I'm glad someone brought up this discussion.  I struggle with this alot when the curator wants to acquisition something into the permanent collection that he would use as a prop in an exhibit.  For instance he brought in a 20 year old bottle of salad dressing (nothing unique, a brand that is still being made) as a new acquisition because he might need it in an exhibit display for instance if we had a scene of a grocery store.  So our problems are props that don't even rate a label in an exhibit, so they are just used to set the scene.  So does anyone else have items like this, do you store them?  I've tried to explain that items like that can be aquired when needed, and should not go in the permanent collection. 

I apologize for not signing my name, but I'm a little embarrassed by the salad dressing.

(of course I have other issues with the donors as to why they retained a bottle of salad dressing for 20 years.)

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