Curator of Your Own Museum: Part One
10.16.06 By Deanna DahlsadPerhaps you resist the notion that as a collector you have your own museum. Maybe you (still) imagine that a museum must be significantly historical or be meaningful to society at large. But let me tell you, if other folks believed that their collection had no value, then we would be without the the Burlingame Museum of Pez Memorabilia, the Museum of Bad Art, the Cockroach Hall of Fame Museum, and the Lunchbox Museum. (The latter is recognized by the Smithsonian, yet!) Yet these and many other ’strange little museums’ have hundreds of visitors (or more) each year. Even if the number of visitors who would make a pilgrimage &/or pay to see your collection is a very small one, your collection does have merit and meaning.
Do you still think your collection is undesirable and uninteresting? Then ask yourself this: Do you have people bidding against you at auctions?
Yeah, I thought so. *wink*
See, your collection is interesting. You have a collection, you have a museum; that’s pretty clear-cut to me.
As with any museum, there is a curator: You. You are responsible for shaping and preserving the collection.
You may not have thought of yourself as a curator before, so let’s look at what one is.
The U.S. Department of Labor says, “Curators direct the acquisition, storage, and exhibition of collections, including negotiating and authorizing the purchase, sale, exchange, or loan of collections. They are also responsible for authenticating, evaluating, and categorizing the specimens in a collection. Curators oversee and help conduct the institution’s research projects and related educational programs. Today, an increasing part of a curator’s duties involves fundraising and promotion, which may include the writing and reviewing of grant proposals, journal articles, and publicity materials, as well as attendance at meetings, conventions, and civic events.”
This boils down to three rather natural steps for most collectors.
Step One: Acquisition
This is rather simple; it’s the collecting part. In the process of adding pieces to your collection you automatically authenticate and evaluate items to see what pieces are worth your investment. Like any museum, you have a budget which prevents you from having it all. Sometimes you get lucky; you can afford it, so you buy it. Sometimes though, you want it, want it bad, but it’s too expensive. So then you have to save funds as you watch and wait for another like it — or you may may get more creative. You might arrange a trade for other items in your collection, take out a loan (even if it is just from your spouse), or make payments over time. ‘Real museums’ do this too, only they call it negotiating an exchange, finding a benefactor, or fundraising.
Step Two: Storage and Display
Like any other museum curator you worry about how to best show off your collection. Not only should the items be shown to their best advantage, but done so in a way which does not harm them. Depending upon your particular collection this may be as simple as keeping them out of reach of small children or as challenging as shielding the items from the environment at large. Protecting items may mean higher shelves; protective cases, sleeves, or framing; or even storing them out of sight so that they live to see another decade. Sometimes even the best curators at the largest museums will have to pass on a piece simply because they do not have the room or the ability to properly store the item.
Step Three: Exhibition and Education
The more committed you are to your collection, the more knowledge you gain. The more passionate you are about your collection, the more you want to share both your knowledge and your collection. Through this you become an expert. You don’t have to be collecting something for 25 years in order to be an expert. Maybe your collection is a very unique set of items. (It need not be due to the rarity of the items themselves, but in their context to one another.) Or maybe your collection is so specific & limited that it requires you to be an expert in some small niche area. But one way or another, collecting eventually leads to the collector, the curator, becoming an expert.
As an expert you may be asked to share your collection in a more public venue. It may be a casual exhibit at a Scout meeting or local library, or a more prestigious event at an art gallery or state historical society. Now you are “loaning your acquisitions.” It might be that you are asked to write a paper for your collecting newsletter, share photos of your collection in an author’s book, speak at a local collectibles show, or help evaluate items in an estate. Now you are a curator “promoting” the collection.
Of course, being out in the public means you are also more visible to others, making acquisitions even easier. And the circle continues…
See? You’ve been acting as a curator of your own museum for quite some time now.
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Article Tags: acquisition, Bad Art, Burlingame, curator, display, exhibition, Lunchbox Museum, museum, preservation, storage================
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October 17th, 2006 at 8:44 pm
[...] Deanna Dahlsad has started a series of articles that follow up on her discussion of the personal collection as museum. In Curator of Your Own Museum: Part One, she takes the U.S. Department of Labor’s definition of a curator and breaks it down into three steps of collecting. For a bookmark collector: [...]
October 19th, 2006 at 4:20 am
[...] Perhaps the one area in which you are least likely to feel “like a museum” or a curator is that, at least in the beginning, you may not have defined your collection. Museums have a plan which includes the definition of their collection, generally before their first purchase is made. In part they do this for funding as they have to answer to a board of directors, benefactor, or other funding source — often they do before they get or expand a location. [...]
August 23rd, 2007 at 4:20 am
[...] My point today, if I must have one, is that while I’m an excellent curator of my own personal collections I’d likely make a terrible museum worker. Not only would I want to keep everything (as in, “keep it in my home”), but I’d have a terrible time taking things off display and putting them into the archives (storage). If I can’t decide what one item of mine to take along for appraisal, what do you think it would be like for me to choose which things to favor with display? Or is it showing more favoritism to properly preserve it? [...]
October 12th, 2008 at 2:22 am
[...] and understanding of collectors was clear as he talked about how objects hold stories and how collectors should think of themselves as curators. (In my notes I wrote, “It’s like Wes reads my [...]
October 20th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I had read this a while back and have kept it on the back burner (actually placed it in my favorites), until I opened my Lunch Museum three weeks ago October 1, 2009. Your article reminded that even though every person entering my collectibles store/lunchbox museum, is a potential customer; my first goal is to be the best curator ever. Everyone that walks into Clarke’s Collectibles and Lunchbox Museum will hear an explanation or history or story about any piece in my collection. Some of course want to just walk through or perhaps just purchase an item quickly but they always feel comfortable in asking questions about my collections. Out of the hundreds of visitors the last three weeks, only one has asked to buy part of the collection above their heads, out of reach. This shows me that I have set it up right for both viewing and purchasing. Come visit anytime, you will not be disappointed. You will find the directions on my virtual museum on my website.
Have a great day!
deb clarke
curator and owner