Museums and the Future of Collecting
Edited by Simon Knell
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 is determined by politics,
professional ethics, the law or social agenda. It is easy for museums to
be blind to such things or afraid to confront them. How did curators
collect during the war in Croatia? What were the problems of trying to
collect the "old" South Africa when the new one was born? Can museums
collect from groups which seem to "deviate" from society's norms? How
has the function of museums affected the practices of international trade?
Can museums collect successfully if collecting agenda are being set externally?
This book 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. It offers examples
from Australia, Sweden, Canada, Spain, Britain and Croatia which provide
this intellectual understanding and many practical tools for evaluating
a future collecting strategy.
Contents: Introduction: What future collecting?, Simon Knell; Collecting
in context: Collections and collecting, Susan Pearce; Museums without
collections: museum philosophy in West Africa, Malcolm Mcleod; The future
of collecting: lessons from the past, Richard Dunn; The Ashmolean Museum:
a case study of 18th century collecting, Patricia Kell; The cartographies
of collecting, Rebecca Duclos; From curio to cultural document, Barbara
Lawson; Contemporary popular collecting, Paul Martin; Omissions and Dilemmas:
Collecting from the era of memory, myth and delusion, Gaynor Kavanagh;
Collecting in time of war, Zarka Vujic; The politics of museum collecting
in the "old" and the new "new" South Africa, Graham Dominy; Folk devils in
out midst? Collecting from "deviant" groups, Nicola Clayton; All legal and
ethical? Museums and the international market in fossils, John Martin; What
is in a "national" museum? The challenges of collecting policies at the
National Museums of Scotland, Michael Taylor; Who is steering the ship?
Museums and the archaeological fieldwork, Janet Owen; Collecting Futures:
Collecting: Reclaiming the art, systematising the technique, Linda Young;
Samdok: tools to make the world visible, Anna Steen; Professionalising
collecting, Barbro Bursell; Developing a collecting strategy for smaller
museums, Maria Garcia, Carmen Chinea, José Fariña; Towards a national
collection strategy: reviewing existing holdings, Jean-Marc Gagnon and
Gerald Fitzgerald; Deaccessioning as a collections management tool,
Patricia Ainslie; Collecting live performance, James Fowler; Redefining
collecting, Tomislav Sola; Index.
Simon Knell, Department of Museums Studies, University of Leicester, UK.
For more information visit: http://www.ashgate.com/html/bookdetail.cfm?isbn=0
and search for the keyword KNELL.
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