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In recent years, many museums have implemented sweeping changes in how they engage audiences. However, changes to the field's approaches to collections stewardship have come much more slowly. Active Collections critically examines existing approaches to museum collections and explores practical, yet radical, ways that museums can better manage their collections to actively advance their missions.
Approaching the question of modern museum collection stewardship from a position of "tough love," the authors argue that the museum field risks being constrained by rigid ways of thinking about objects. Examining the field's relationship to objects, artifacts, and specimens, the volume explores the question of stewardship through the dissection of a broad range of issues, including questions of "quality over quantity," emotional attachment, dispassionate cataloging, and cognitive biases in curatorship. The essays look to insights from fields as diverse as forest management, library science, and the psychology of compulsive hoarding, to inform and innovate collection practices.
Essay contributions come from both experienced museum professionals and scholars from disciplines as diverse as psychology, education, and history. The result is a critical exploration that makes the book essential reading for museum professionals, as well as those in training.
List of contents
Foreword
Jim VaughnIntroduction
Trevor Jones, Rainey Tisdale, Elizabeth WoodA Manifesto for Active History Museum Collections
Trevor Jones & Rainey TisdaleSection 1: Conceptual Frameworks1.Ten Principles for an Anti-Racist, Anti-Orientalist, Activist Approach to Collections
Masum Momaya2. Objects or People?
Rainey TisdaleInterlude: Sensory Deprivation: A Short Play Based on a Real-Life Scenario
Elizabeth Wood3. Museum Collections and Public Feelings
Modupe LabodeInterlude: What Happens When Audiences "Talk" To Objects?
Gabriel Taylor4. Hoarding and Museum Collections: Conceptual Similarities and Differences
Gail Steketee5. The
Vital Museum Collection
Elizabeth Wood6. Four Forceful Phrases: An Archival Change Agent Muses on Museology
Mark GreeneInterlude: We are Collecting
Empty Boxes?
Elizabeth Wood, with Kayla Al Ameri7. Rethinking Museum Collections in a Troubled World
Robert R. JanesInterlude: Activate Your Object: 51 Questions to Reveal Inactivity
Katherine RieckSection II: New Ideas and Tools for Change8. Tier your Collections: A Practical Tool for Making Clear Decisions in Collections Management
Trevor Jones9. #Meaning: Cataloging Active Collections
Paul BourcierInterlude: Question the Database!
Vickie Stone10. Practical Strategies for Addressing Hoarding in Collections
Gail SteketeeInterlude: Tidying Up Museum Collections
Anne Jordan11. Things in Flux: Collecting in the Constructivist Museum
Benjamin FileneInterlude: A (Practical) Inspiration: Do You Know What It Costs You to Collect?
Trevor Jones12. Reworking Collections Management Practices for How We Must Live Now: An Archival Case Study
Susan M. Irwin and Linda A. Whitaker13. Object Reincarnation: Imagining a Future Outside the Permanent Collection
Kate BowellEpilogue: Imagine with Us
Rainey Tisdale
About the author
Elizabeth Wood is Professor of museum studies, and public scholar of museums, families, and learning at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), USA.
Rainey Tisdale is an independent curator who leads for change on field-wide issues including place-based interpretation, collections stewardship, creative practice, and museums and well-being.
Trevor Jones is Director and CEO of the Nebraska State Historical Society, USA.
Summary
This book considers modern museum collection stewardship and argues that the museum field risks being constrained by rigid ways of thinking about objects. Exploring issues such as ‘quality over quantity’, emotional attachment, dispassionate cataloging, and cognitive biases in curatorship, the book aims to inform and innovate collection practices.
