Publication date: 22 July 2024
DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781800087040
Number of illustrations: 46
Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice
Cara Krmpotich (Editor), Alice Stevenson (Editor)
There is a common misconception that collections management in museums is a set of rote procedures or technical practices that follow universal standards of best practice. This volume recognises collections management as a political, critical and social project, involving considerable intellectual labour that often goes unacknowledged within institutions and in the fields of museum and heritage studies.
Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice brings into focus the knowledges, value systems, ethics and workplace pragmatics that are foundational for this work. Rather than engaging solely with cultural modifications, such as Indigenous care practices, the book presents local knowledge of place and material which is relevant to how collections are managed and cared for worldwide. Through discussion of varied collection types, management activities and professional roles, contributors develop a contextualised reflexive practice for how core collections management standards are conceptualised, negotiated and enacted. Chapters span national museums in Brazil and Uganda to community-led heritage work in Malaysia and Canada; they explore complexities of numbering, digitisation and description alongside the realities of climate change, global pandemics and natural disasters. The book offers a new definition of collections management, travelling from what is done to care for collections, to what is done to care for collections and their users. Rather than ‘use’ being an end goal, it emerges as a starting point to rethink collections work.
Praise for Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice
‘A groundbreaking volume that critically assesses collections management from alternative perspectives. The book’s contributors destabilize the orthodoxy of “best practices” by shifting the focus to culturally appropriate models of stewardship, pushing for a more integrated, holistic praxis. Reaching beyond the typical domains of collections management, chapters cover the most salient topics in museology today. A “must read” for museum anthropology and museum studies students, practitioners, and scholars.’
Christina Kreps, University of Denver, Colorado
List of figures and tables
List of contributors
Introduction: collections management is/as critical practice
Cara Krmpotich and Alice Stevenson
Part I: Making and unmaking museum collections
1 Documenting COVID-19: sensitivity, care, collaboration
Ellie Miles and Rosamund Lily West
2 A failure of care: unsettling traditional archival practices
Sony Prosper
3 Deciding whether and how to build a digital archive: lessons from the Jackson Park Project
Tonya Sutherland-Stewart
4 Collecting the sacred: the transition of diasporic objects in between museum regimes
Bruno Brulon Soares
5 Bane and boon: critical contexts of object marking
Alice Stevenson, Cressida Fforde and Lyndon Ormond-Parker
6 Humanising collections disposal
Jennifer Durrant
Part I Response: In a multiverse of timelines and possibilities… Temi Odumosu
Part II: A universal approach? Accessing, handling and enlivening collections
7 Challenging ableism: including non-normative bodies and practices in collections care
Rafie Cecilia
8 Playing the odds: the fine line between keeping an object safe and making it accessible
Alice Beale and Tom Pyrzakowski
9 Managing a working collection: the Historic Furniture and Decorative Arts Collection at the Palace of Westminster
Emily Spary
10 Gloves in the twenty-first century: beyond the pandemic
Paul Garside, Scott Rātima-Nolan’ and Cordelia Rogerson
11 A healthy ageing approach to collections care
Cara Krmpotich
Part II response: Claim what is stored here
Devorah Romanek
Part III: Community brilliance in shaping collections management
12 On language, access and practitioners: beginning a conversation on decolonising and indigenising the care of kapa collections at Bishop Museum
Halena Kapuni-Reynolds, Kamalu du Preez and Sarah Kuaiwa
13 Shifting organisational culture through repatriation policy
Anna Russo
14 Kaitiakitanga: Māori collection management in Aotearoa New Zealand
Conal McCarthy, Laureen Sadlier and Moana Parata
15 Reconciling with ourselves: how do we decolonise collections management practices in museum spaces and systems?
Sharon Fortney
16 Handling collections in the museum against cultural ethics
Nelson Abiti and Mary Mbewe
17 Decolonising collection management in an indigenous ritual house in Malaysia
Yunci Cai
Part III Response: ‘Collections should reflect the relationships we hold’
Nathan Mudyi Sentance
Part IV: Collection management’s publics
18 Decolonising the registration and documentation of the Dutch ethnographic collection
Cindy Zalm
19 Rebuilding collection infrastructure: thinking beyond best practice collection care
Alice Beale
20 Methodologies for international access and collaborative collections research in museums: challenges and opportunities Johanna-Zetterström Sharp, JC Niala, Juma Ondeng
21 Public art and artefacts – who cares: caring for art and artefacts in the public realm; ethical considerations
Susan L. Maltby
Part IV Response: Letting people in, letting objects out: countering the dislocations of collections management practice
Ananda Rutherford
Part V: The ethics of sustainability, preservation and stewardship in collections care
22 Eastern Mediterranean perspectives on eco-conscious, resilient and sustainable preservation of museum collections and heritage sites in Greece
Vasilike Argyropoulos, Dimitrios Karolidis and Paraskevi Pouli
23 Object stories in support of sustainable futures: tackling climate change at the Australian Museum
Jenny Newell and Zehra Ahmed
24 Making and stewarding digital collections: case studies and concerns
Hannah Turner, Reese Muntean and Kate Hennessy
25 Responses in the aftermath of the Great East Japan Earthquake: a conversation
Fuyubi Nakamura and Hiroyasu Yamauchi
Part V Response: The best practice of sustainability and the sustainability of best practices
Josh Yiu
26 Conclusion
Cara Krmpotich and Alice Stevenson
Index
DOI: 10.14324/111.9781800087040
Number of illustrations: 46
Publication date: 22 July 2024
PDF ISBN: 9781800087040
EPUB ISBN: 9781800087071
Hardback ISBN: 9781800087064
Paperback ISBN: 9781800087057
Cara Krmpotich (Editor)
Cara Krmpotich is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, and former Director of the Museum Studies program. She teaches and researches in the areas of critical collections management, repatriation, material culture, and decolonial and Indigenous museology. She has worked in museums in Canada and the United Kingdom.
Alice Stevenson (Editor)
Alice Stevenson is Professor of Museum Archaeology at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology. She has previously held posts as the Curator of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and as Researcher in World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum. Her academic specialization is Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egyptian archaeology, but she has a written on a broad range of topics including the history of archaeology, anthropology and museums.
‘A groundbreaking volume that critically assesses collections management from alternative perspectives. The book’s contributors destabilize the orthodoxy of “best practices” by shifting the focus to culturally appropriate models of stewardship, pushing for a more integrated, holistic praxis. Reaching beyond the typical domains of collections management, chapters cover the most salient topics in museology today. A ‘must read’ for museum anthropology and museum studies students, practitioners, and scholars.’
Christina Kreps, University of Denver, Colorado
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