ACTIVE COLLECTIONS AND MEANING

Sarah Grace Rogers

Collections Management
22 July 2022
 In Night at the Museum, Larry, a night guard at the New York Museum of Natural
History, experiences something both terrifying and thrilling: a museum that comes to life.1 He
experiences the stories of the people, objects, and animals within the museum first-hand. Rather
than reading about Theodore Roosevelt, Larry has a conversation with him.
Unfortunately, this is not realistic outside of literature and movies. Real museums,
however, can bring things to life in other ways. Museums can become places of enlightenment
and connection when they live up to their full potential.2 They draw people in with intrigue– the
mystery of knowledge that is right at their fingertips, if they only venture inside. The best
museums create an active, engaging, and inspiring environment that encourages thought-
provoking questions and corresponding answers, or at least discussion. Museums exist to bring
history, science, and culture into a plane of existence that not only sits behind a piece of glass for
people to stare at but creates an electric atmosphere of discovery and truth.
This is not accomplished with a magic tablet or even advanced holograms like in Larry’s
world. Rather, living museums are products of active collections. Active collections are vital to a
museum because they are the cornerstone for the foundation of the museum experience:
meaning.3 Meaning creates life; without it, objects are isolated and seemingly irrelevant.
Everything has meaning, but it is the role of collections to actively create a meaningful story
with which visitors ingeract, interpret in their own way, and carry with them for the rest of their
lives.
Active Collections highlights the theme of meaningful museum collections. Meaning
activates a collection, giving it a story, and bringing it to life.4 However, this does not just
inherently happen on its own; collections managers, curators, educators, and other museum staff
work together to highlight connections and facts or provide their visitors with the tools to do so
themselves. This is because it is not just about an object’s materialistic characteristics but its
“mind and spirit.” and how it affects people and their perception of history and the world5
Museums belong to the people; their collections must celebrate and enhance meaningful
connections. Without them, museums are just objects, sitting in isolation, collecting dust.

1 Leslie Goldman, Night at the Museum: The Junior Novelization (Woodbury: Sourcebooks Young Readers, 2006).
2 University of Iowa, “Activating the Museum,” Obermann Center for Advanced Studies (2020), accessed July 17, 2022,
https://obermann.uiowa.edu/news/2020/01/activating-museum, para. 5.
3 Active Collections, ed. Elizabeth Wood, Rainey Tisdale, and Trevor Jones (New York: Routledge, 2018).
4 Ibid.
5 Robert R. Janes, “Rethinking Museum Collection in a Troubled World,” in Active Collections, ed. Elizabeth Wood, Rainey

Tisdale, and Trevor Jones (New York: Routledge, 2018), 88.

Bringing an object to life by giving it a story affects people on a personal level.6 It stories that
create that meaning that draw people in, educate them, inspire them to see the world in a new
light, and maybe even change it for the better. Museums, then, are public servants.
How can they be public servants, though, when they are drowning in decades of
hardships and obstacles that continue to threaten their ability to stay afloat? Museums cannot
achieve their goals with so many imposing obstacles pushing them further and further down. In
the past, museums have been pulled into a riptide of collecting for collecting’s sake, slowly
drifting away from the reason they exist at all. Therefore, there is now a movement to throw
museums a life preserver and pull them back to their purpose.
The museum industry has a long history of bragging about the size of collections.
Museums are seen as the community attic with a purpose to primarily preserve things; sometimes
they are nice to look at, but none of it is essential in life. Sometimes museums collect just to
assuage guilt because no one wanted to tell a donor “No,” leading to an excess of “stuff” that
offers little to the public good.7 This causes a disconnect from their mission but can also start to
affect their connection to culture and relevance in an ever-evolving world. Items are all treated of
equal value that prevents the ability for several items to reach their full potential. With the
addition of funding, training, and storage issues, the problems continue to build over time and
can prevent accessibility and relationships to the community.8 They continue to move further
away from their mission and the reason they were established in the first place.
How, then, do museums return to their purpose? How do they create meaningful
experiences for the public? Being aware of the shortcomings of the past allows museum
professionals to make changes that will better an unpredictable future.9 Museums can become
places of better engagement if they activate their collections.10 For example, collections’ value
should not be about size but rather about quality. When focusing on size, thousands of “lazy”

