# The Department That Decides What the Object Is > Three glazed ceramics in this archive sit in three different Metropolitan Museum departments. The Met sorts by culture, by medium, by period and by address at the same time, and the object never moves again. > The Study - 2026-09-05 > Canonical HTML: https://iconotheca.com/study/the-department-that-decides-what-the-object-is/ ## Key points - Three glazed ceramic vessels in this archive are held by the Metropolitan Museum in three different departments: Islamic Art, Asian Art, and European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. The museum's own classification field calls all three of them ceramics. - The Met's departments do not run on one principle. They run on four at once: culture, medium, period, and position in the building. An astrolabe is filed under Islamic Art and a printed book under Drawings and Prints. - Two of the departments in this archive are places rather than subjects. The Cloisters is a building in northern Manhattan, and The American Wing holds a crown made in colonial Colombia. - The department is chosen once, at accession, and it decides which specialists write the entry, which galleries can show the object and which literature it joins. It is the least examined line on a museum record. ## A department is a claim about what the object mainly is ## Three ceramics in this archive sit in three different departments ## Where a vessel was made outranks what it is made of ## An astrolabe is filed as Islamic art rather than as a scientific instrument ## A printed book is held by the department of drawings and prints ## Two of the departments in this archive are addresses ## What the department decides after it is decided ## How to read a department line ## Why this archive is free to read The department line sits near the bottom of a museum record, under the accession number, and it reads like the name of a filing cabinet. It is not. It is the museum saying what it believes the object is before anything else, recorded once, usually decades ago, by people working with less than we have. Three ceramics in this archive went to three departments and none of them was a mistake. Read the line as a dated judgement and it starts telling you who has been allowed to speak for the object, and what it has been compared with all these years. ## Questions **What is a curatorial department in a museum?** It is the unit that owns an object inside the institution: the curators who catalogue and interpret it, the budget it is acquired against, and the galleries it can be shown in. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art the department is published on every object record, alongside the accession number and the credit line. **Why are similar objects held in different departments?** Because most large museums sort by more than one principle at once. The Metropolitan uses culture, medium, period and position in the building, so three glazed ceramics in this archive sit in Islamic Art, Asian Art, and European Sculpture and Decorative Arts, while its own classification field records all three as ceramics. **Does an object ever change department?** It can, but it is uncommon. The department is normally settled at accession and stays there, which is why it preserves the museum's reading of the object at the date it arrived rather than its current one. **Why is a printed book in the Metropolitan's Department of Drawings and Prints?** Because its claim on an art museum is its images. The museum's copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle, accession 1981.1178.29, is recorded with the object name Book and the classification Books, and is held by Drawings and Prints, which collects it for its woodcuts rather than as an edition. **What does The American Wing cover?** A hemisphere rather than a country. Its holdings in this archive include the Crown of the Andes, accession 2015.437, made in Popayan in present-day Colombia, alongside Newport and New York furniture. ## Sources - [1] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 446648, dish, accession 14.40.727. Department: Islamic Art; classification: Ceramics; Gallery 460. Read as raw JSON, 5 September 2026. - [2] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 201645, platter in the manner of Bernard Palissy, accession 53.225.64. Department: European Sculpture and Decorative Arts; classification: Ceramics-Pottery. - [3] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 50352, bowl with two boys and lotuses, accession 11.8.6. Department: Asian Art; classification: Ceramics; Gallery 233. - [4] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 444408, astrolabe of Umar ibn Yusuf ibn Umar al-Muzaffari, accession 91.1.535a-h. Department: Islamic Art; classification: Metal. - [5] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 356792, Liber Chronicarum, accession 1981.1178.29. Department: Drawings and Prints; object name: Book; classification: Books. - [6] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 454662, folio from the Blue Qur'an, accession 2004.88. Department: Islamic Art; classification: Codices. - [7] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 249470, Ennion jug, accession 17.194.226. Department: Greek and Roman Art; classification: Glass; Gallery 166. - [8] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 447002, mosque lamp bearing the name of the Mamluk sultan al-Nasir, accession 17.190.987. Department: Islamic Art; classification: Glass. - [9] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 3141, desk and bookcase, accession 15.21.2. Department: The American Wing; Gallery 753. - [10] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 480706, Carlo Bugatti desk chair, accession 1970.181.2. Department: Modern and Contemporary Art; classification: Furniture. - [11] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 468233, Julius Caesar from the Nine Heroes tapestries, accession 47.101.3. Department: The Cloisters; classification: Textiles-Tapestries. - [12] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Open Access Collection API, object 21698, Crown of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception, known as the Crown of the Andes, accession 2015.437. Department: The American Wing. - [13] Metropolitan Museum of Art, Collection Areas, the museum's own published list of its curatorial departments. Retrieved 5 September 2026. - [14] Metropolitan Museum of Art, object page for the Iznik dish, accession 14.40.727, giving the department and gallery as displayed to the public.