At last year’s NCPH in Pensacola, some of the standout panels were on museum collecting and collections. It’s surprisingly unusual for colleagues from history organizations to have a chance to come together and talk about the practical and philosophical issues we run into every day of working with objects.
I therefore propose a session for an unstructured discussion on museum collections. Some issues we might address: dealing with donors, provenance issues, found in collections items, collecting strange/controversial/unwieldy things.
I’d like to take part in the session Suzanne proposes, especially if it deals with using a digital interface to understand museum collections.
I am just starting graduate school and will be starting my museum studies next fall. This is something I’m quite interested in.