6
Paul Bourcier, “#Meaning,” in Active Collections, ed. Elizabeth Wood, Rainey Tisdale, and Trevor Jones (New York:
Routledge, 2018), 115.
7
Trevor Jones, “Active Collections: Rethinking the Role of Collections in Your Museum,” Active Collections: Thought Pieces
(2015), accessed July 17, 2022, http://www.activecollections.org/thought-pieces/2015/10/23/active-collections-rethinking-the-
role-of-collections-in-your-museum, para. 3-6.
8
Maggie Appleton, “Empowering Collections,” Museums Association: Collections 2030, accessed July 17, 2022, https://archive-
media.museumsassociation.org/MS1681-Empowering-collections__v8.pdf, 4-5.
9
Susan M. Irwin and Linda A. Whitaker, “Reworking Collections Management Practices for How We Must Live Now,” in
Active Collections, ed. Elizabeth Wood, Rainey Tisdale, and Trevor Jones (New York: Routledge, 2018), 151 .
10
Michael O’Hare, “Museums Can Change– Will They?,” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas (2015), accessed July 17, 2022,
https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/36/museums-can-changewill-they/. Para. 16.
artifacts make residence of storage shelves for decades without ever being used for research,
exhibit, or education; they are not active assets and thus prevent the activation of a museum.11
Instead of focusing on collecting and preserving, museums should consider how to improve
collections to create more impactful experiences for the public.12 When considering this, though,
each museum will be different; there is not a one-size-fits-all model.13 Facilitating changes to
promote higher quality collections will involve individualized conversations and policies that tie
back to a museum’s mission. These conversations should lead to better procedures not only for
acquisition but also for deaccessioning and even tiering objects to understand their museum
value.14
Many museums and institutions are trying to activate their collections in this way. One
such example is the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library; it opened in 1975 with a plan to
focus on traveling exhibits that told American history in Lexington. Soon, people started
donating objects, many Masonic in nature, many by members of the Masonic fraternity. Staff felt
that they had to take them even though they did not feel the objects necessarily aligned with the
collection or its goals. Many of these items were put away in storage, separated from the “real”
collection, and given little attention for the next few decades even though they took up
significant storage space. In 2009, the board refocused the museum's mission and reconsidered
the thousands of items taking up storage. Items were sorted, either brought into main collection
storage or set aside to be considered for deaccessioning. Objects that were not museum quality,
such as broken or irrelevant items, were either discarded or sold. Proceeds from sold items went
towards the acquisition fund. Though it took several months, it proved worth the effort; not only
did storage space become available to bring in more meaningful items, but objects were also
discovered that allowed for better understanding of American freemasonry.15 In other words,
creating an active environment allowed for the development of a richer experience for the public.
This example reflects that, when used correctly, artifacts are transformative; they can
connect visitors to the past in meaningful ways that also impact their daily lives and

11
Trevor Jones, “Active Collections: Rethinking the Role of Collections in Your Museum,” Active Collections: Thought Pieces
(2015), accessed July 17, 2022, http://www.activecollections.org/thought-pieces/2015/10/23/active-collections-rethinking-the-
role-of-collections-in-your-museum, para. 13-14.
12
Ibid., para. 7.
13
Ibid., para. 11.
14
Ibid., para. 15.
15
Aimee E. Newell, “Getting Over the Deaccessioning Hump,” Active Collections: Case Studies (2015), accessed July 17, 2022,
http://www.activecollections.org/new-blog/2015/4/8/getting-over-the-deaccessioning-hump.
understanding of the world.16 Having fewer, higher quality, active objects allow for this. They
create empowering and relevant collections that connect to their audience on a much deeper
level, encourage discussion on difficult topics, and inspire active members of society.17
Museums should not be about “stuff;” they should be about meaning. Meaning is
unachievable without more active collections. Museums can adjust their perspective and discuss
their mission to create an environment of enrichment, engagement, and enlightenment; they can
refocus their trajectory to better connect with visitors. With active collections, museums do not
need a tyrannosaurus rex skeleton that runs the hallways or a talking Easter Island head to draw
people in; the collections will speak for themselves.

References

16
Ibid., para. 12.
17
Maggie Appleton, “Empowering Collections,” Museums Association: Collections 2030, accessed July 17, 2022,
https://archive-media.museumsassociation.org/MS1681-Empowering-collections__v8.pdf.
Active Collections. Edited by Elizabeth Wood, Rainey Tisdale, and Trevor Jones. New York:
Routledge, 201.

Bourcier, Paul. “#Meaning.” In Active Collections, edited by Elizabeth Wood, Rainey Tisdale,
and Trevor Jones, 110-116. New York: Routledge, 2018.

Filene, Benjamin. “Things in Flux.” In Active Collections, edited by Elizabeth Wood, Rainey
Tisdale, and Trevor Jones, 130-140. New York: Routledge, 2018.

Goldman, Leslie. Night at the Museum: The Junior Novelization. Woodbury: Sourcebooks
Young Readers, 2006.

Irwin, Susan M., and Linda A. Whitaker. “Reworking Collections Management Practices for
How We Must Live Now.” In Active Collections, edited by Elizabeth Wood, Rainey
Tisdale, and Trevor Jones, 145-152. New York: Routledge, 2018.

Janes, Robert R. “Rethinking Museum Collection in a Troubled World.” In Active Collections,

edited by Elizabeth Wood, Rainey Tisdale, and Trevor Jones, 85-97. New York:
Routledge, 2018.

Jones, Trevor. “Active Collections: Rethinking the Role of Collections in Your Museum.” Active
Collections: Thought Pieces (2015). Accessed July 17, 2022.
http://www.activecollections.org/thought-pieces/2015/10/23/active-collections-
rethinking-the-role-of-collections-in-your-museum.

O’Hare, Michael. “Museums Can Change– Will They?” Democracy: A Journal of Ideas (2015).
Accessed July 17, 2022. https://democracyjournal.org/magazine/36/museums-can-
changewill-they/.

Newell, Aimee E. “Getting Over the Deaccessioning Hump.” Active Collections: Case Studies
(2015). Accessed July 17, 2022. http://www.activecollections.org/new-
blog/2015/4/8/getting-over-the-deaccessioning-hump.

University of Iowa. “Activating the Museum.” Obermann Center for Advanced Studies (2020).
Accessed July 17, 2022. https://obermann.uiowa.edu/news/2020/01/activating-museum.