Conference Review:

"Should We Junk Collections?"

The Institute of Ideas hosted a panel discussion on May 16, 2005 at the Wallace Collection in London titled provocatively, "Should We Junk Collections?" Moderated by Tiffany Jenkins, the panel featured Andrew Burnett, Deputy Director, The British Museum; Maurice Davies, Deputy Director, Museums Association; James Fenton, poet and essayist; and Anna Somers Cocks, General Editorial Director and Group Newspapers Editor, Umberto Allemandi & Co.

To start the conference each panelist gave a brief introductory statement, which was followed by questions from the moderator and the audience. Maurice Davies began by making a plea for collections not to be "junked", but to be displayed and used more intensively. He stressed the need for museums to worry less about perpetuity and even posterity, and more about today. Keeping thousands of items in storage is serving neither current nor future generations of either museum visitors or researchers effectively. Why not see then if there might be opportunities to display some of these works-the "B" list stuff, duplicates, works slightly out of synch with the focus of the collection etc.-at alternative venues such as schools, libraries and hospitals that might consider them jewels? If structured thoughtfully, such an arrangement could benefit both organizations. Notably, Davies did not expressly make a case for that bogeyman known as deaccessioning.

Anna Somers Cocks made the important and often overlooked point that collections of contemporary art and artists are disadvantaged by a museum's default responsibility to steward what are often outsized and disproportionate collections from the past. [1] Predictably, the other panelists did less than argue persuasively the case against "junking" collections but simply invoked the mantra about a museum's role, which is fundamentally and first rooted in its obligation to steward the items that have been entrusted to them. The standard cautionary tales about deaccessioning followed, including reference by one panelist to "dodgy" deaccessioning practices of American museums. While one could argue the anti-American dig may have been gratuitous, the warnings about thoughtless deaccessioning are critical and merit repeated articulation.

The problem is that this mission is essentially indisputable and thus when articulated - especially in a context such as this one - it becomes a conversation stopper. The tautology goes something like this:

1. Primary purpose of museums = Stewardship
2. Stewardship = Retaining objects in collection
3. Retaining objects = Storage facilities bursting at the seams
4. Storage facilities bursting at seams = Proof of good stewardship
5. Proof of good stewardship = Mission fulfillment

The discussion at The Wallace Collection was ultimately frustrating, because all of the panelists except one (Davies) and the majority of the audience were reluctant to engage the substantive issues that lie at the heart of the matter:

1. As Davies described, millions of collection items are in storage in museums around the world, often uncatalogued, in poor and declining condition, and, importantly, not being viewed or utilized either by the public at large or by scholars and researchers. What is the point, ultimately, of these objects if a) no one knows they exist; b) no one sees, studies or elucidates them and c) they are deteriorating? This is ugly territory, and there are no easy answers.
2. What defines effective stewardship, and how can the sector secure the enormous sums necessary to catalogue and care properly for every collection item? Given the imbalance between the funds needed to maintain collections and the availability of that funding, and assuming continued acquisition and the relentless effects of time on both buildings and objects, how can museums truly fulfill their responsibilities of preservation, access and education? Are there new models - networks, partnerships, distributed collections, commercial strategies, etc. - that might help?

Nick Merriman, Curator of Museums and Collections at University College London, tried to get a discussion going about these questions - presumably the reason for holding such a symposium in the first place - by calling for a mature dialogue that would address fundamental long-term issues surrounding collections and move toward articulating a more sustainable collections model. Merriman's comments followed my own unpopular observation that collections might end up junking themselves if the museum community doesn't begin to explore creative new solutions to the dilemma sometimes referred to as "too much stuff". Let's hope the report to be issued this month by The Museums Association after an 18-month inquiry into the future of museums collections in the U.K. will serve as a step in this direction.

But Merriman's argument was not picked up, a pity as an honest dialogue about collections planning and sustainability is needed indeed. A recent article in the Washington Post about the Smithsonian's conservation crisis caused by having over 300 million objects in buildings in various states of disrepair was a dramatic reminder.[2] Museum leaders need to stop denying the magnitude of the problem for many institutions for fear that they may be seen as not fulfilling their stewardship obligations. Like the audience member who suggested that tales of storage crunches are hyped up and are merely a "red herring" for something else, which she didn't articulate. I suppose she was envisioning a bunch of swashbuckling American "bursars" with dollar signs in their eyes and plenty of empty, climate-controlled secret chambers in their basements. I have a few museum registrars I'd like her to meet.

Elizabeth Casale
ecasale@aeaconsulting.com

[1] I am thinking of a recent New Yorker article that mentions the daunting task of making a high-resolution digital image of every collection item in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a job estimated to take 25 years and exacerbated by "an endless quantity of scarab beetles from Egypt" that happens to reside there. http://www.newyorker.com/printables/fact/050411fa_fact .
[2] Don Oldenburg, "Smithsonian Inundated With Leaks, GAO Reports" The Washington Post , May 27, 2005, p. C01. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/26/AR2005052601748.html?sub=AR

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