf carpet in 2013, and published by its current museum in Doha on 3 March 2026 as the Bacri-Clark Sickle-Leaf Throne Carpet. ## Sources - [1] Sotheby's, ecatalogue entry for lot 12, 'A Sickle-Leaf, vine scroll and palmette Vase-technique carpet, probably Kirman, Southeast Persia', sale N09012, New York, 5 June 2013. Read 2 September 2026 for the estimate of 5,000,000 to 7,000,000 USD, the dimensions, the provenance given in full as 'Bacri Freres, Paris', and the nine-entry Exhibited list from the Corcoran in 1948 to the Corcoran in 2007-2008. - [2] Qatar Museums, Nicoletta Fazio, Curator for Iran and Central Asia, Museum of Islamic Art, 'A Masterpiece of Persian Grandeur: The Bacri-Clark Sickle-Leaf Throne Carpet', published 3 March 2026. Read 2 September 2026 for the name under which the holding museum now publishes the carpet, and for the absence of any reference to the Corcoran Gallery of Art. - [3] Victoria and Albert Museum, 'About us'. Read 2 September 2026 for the museum's own account of its history, dating its beginnings as a Museum of Manufactures to 1852 and the foundation stone laid by Queen Victoria to 1899. - [4] Associated Press wire report, 'Carpet from 17th century sells for 33.7 million dollars at auction', 6 June 2013, as carried by the Christian Science Monitor. Cited for the sale result that made the carpet the most expensive ever sold at auction and for the Corcoran's role as consignor.