Donating a Collection

[Peter Brydon]

In my experience Museum`s generally have a lot more items in storage than they have on display.

There is no guarantee that items donated or indeed loaned will be on permanent display.

I am not saying dont give items to Museums, I am saying that no matter how important or comprehensive an item or collection of items might be, in your opinion, the same opinion might not be that of the Curator or Museum Committee and as displays change dont presume that items you have gifted/loaned will be visible next time you visit the Museum.

P.B.

[slick_mick]

Originally Posted by 8thfoot

In my experience Museum`s generally have a lot more items in storage than they have on display.

There is no guarantee that items donated or indeed loaned will be on permanent display.

I am not saying dont give items to Museums, I am saying that no matter how important or comprehensive an item or collection of items might be, in your opinion, the same opinion might not be that of the Curator or Museum Committee and as displays change dont presume that items you have gifted/loaned will be visible next time you visit the Museum.

P.B.

Very true! The Australian War Museum literally has containers of medal groups, badges and other stuff that was donated but that will never be displayed.

Mick

[Rob Dekker]

Originally Posted by Phillip Herring

I loaned an item to a particular museum (which some clod on this Forum has accused me of never having bothered to visit) and getting the item back took an act of God. Fortunately I had retained the original receipt, but they hadn't and in the course of several years had transferred responsibilty for the item to somebody outside of the museum. I was not pleased.

Phil

So, did you get the item returned to your possession in the end??

A lot of stuff goes out the back door of smaller institutions...it ain't funny!!! Remember the RCL just outside of Ottawa, it was closing down so the 'curator' decided to destroy all the Memorial Crosses in the collection so they wouldn't fall into the hands of collectors...sold the remains for scrap.

[tynesideirish]

For a short time I was volunteered to work in a Regimental museum when I was convalescing. I was amazed at the rails of unseen BD's, medals, badges, diaries, paperwork and photos that veterans and their families had donated. All to never see the light of day.

I have discussed this on another thread somewhere, probably a different forum. After all most museums only want a single example of a badge, they are not concerned by different makers marks etc. Unless you won a VC or held some really important post or rank within that Regiment you are unlikely to ever see your items on display. Most Regiment's have had multiple battalions with 1000's of men passing through them. They cannot possibly begin to show or use everything that even the relatively small percentage of donations throw up each year.

A museum will never be honest and say "your donation is great but look we've 100's already!" They'll thank you. Document it, stick it in storage somewhere and that's it. If your really lucky your donation, especially an impressive framed collection, may be sold at auction sometime in the future as a way of raising funds. I mean lucky as in at least then it'll see the light of day again.

Sell it yourself and donate the money to the museum. But don't add to the cave full of hidden, nice but otherwise useless family treasures. Unless it's a VC your donations are just Futile expensive gestures.