Your views on Museums

**TimCaulton** Mon Aug 18, 2008 11:17 pm

Museums.......safe guarding our heritage......or cultural jail locking away our ability to express our identity by owning a NZ artefact..........what say you Question

**shazz** Tue Aug 19, 2008 7:35 am

educational Very Happy

**collectiques** Tue Aug 19, 2008 9:12 am

TimCaulton wrote:Museums.......safe guarding our heritage......or cultural jail locking away our ability to express our identity by owning a NZ artefact..........what say you

hrrrmm well I'm a registered collector of artefacts ... had to become one at 16 or so when I found the tip of a Greenstone adze ...lol...it was sooo small the museum let me keep it! lol

The thing that does disappoint me about some museums is that some of their attributions are incorrect ...also so much of their collections just arent viewable by the public ...

I don't view it as a cultural jail though... Razz

**TimCaulton** Tue Aug 19, 2008 10:29 am

Hey guys thanks for adding your thoughts Very Happy

Lets hope we can get a few more, and I use the term artefact very loosely here.....meaning any sort of object of desire etc.

sirod Sat Aug 23, 2008 8:00 pm

The Museums use yours and my money to buy items which they then store in earthquake proof vaults, never to see the light of day again. Private collectors at least recycle collections which gives others the joy of owning items. Bah humbug!!!!!!!

Guest Sun Aug 24, 2008 12:22 am

I think museums can conserve or preserve objects but in the process stifle culture. Looking at any large display case I'm often tempted to break the glass and set the pieces free. By removing something from its everyday use and labelling it as artefact its purpose is ended.

There's a long standing debate about ethnographic collections housed in foreign countries or human remains displayed as curiosities. I think the same discussion could be had over studio pottery bowls or factory pottery ashtrays. If an object is no longer used for its intended purpose and removed from its original location is it still the same object? Or just an artefact to be accessioned, catalogued, interpreted and sometimes displayed, depending on curatorial whim?

Are private collections consistently any different? The objects on display are less accessible than public collections and the material in boxes might or might not see the light of day before the inheritors flog it off on TradeMe with a circling flock of experts watching on. There's always an underground of serious collectors and dealers that circulate the most fancied objects between themselves but isn't this just another form of concealment?

ev Sun Aug 24, 2008 6:55 pm

Well I just love going to Museums!
They give me access to things that I could never see anywhere else.
Items are beautifully displayed and they do change the displays from time to time.
Yes I would love to touch some things - but my eyes do the touching.
I think that Museums are an important way of preserving the past for the public to enjoy.
Unlike private collections that are fawned over like treasure by their gollum-like owners.
I had an opportunity to run through the endless passage ways and corridors at the Auckland Museum one day when Mike Eagle helped to identify a fossil that I had found and the memory of hunks and chunks of fossils that were stacked up in an endless array was breathtaking.

Guest Sun Aug 24, 2008 7:39 pm

Thanks Ev. You've reminded me of a visit to the National Museum's Taranaki Street building. There were glass containers of all sizes with preserved specimens of all kinds, the flensing room with it's flesh-eating bugs and the whale skeleton basement which was like something out of Jurassic Park.

I can't remember the NAG or museum having much of a focus on "craft" though. I think Te Papa has improved that side of things.

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