Exposure Draft, April 2001

Chapters 1 & 2: Background & The Context
Chapter 3: The Policy Framework
Chapter 4: The Market
Chapter 5: Museums & Their Collections
Chapter 6: Resources
Chapter 7: Conclusions
Annexes 

5 Museums & Their Collections

 

501.  The region's museums hold approximately 5 million items. Some have a considerable financial value, but most do not. Their real worth lies in their forensic value as a means of exploring and learning about the natural environment and how it has been shaped by people of different cultures over many millennia.

502.  The size of the regional collections by theme is in Table 20:

Table 20: East Midlands Museum Collections by Size

Source: East Midlands Museums Service

503.  The bulk of these collections are held by a relatively-small number of organisations, and the majority are of local interest. Where objects are of more than local significance, they often make up no more than a small part of a museum's holdings. However, from a regional perspective, it is clear that the significance of some such elements increases greatly when considered together, rather than apart.

504.  Four such 'distributed regional collections' have been identified - costume and textiles (including footwear and associated technological material), science and technology (excluding industry and transport), agriculture and natural sciences (biology and geology). They are characterised by some or all of the following:

• collecting has been carried out on the basis of subject rather than geography, and come from a wider area than that to which the museum normally limits its collecting activity;
  

• this activity has been undertaken for an extended period of time;

• the collection, in whole or substantial part, includes items that are at least of national interest;
  

• the collection, besides objects, includes archival and/or library material;
  

• the collections have been assembled by people with specialist knowledge of the subject concerned.

505.  While the selection has been made on academic grounds, it should be noted that the collections so distinguished have very strong links to present-day industries and activities that feature large in the Regional Economic Strategy.

506.  Table 21 lists the museums that hold those collections:

Table 21: Distributed Collections of the East Midlands

507.  There are strong arguments for creating partnerships to manage these collections. They include

· improved profile for these important collections within the region;

· creation of regional museums with collections of European importance; and

· economies of scale in recruiting and retaining high-calibre people to curate the collections.

508.  This is not to say that these collections should necessarily all be brought together under one roof. Many of these topics and themes are rooted in local communities, and their removal would both lead to a gap in the local record, and estrange the collections from the people who created them. However, the creation of regional centres for reserve collections, perhaps with some exhibition facilities, but also servicing displays on those themes in the originating museum, and supporting those places which represent the theme in situ (such as Hardwick, Ruddington and Church Farm, Skegness) has much to commend it.

509.  Similarly, the case for economies of scale can be applied to archaeology collections. These constitute more than half of the region's collections, and a high percentage is retained as an archive rather than its potential to entertain and educate through displays and activities.

510.  The region has four sites recognised by English Heritage as meeting appropriate standards of archaeological storage:

· Derby City Museums (Bold Lane Store)

· Lincolnshire Museums (Rumbold Street Store)

· Leicester City Museums (Jewry Wall Store)

· Nottingham City Museums (Brewhouse Yard Store)

511.  However, substantial collections are held in other museums, and by English Heritage, archaeological trusts and other contractors pending transfer to place of final deposit.

512.  Moves have been made by local authorities in Northamptonshire to create a single archaeological store for the county. This proposal is commended, and it is suggest that its scope might extend northwards to include Leicestershire and Rutland, and perhaps to areas in the region's hinterland. A similar project for Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, and retention of what already exists in Lincolnshire, would provide a sound framework for maintaining the region's archaeological archive.

Storage & Access

513.  It is a fact of museum life that most collections are in store. This does not mean that their significance is any less than those that are exhibited. Not only do they represent the inheritance of future generations, but they are also the raw materials for scholarship, learning and discovery for the people of today. In many ways they are the three-dimensional equivalent of archives held by record offices.

514.  To realise their potential in lifelong learning these collections must be in good condition and accessible. Their usefulness is limited when their care and maintenance are of a standard lower than that expected of a museum's public areas.

