Museums and the Future of Collecting

by Knell,Simon J.; Knell,Simon J.

• ISBN13: 9780754630050
• ISBN10: 0754630056
• Edition: 2nd
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2016-03-03
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Collecting is a key function of museums. Its apparent simplicity belies a complexity of questions and issues which make all collecting imprecise and unrepresentative. Museums and the Future of Collecting exposes the many meanings of collections, the different perspectives taken by different cultures, and the institutional response to the collecting problem. One major concern is omission, whether this be determined by politics, professional ethics, the law or social agenda.Museums and the Future of Collecting encourages museums to move away from the collecting of isolated tokens; to move beyond the collecting policy and to understand more clearly the intellectual function of what they do. Here examples are given from Australia, Sweden, Canada, Spain, Britain and Croatia which provide this intellectual understanding and many practical tools for evaluating a future collecting strategy.

Table of Contents

List of Figures	viii
List of Tables	ix
Preface	x
Altered values: searching for a new collecting	1	(46)
Simon Knell
Collections and collecting	47	(5)
Susan Pearce
Museums without collections: museum philosophy in West Africa	52	(10)
Malcolm McLeod
The future of collecting: lessons from the past	62	(10)
Richard Dunn
The Ashmolean Museum: a case study of eighteenth-century collecting	72	(12)
Patricia Kell
The cartographies of collecting	84	(18)
Rebecca Duclos
From curio to cultural document	102	(11)
Barbara Lawson
Contemporary popular collecting	113	(5)
Paul Martin
Collecting from the era of memory, myth and delusion	118	(10)
Gaynor Kavanagh
Collecting in time of war	128	(7)
Zarka Vujic
The politics of museum collecting in the `old' and the `new' South Africa	135	(11)
Graham Dominy
Folk devils in our midst? Collecting from `deviant' groups	146	(9)
Nicola Clayton
All legal and ethical? Museums and the international market in fossils	155	(10)
John Martin
What is in a `national' museum? The challenges of collecting policies at the National Museums of Scotland	165	(14)
Michael Taylor
Who is steering the ship? Museums and archaeological fieldwork	179	(6)
Janet Owen
Collecting: reclaiming the art, systematising the technique	185	(11)
Linda Young
Samdok: tools to make the world visible	196	(8)
Anna Steen
Professionalising collecting	204	(7)
Barbro Bursell
Developing a collecting strategy for smaller museums	211	(4)
Maria Garcia
Carmen Chinea
Jose Farina
Towards a national collection strategy: reviewing existing holdings	215	(7)
Jean-Marc Gagnon
Gerald Fitzgerald
Ranking collections	222	(13)
Martin Wickham
Deaccessioning as a collections management tool	235	(7)
Patricia Ainslie
Collecting live performance	242	(8)
James Fowler
Redefining collecting	250	(11)
Tomislav Sola
Index	261