Today a team of collectors and museum conservators met at the Marion Jones Stadium conference room to talk about collections management. Sounds about as exciting as a librarian's conference on the "dewey decimal system", but it's key for the preservation of antiquities.
We dropped by to find out more:
Rebecca Newberry, Conservator, Science Museum Minnesota
"This year we are focusing on collections management, so collections management is knowing what you have, knowing if you are allowed to have it, knowing what it is, where it is and also taking good care of it."
"So one of the things that can happen is if you are donating an object to a collection or a museum so say you collected objects over your life and you decided to donate them to the museum the museum wants to make sure you actually own those objects so that you didn't take them from your neighbor and say they are yours, then the museum would be in trouble for taking those objects or maybe they were looted Maya artifacts and they are from a private collector, the museum would be responsible if they took in something that was illegally gains so it is making sure you do your due diligence and know where something came from."
"I think it is really great, one of the things that I think it an unintended consequence that I have seen happen is that everyone who works in collections in the country is able to get together once a year and talk and so they are learning similar things and they connect with each other."
This 3 day workshop is an annual event.
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