515.  During 1997/8 the East Midlands Museums Service commissioned a review of storage provision in East Midlands museums, and it was updated in 2000. Table 22 shows the current quality of storage in the region's Registered museums:

Table 22: Storage Quality in East Midlands Museums

Source: East Midlands Museums Service

516.  Few stores are purpose-built, or planned and designed to meet appropriate national standards of collections care. In many museums storage is overcrowded, precluding easy and efficient access. Failure to co-ordinate collecting, storage and documentation has led to some museums collecting in a way that has outstripped the resources to house and document them, making access difficult, and precluding full exploitation of those collections.

517.  The assessment of collections size in para 502 above shows that the bulk of collections in terms of numbers - some 82% of the total - are archaeology archive and natural science material. As much of this material is of specialist academic interest, and in its raw form is unlikely to seize the public imagination without explanation and interpretation, it is capable of being kept in high-density storage. We have already proposed that the archaeology material should be brigaded within three regional stores, and that the natural history collections should be treated within a single organisational framework.

518.  Several museums in the region are considering the development of 'resource centres' to address their storage needs. These would allow the public access throughout those stores, with the aim of increasing the percentage of collections on public view. They might be located on the edges of cities, obviating some of the problems of town-centre parking, especially where regular public transport is available.

519.  While it has attractive features, this option does bring with it a number of disadvantages. These are:

• a high capital cost (perhaps double that of an ordinary, high-quality, purpose-built museum store);
  

• additional revenue costs, unless these are to be offset by the closure of existing sites;
  

• management difficulties in reconciling access needs with safeguarding objects (especially those that are valuable, fragile, large or of high value);
  

• limited interpretative or education value, unless accompanied by a high level of personal interpretation, which again increases revenue costs.

520.  The alternative is to provide high-density storage, closed to the public, with modern object-handling systems, which enables easy access for material to be used on existing sites. Although this has cost advantages in capital terms, it again has the risk of being peripheral to the museum's activities rather than being a core resource. The fundamental problem is 'out of sight, out of mind', and new storage should be within the scope of a forward plan that uses the store and the collections it contains within lively museum programmes.

Collecting

521.  Collecting is the activity that provides tangible evidence of the museum's role in creating the inheritance of future generations.

522.  In East Midlands museums collecting activity has diminished during recent years. Although partly due to pressures on space and staff capacity, it mainly comes from the discipline of collecting policies that Museum Registration has required for the past ten years. This has led to more focused and relevant collecting, linked to the museum's key objectives.

523.  Most material that is collected comes by way of gift. Although some purchases are made, the aggregate of 'top line' budgets for acquisitions across all the region's museums is less than £40,000. Some museums operate cumulative purchase funds, so that underspends from one year can be carried forward for purchases in subsequent years. In others purchases are made from general supplies and materials budgets.

524.  This is supplemented by gifts from benefactors, Friends organisations, and grant-aid from the national Purchase Funds operated by the Victoria and Albert Museum and Science Museum on behalf of Resource: The Council for Museums, Archives and Libraries. The Heritage Lottery Fund has also recently supported purchases at several of the region's museums.

Museums as Patrons

525.  Most collecting is responsive to what is available. Museums also have an opportunity to create their own inheritance by commissioning contemporary artists and craftspeople to create their own response to issues that are the museum's concern - whether collections, building, environment or community. The railings and gates by John Creed at the Usher Gallery, Lincoln, are a functional example of this approach.

526.  Limited acquisition budgets often make funding such work difficult, especially as such purchases fall outside the scope of the main acquisition funds. However, they are to be encouraged, especially where they can complement capital investment projects.

Collections rationalisation

527.  All museums in the region hold material that it may no longer be appropriate to retain. The scale of such holdings is not established, but in some areas, perhaps especially social and industrial history, it may be substantial in size and volume. One of the fundamental principles of museum management is that the collections inherited by the present generation should be passed on in good order to people to come. Finite resources means that this cannot be achieved without some element of collections rationalisation and disposal.

