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At Jersey Heritage, we are currently working on a new project to review and rationalise our social history collections.
All over Britain, museum collection stores are overflowing with objects, and ours is no different. This storage problem is unfortunately now impacting our ability to continue collecting and to grow our collections into the future.
The museum collection was started by the Société Jersiaise in 1873 and has been built up over the last 150 years. During this time, attitudes towards collecting have changed a great deal; in the past, the museum would accept almost anything that was offered to it, whereas nowadays we are more selective in what we accept and do not accept. Our Collecting Policy can be read here.
Some of the items in our collection that have been collected in the past have little to no provenance, no real Jersey connection, and/or came to us in very poor condition, and nowadays we would not accept these kinds of objects if they were offered to us. While disposal of collection objects has often been considered taboo in the past, the Museums Association, the governing body for museums across Britain, now acknowledge that “deaccessioning is an everyday and necessary part of collections management”.
At Jersey Heritage, we want to be able to keep preserving important pieces of history for the future, and therefore rationalising our collections will help us to create more space in order to do this.
Why is this project important?
A recent report published by the Museums Association pointed out that “many museum collections are in a state of stasis or even decay” as a result of overflowing stores.
All over Britain, museum collections are growing at a rate that is not sustainable, and museums are therefore being encouraged to think about the ethical deaccessioning of objects in order to keep collections relevant and manageable.
How can you ensure that you are not deaccessioning something important?
We are undertaking full due diligence on each and every object that we are considering deaccessioning, which involves a full review of the object’s catalogue entry, checking the original accession records and reviewing any relevant correspondence from the time that the object was acquired. We are not taking any shortcuts with this project; every object is individually assessed and discussed within our Collections Management Team.
In instances where our subject knowledge is limited, we will be working with external experts across the Island to assist us with reviewing certain collection areas, to ensure we are not deaccessioning anything important.
I donated an important object that wasn’t in the best condition. Will you be deaccessioning this?
Almost certainly not. Anything with an interesting or important story to tell will be retained by the museum. If a significant object comes to us in poor condition, we have a team of professional conservators who work full-time on conserving and restoring these items.
The focus of this deaccessioning project is to remove items from the collection that arguably should not have been collected in the first place; this includes objects that have no real connection to Jersey, generic objects which we have multiple examples of and/or items that have no particular provenance or story to tell.
Who is making the decisions about which objects are being deaccessioned?
There is no single person making deaccessioning decisions. Any member of staff in our collections team can recommend an object for deaccessioning, but this then goes through a multi-layer approval process before any final decision is made.
The first step is to draft a proposal which is considered by our Collections Management Team – this team is made up of registrars, conservators and archivists and is overseen by our Archives and Collections Director.
If approval is given by this group, then the proposal is sent to the object’s owners for final approval – if the object is owned by the Société Jersiaise, then the proposal will be sent to their President and Chief Executive Officer, or if the object is owned by Jersey Heritage, it will be considered by the organisation’s Board of Trustees.
Will you be selling museum objects?
At the moment, we have no intention of selling any objects that we deaccession. The nature of the objects that we are targeting for deaccessioning are generally in poor condition, and therefore have little to no financial value. Anything that we deaccession will be offered to other organisations for use or repurposing in the first instance, to the wider community second, and will only be recycled as a last resort.
Will you contact donors about the objects that you are deaccessioning?
If an object was donated within the last ten years and we have up-to-date contact information for the donor, we will contact the donor to let them know about the process and offer the return of the object in the first instance.
In most cases however, the objects will have been donated much longer ago and so it will not be possible for us to get in touch with donors.
If I donate something to the museum, could this be deaccessioned in future?
Yes, it is possible, as deaccessioning is now becoming a more accepted and critical part of collections management procedures.
However, the Collections Team are now much more selective about the objects that are accepted for the collection than has generally been the practice in the past. This means that the criteria by which we are selecting objects for deaccessioning has already been applied to donations made in recent years, making it less likely that it would be something highlighted for deaccessioning in the future.
Museum procedures and collecting habits do change over time however, and we cannot predict whether attitudes to collections might change again in 50, 100 or 150 years’ time. It is therefore always a possibility that something donated might be deaccessioned later down the line.
In order to better illustrate the work we are doing, this is a real example that we have been working on recently.
The Collections Team recently carried out an audit and condition check of all the chairs in the museum collection and proposed some for deaccessioning as part of this review.
At the time that this review was undertaken, there were 199 chairs listed on the museum catalogue. The best quality chairs can generally be found on display at our visitor sites, such as furnishing the Victorian House at the Jersey Museum, at Hamptonne, or on loan at other locations such as the National Trust’s Georgian House on New Street. This accounts for 56 of the chairs.
The other 143 chairs are currently in storage and not being used. Of this number, some are important; they might be a good example of a type of period chair that doesn’t necessarily fit with our site displays at present, or it might be a chair which belonged to or was used by someone significant. These will of course be retained and continue to be housed in our store until such a time that it might be appropriate to exhibit them.
Other chairs do not have particularly interesting features or stories to tell, and these are the ones that were reviewed. Following this audit, 19 chairs were proposed for deaccessioning, which would leave us with 180 in the collection – still a very large number and far more than we would ever need at any one time.
We are not deaccessioning treasures or important items, the aim of this project is to free up space by removing some items that will never be used. We are dedicated to collecting Jersey’s heritage and it is important to create some space in our store so that we are able to continue doing this.
