Collections in a Museum

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‘Imagine you were in charge of a museum’s collecting policy. What would you chose to collect and how would you justify these decisions?’

Introduction
Collections play a crucial role in fulfilling a museum’s mission and purpose. A museum’s collection is defined by its collection policy past and present which in turn helps to shape the museum’s goals and direction. As stewards of collections, museums are expected to maintain the highest professional standards legally and ethically.

The development of written policies are necessary to govern the management of collections and to establish the museum's collections related activities to support its mission and guide the priorities and decision-making of its governing authority and its staff.

A museum’s collections policy also validates the museum's commitment to care for and manage its collections properly to the highest standards to fulfil its public trust responsibilities as a steward of collections.
Collection policy
Collection management policy defines the scope and limits of museum’s collection and establishes standards and guidelines for its acquisition, accessioning, access deaccession, documentation, conservation, loans, security and management.
“A policy is useless if it is outdated, ignored, too complex to be followed, too simplistic to be useful, or does not serve the museum’s mission. […] Good policies help the museum achieve its mission and demonstrate its commitment to professional standards and best practices.”

The collection policy must relevant and supports the museum’s mission and purpose. All works proposed for acquisition to the collection should be based on and consistent with the museum’s stated mission. At the National Museum of Singapore the mission is to ...

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... recognise the importance of intangible heritage, museums still record very little that is intangible in a meaningful way (this applies to new media and scientific developments as much as to oral history and traditional culture).
It is important to establish the criteria for evaluating and determining whether an object should be added to the collection (e.g. consistency with museum's mission and collecting goals; quality, rarity, intellectual value; provenance; ability to properly care for and store; research and exhibition use; restrictions on use etc).
While resources do not permit any museum’s collection to be exhaustive, the richer the collection, the more stories the museum is able to tell. Museum collections used in exhibitions and other interpretive programs help visitors gain better understanding of the events, activities, and people associated with them.

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