528.  The Museum Registration scheme provides a process to enable disposals to be undertaken in a transparent and ethical manner, respecting the public interest. The barriers to rationalisation and disposal are lack of resources to carry out the task to an appropriate standard invariably include:

• inadequate documentation, which risks the museum taking a decision it subsequently regrets because it did not have the full facts at its disposal when the decision was made;
  

• uncertainties about the legal status of the item - whether or not it is the corporate property of the museum's governing body, and particularly whether it is held on trust, or is on loan - again a problem of poor documentation;
  

• the lack of in-house expertise needed to make decisions on the relative importance of material.

529.  These practical difficulties are exacerbated by many museums having ill-defined aims, or short-term, utilitarian objectives focused on the governing or funding body's current goals, rather than the museum's long-term mission. There are also communications issues that have to be addressed when dealing with the local community, whose members - both past and present - are usually the museum's main benefactors.

530.  The sum of all these reasons is that no museum in the region has a rationalisation policy, or processes in place to enable sensible and transparent disposals to take place as part of an organised programme of work.

Documentation

531.  The term 'documentation' embraces all the records and information associated with museum collections. A museum without documentation is of limited value: it cannot prove it is the legal owner of its collections; it cannot account to donors for what has been given, or to auditors or funding bodies for what has been bought; it cannot maintain proper security, and will be unable to provide researchers with the information they should expect. If a museum fails in its documentation, it has probably destroyed the scientific value of its collections, and their usefulness to the public.

532.  Museum Registration demands minimum standards of documentation, though many museums have documentation backlogs - objects for which all or part of the process has not been carried out. In some museums these backlogs are more than a few months, and reflect inadequate priority given to documentation over many years. Projects supported by the Service in the past suggest that, even when backlogs are identified, it is difficult to gauge their full extent, and to remedy them absorbs large resources for relatively long periods of time. Further, even baseline documentation - sufficient for managing collections - is inadequate for publicly-accessible databases of the type expected on websites.

533.  It is only possible to assess the region's documentation needs on a site-by-site basis. However, based on the experience of Nottingham City Museums, whose baseline documentation project was supported by the East Midlands Museums Service, the cost of addressing the region's basic documentation needs is unlikely to be less than £8 million, or to be achieved in a shorter timescale than ten years.

Collections Care and Conservation

534.  There are two types of conservation - remedial conservation, to stabilise or repair items that have suffered damage or neglect; and preventive conservation, which is to prevent or reduce the impact of those factors that threaten an item's continued survival. Within the past ten years there has been a shift from remedial to preventive conservation. The budget available for remedial collections in 'top-line' budgets in the region's local authority museums is less than £5,000.

535.  A survey by the East Midlands Museums Service in 1998 suggested that:

· very few museums have a collections care policy, and most of those that do are unable to achieve its perameters;

· monitoring and control equipment, when available, is not always correctly used;

· symptoms of problems are often addressed, rather than curing the cause; and

· there is a lack of effective work planning and organisation.

536.  The East Midlands Museums Service operates a Regional Emergencies and Disaster Squad, a team of curators and conservators on 24-hour call-out to fire and flood at any one of 166 participating locations operated by the region's museums, record offices and libraries. Participating institutions are also issued with a Museums and Record Office Emergency and Disaster Manual which provides a framework for avoiding disasters and planning the measures to be taken in the case of emergency.

537.  Problems in collections care in the region mirror those in providing public services: too few, or inappropriately deployed, resources, which often include people with inadequate or inappropriate skills, attempting too much. The issues to be faced in both areas are primarily issues of management (especially at the levels where strategic decisions are taken), training and funding.

 

Chapters 1 & 2: Background & The Context
Chapter 3: The Policy Framework
Chapter 4: The Market
Chapter 5: Museums & Their Collections
Chapter 6: Resources
Chapter 7: Conclusions
Annexes