The concept of sustainability is more and more perceived as a key to the understanding of what ‘quality’ is, or should be. Museums are and will be increasingly being asked to what extent they contribute to a sustainable future of the social and natural environment. The most generally accepted definition of sustainability is the one given in the Brundtland Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) saying “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. The British Museum is among the growing number of museums with a policy on sustainable development (adopted in 2007). This policy statement starts with the assertion that “The British Museum recognises that its activities impact on society and on the environment at local, regional and global levels through the energy and water used, the waste it produces, the travel and work patterns it encourages amongst its staff and the products it buys” (art. 1.1).
In the discussion paper, Sustainability and museums. Your chance to make a difference (Davies & Wilkinson 2008), the Museums Association mentions three forms of sustainability: economic sustainability, social sustainability, and environmental sustainability. Sustainability has been described as “efficiency with a conscience” and a key aspect of sustainable operation is to use the limited resources that are available efficiently in order to achieve the maximum possible impact. This, in fact, applies to all types of resources, from financial resources, to energy and materials, to human engagement.
In the following text I will focus on the relation between collection development and social sustainability. In aforementioned discussion paper it is stated that long-term sustainability means that museums are becoming more socially responsible. Social responsibility is described as the museums’ efforts “to improve society and undo harm where harm has been done” (loc.cit.: 11). In the end, “museums can only become sustainable when they engage with people and issues outside, including both professional ‘outreach’ activities and personal experiences beyond their own self-interest” (Marstine, Dodd & Jones 2015: 87). Speaking about collections, the Museums Association suggests that to flourish sustainability, museums should “acknowledge the legacy contributed by previous generations and pass on a better legacy of collections, information and knowledge to the next generation”, and “manage collections well, so that they will be a valued asset for future generations, not a burden” (Davies & Wilkinson 2008: 5). What specific methodological approaches towards collection development does sustainability require? Museums are said to work for eternity, but how can museums and other heritage institutions meet different – sometimes conflicting – societal requirements? What is the impact of collecting on the sustainability of ecosystems and communities? Museums are often accused of disrupting ecosystems and communities by their collecting practices. There is a growing awareness that museums should adopt an activist attitude towards key social issues such as social injustice and environmental degradation. Following this attitude, should collecting be replaced by the ethics of guardianship, i.e. the abstinence of collecting in favor of protection in situ, in function? In other words, can museums contribute to the sustainable development of ecosystems and communities by not-collecting? And, going one step further, can museums contribute to this development – in particular the sustainable development of communities – by returning items of cultural significance to their creators?
In order to respect – and to sustain – the interest of the original creator community or user community, the principle of guardianship has been introduced in contemporary museum ethics (Marstine 2011). According to Janet Marstine “guardianship prioritizes repatriation as a human right”. In relation to sustainability it is interesting to reflect upon the fact whether the principle of guardianship should also be applied in the process of musealisation. Guardianship would than prioritize forms of shared ownership where museums and creator/user communities share responsibility for the preservation of objects as living heritage i.e. a form of preservation where heritage value does not exclude use outside the museum context (Meijer-van Mensch, 2015). This can be called dynamic preservation. In fact this principle is more familiar in the sphere of nature conservation, historic buildings, industrial heritage, transport heritage and intangible heritage (Van Mensch 2015). Dynamic preservation combined with shared ownership in a museum context has already some tradition in ethnographical museums, for example as indigenous curation (Kreps 2008). It has challenged the traditional notions of integrity held among conservators (Clavir 2015).
The challenge is to find a balance between the active (and activist) use of heritage and art and the procedures that are part of professional museum work. Important is that the creator community as key stakeholder continues to have access to the objects and has a right to use the objects outside the museum. In this respect the concept of heritage community, as presented by the Council of Europe in its Framework Convention on the Value of Cultural Heritage for Society of 2005 (also known as Faro Convention), is of crucial importance, emphasizing a shared responsibility of all persons and organisations with an interest in a certain theme or heritage sector. Arjen Kok described concepts such as heritage community in terms of new collecting (Kok 2009: 55). He identified three forms: (1) the museum doesn’t collect objects, but interactions, (2) the museum participates as equal within a heritage community, and (3) the museum acts as a platform for individuals and groups to collect their own heritage. The first form of new collecting starts from the assumption that in certain fields private collectors have achieved a high level of sophistication. The role of the museum is to support these collectors, for example by taking care of storage, conservation, and restoration, but also to create new meaning by using the collections for curatorial exhibitions. The second option refers to museums as functioning in networks of private and institutional collectors, but also owners of objects still in use. The third approach emphasizes the role of source or user communities. Most new collecting projects are self-documentary; these projects intend to give people the opportunity to share their stories, providing a platform for the attribution of meaning. But, in more recent projects in the Netherlands and Germany, new collecting also means working with the public as co-curator. The underlying hypothesis is that the social sustainability of collection development depends on the ability of museums to take the role of facilitator, rather than authority.
References
The text of this article is based on the forthcoming second edition of New Trends in Museology, written by Peter van Mensch and Léontine Meijer-van Mensch, and published by the Museum of Recent History, Celje (Slovenia).
Miriam Clavir (2015) ‘Preserving the physical object in changing cultural contexts’, in: Annie E. Coombes & Ruth B. Phillips eds., Museum transformations. The International Handbooks of Museum Studies 4 (John Wiley and Sons, Chichester) 387-412.
Maurice Davies & Helen Wilkinson (2008) Sustainability and museums. Your chance to make a difference (Museums Association, London).
http://www.museumsassociation.org/download?id=16398
Arjen Kok (2009) ‘Het Nieuwe Verzamelen in Zoetermeer’, in: André Koch & Jouette van der Ploeg eds, 4289 Wisselwerking. De Wonderkamer van Zoetermeer. Verslag van een geslaagd museaal experiment (Stadsmuseum Zoetermeer, Zoetermeer) 54-58.
Christina Kreps (2008) ‘Indigenous curation, museums, and intangible cultural heritage’, in: Laurajane Smith & Natsuko Akadawa eds., Intangible Heritage (Routledge, London) 193-208.
Janet Marstine (2011) ‘The contingent nature of the new museum ethics’, in: Janet Marstine ed., The Routledge Companion to Museum Ethics. Redefining Ethics for the Twenty-First-Century Museum (Routledge, Abbington) 3-25.
Janet Marstine, Jocelyn Dodd & Ceri Jones (2015) ‘Reconceptualizing museum ethics for the twenty-first century. A view from the field’, in: Conal McCarthy ed., Museum Practice. The International Handbooks of Museum Studies 2 (John Wiley and Sons, Chichester) 69-95.
Léontine Meijer-van Mensch (2015) ‘Die Musealisierung von Lebendigkeit – Ein Widerspruch in sich?’, in: Barbara Keller, Stefan Koslowski, Cornelia Meyer & Ulrich Schenk eds., Lebendige Traditionen ausstellen (Hier und Jetzt, Baden) 96-109.
Peter van Mensch (2015) ‘Museality at breakfast. The concept of museality in contemporary museological discourse’, Museologica Brunensia (in print).
Léontine Meijer-van Mensch is deputy director of the Museum for European Cultures- State Museums Berlin and chair of the International Committee for Collecting of ICOM.
