Museum collections and sustainability

Abstract This contribution to the debate on museum collecting and disposal takes as its starting point the results of a survey which demonstrates that museums are continuing to collect at a significant rate, and that disposal is not being used as a collections management tool. Museums are therefore currently unsustainable institutions, which pass on their expanded collections in a way that increases the management burden for future generations. In order to address this problem, it is argued that disposal must have a significant role to play in collections management. It is still rarely used because a professional reticence over the issue has developed, both through decades of training which has instilled a “presumption against disposal”, and because nearly all disposals have been done on pragmatic grounds of saving costs or space, with no coherent intellectual framework within which to justify them. What is needed is a review of the philosophy underpinning museum collecting and an examination of whether it still serves us well. The literature on cultural heritage and the anthropology of memory provides a framework for challenging the notion that museums still function as repositories of objects and specimens that represent an objective record or collective memory. Instead, they should be seen for what they are: partial, historically contingent assemblages that reflect the tastes and interests of both the times and the individuals who made them. The intellectual framework put forward allows us not to be solely beholden by the collecting decisions of our predecessors, but to re-work these object “memories” and to choose to “forget” some of them through disposal. Finally, some of the practical implications of this framework are examined. It does not mean that museums can dispose of anything they choose, but it does mean that, instead of treating all collections as having equal importance, the ascription of value must become a fundamental part of curatorship. A number of existing schemes that do this are summarized, and some prospects for future development are outlined. Keywords: museumscollectingcollectionssustainabilityforgetting Acknowledgements The research and writing of this article was made possible through a Clore Leadership Fellowship, for which I am hugely grateful. I would like to thank Chris Smith, Sue Hoyle and Helen Acton of the Clore Leadership Programme for making the Fellowship such a transformative experience, and for all of their help and advice. Tristram Besterman, my supervisor for this piece of research, has been a wise and friendly critic and I want to thank him for sharpening up my ideas in many areas. Thanks are due also to a range of people who have helped me in providing information for the case studies: Jen Caines of Leeds Museums; Finbarr Whoolley and Kirsten Walker of the Horniman Museum; Martin Harrison-Putnam of London's Transport Museum; Ellen McAdam and colleagues at Glasgow Museums; Malcolm Chapman and colleagues at the Manchester Museum; Margarette Lincoln and colleagues at the National Maritime Museum; and Tim Heyburn of Ipswich Museum. In addition, my former colleagues at UCL, Suzanne Keene, Liz Pye, Beverley Butler and May Cassar all discussed some of the ideas put forward here and I am grateful for their insights. Finally, I would like to thank my fellow Fellows on the Clore Leadership Programme for informal discussions on my topic, and for their general friendship. Particular thanks are due to Maria Balshaw for her continual inspiration and unwavering support.