Why do museums collect?

Museum Studies, Week 2

Why do museums collect?

People have collected things for many hundreds of years – artworks, treasures, exotic objects, and curiosities. A collection can be a financial investment, a treasure trove, a hobby or even an obsession. It can be a record that we use to make sense of the world of today and yesterday.

While many collections have been built up by individuals, public spaces where collections are housed, such as museums, houses, libraries and art galleries also have a very long history. In the UK, the biggest museums and galleries date from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The Ashmolean is the oldest public museum in England, established in 1677. It is based on the collection of the Tradescants - antiquarians and plant collectors in Stuart England. When they went out collecting, not only did they bring back plants but also curiosities, these went on display in what was known as The Ark, and was one of London’s main attractions. When Tradescant Jr. died the collection was left to Elias Ashmole. Who formed the Ashmolean museum.

Inside the Old Ashmolean, 1683

The National History Museum at Tring, is essentially the private collection of Lionel Walter Rothschild. He dedicated his life to the study of animals. He started collecting at a young age, and had a huge collection from all over the world. He was interested not only in collecting but also researching. By the age of 24 he had established one of the largest natural history collections in the world and opened a museum in Tring. After he died his collection became apart of the national collection (NHM, London). The museum is very classically laid out. Most of the places we talk about are very high tech, this is completely the opposite.

National History Museum, Tring

Why in the past did museums collect, and why do collectors decide to open their collections to the general public?

Damien Hirst Gallery, Newport Street. His intention when he started to collect, was to exhibit works that have inspired him. He feels it's important to allow the public to enjoy his collection. There are now lots of galleries in the area and so he has helped Vauxhall become more apart of the art scene.

Newport Street Gallery, Vauxhall, London 

Similarly, Saatchi collected lots of works and decided to open collection to public in prestigious building.

Saatchi Gallery, London

Many museums start through donations from private collectors, which provided the foundations for continued acquisitions, e.g. British Museum. But collections are also acquired by other methods, such as field collection, transfer from other organisations, and purchase.

Famous national history collectors include Alfred Russell Wallace and Henry Walter Bates. Who were friends of Darwin. They travelled the world collecting specimens and sending them home. Bates sent c. 15,000 specimens home from his Amazon expedition in 1848-1859. 8,000 of which were previously unknown to science.

Illustration of Henry Walter Bates

Insects collected by Alfred Russell Wallace

Transfers can be controversial, e.g. The transfer of the Royal Photographic Society Collection from Bradford’s Media Museum to the V&A in 2016.

London Museum. (Forerunner to the museum of London)

• The London Museum opened in 1912 at Kensington Palace, near Hyde Park, and moved to Lancaster House in the West End of London in 1914.
• The museum advertised for objects in the newspapers to place in the museum.
• By asking the public what they thought should form the collection, they resulted in a much more eclectic collection.
• They are starting to build stories to relate to their objects, e.g. The key collections have the history of the keys - who donated them and why etc. It was unusual for general items to have this much detail and info attached to them.

Museum collecting

In the past many museums collected without any concerns over the size and maintenance of collections. To get a few items of value, museums often accepted collections that contained many unwanted items.

Throughout the 20th century, many museums tried to acquire as much as possible in their subject areas. The collections that evolved were often large and lacking in cohesion, and sometimes contained materials that were not of museum quality.

Bucks County Museum, Halton Resource Centre

Huge amount of storage in hangers, (holding huge collections of chairs, doors, etc.) and very limited amount of that stuff gets put on display. The museum has to close in the next couple of years so lots of artefacts to rehome.

Too much stuff

•The Natural History Museum has 70 million specimens.

•The Imperial War Museum has six million photographs and 120 million feet of film.

•The British Museum has four million prints and drawings.

•The V&A has one million prints and drawings and 80,000 textiles.

The problem for places like the British museum is they can't deconcession things.

Northampton Museum got rid of an Egyptian bust, not important to the town, but there was a huge amount of controversy, as it was sold to a private collector in order to refurbish the museum. As a result of this they lost their accreditation. Getting rid of things is difficult for museums and they are at risk of losing their status if they do.

The Horniman Museum:

The museum has an offsite storage facility (Study Collections Centre (SCC)) which houses the majority of the museum’s collections. Approximately 95% of the Anthropology and Natural History collections are stored here, and 80% of the musical Instrument collections.

Horniman's Study Collections Centre

There is a lot of discussion about the fact that museums need to be more business-like. They need to be able to get rid of some of their collections. These issues of disposal are controversial but need to be addressed.

“Why do museums not act more like businesses with respect to their assets? Why, for examples, do museums not sell some of their collections?” Keith S Thomson, Treasures on Earth, Faber and Faber, 2002

“The huge store of undisplayed objects [in the British Museum] should be weeded and sold on to collector who would love them, or to museums which would study and display them.” Simon Jenkins, Times, 24/05/2002

“Museums must develop a flexible accessioning and holding policy for current collecting, so that they have the ability to review collections at 25- or 50-year intervals. Such a review of material ‘currently collected’ would allow for reflective re-examination.” Mayo, Smithsonian Report.

The Museums Association commissioned a report on Collecting in 2005 which stated:

• Museums should collect contemporary materials because visitors need to be able to explore their own lives and experiences through the collections. This includes the best of contemporary art, with its multi-layered insights into the modern world.

There are lots of contemporary collections, e.g. Barbie dolls from the V&A collections at the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood and The Moroccan fashion collection at the V&A.

What about older materials?

As museums respond to different agendas, they may need different sorts of objects in their collections. For example, many UK museum collections are the product of Empire and Imperialism so they may seek to acquire objects that tell the other side of a familiar story.

Sometimes collecting is about funding and an income stream.

• e.g. The new WW1 Nissan Hut at the Chiltern Open Air Museum - an acquisition driven by a need, provided with the help of the heritage lottery fund funding.

Some museums don't bother to collect things at all but exhibit reproductions.

• For example, the Oriental Institute in Chicago houses copies of the Hammurabi Law Code, the Rosetta Stone, and the Shalmaneser Obelisk, some of which are more than 120 years old.
• Casts at the Harvard Museum are replicas of reliefs from a palace recently destroyed during the ISIS raid of Nimrud. These are also over 100 years old.
• The “Van Gogh Alive” exhibition is one of 113 different international shows put on by the Australian company Grande Exhibitions. The Dutch artist’s many works are projected across dozens of screens, as music fills the exhibition hall. In Florence this show attracted over 100,000 Florentines, meaning that 85% of their visitors were local!

Contemporary collections - not only physical objects are being collected. Stories, digital media, tattoos, e.g. exhibition about tattoos at the Museum of London.

What should museums collection and how should they do it?

Fundamentally, museums should collect because objects are powerful, potentially much more powerful than an image on a screen or words on a page. Brought together, cared for and imaginatively interpreted, objects in a museum can:

• Give pleasure
• Provoke wonder
• Enable people to explore the world and make other people, other experiences and other places real and tangible
• Provide evidence and give opportunities for research and learning
• Give status to ideas, people or communities
• Validate groups’ or individuals’ experiences
• Serve as memorials
• Inspire people of  today
• Have economic impact, supporting contemporary science and industry
• Give people a powerful sense of place, identity and belonging, anchored in a fuller understanding of the past.