Ellie Miles on how museums can navigate the ethics of contemporary collecting, ensuring that the people involved are treated with care, sensitivity, and respect
Museums are increasingly being called upon to capture the essence of the present. This process, known as contemporary collecting, involves acquiring objects, stories, and experiences that document the world as it is today. But with this responsibility comes a pressing challenge: how do museums navigate the ethics of contemporary collecting, ensuring that the people involved are treated with care, sensitivity, and respect?
Published in October 2024, a new book delves into these questions, offering insights from museum professionals and researchers around the globe. With over twenty case studies and in-depth chapters, Ethics of Contemporary Collecting reveals much of the hidden work of contemporary collecting. The book’s contributors highlight the ways contemporary collecting can be both inclusive and accountable, focusing on many of the decisions around contemporary collecting that aren’t captured in museum processes and standards. Working on the book has taught me a lot about how contemporary collecting is developing.
The Evolving Ethics of Contemporary Collecting
At its core, contemporary collecting is about more than just amassing objects—it’s about documenting living stories. Whether it’s a protest sign from a recent social movement or a piece of digital content representing online culture, these items reflect the essence of our shared experiences when they are preserved with their meaning. Museums hold the dual responsibility of preserving not just the significant objects, but also the meaning and context behind them. With this comes an important ethical consideration: the risk of doing harm.
Museums must grapple with the power they hold and ensure that their actions do not exploit or endanger the very people they seek to represent.
When people entrust their stories or possessions to a museum, they are placing their faith in the institution to protect not only the object itself, but also its significance. This act of trust is profound. For individuals involved in movements or sensitive situations, there is a real danger that their contributions could be misinterpreted, misunderstood or used in ways they did not anticipate. For example, photographs taken during protests might inadvertently expose activists to hostile regimes in the future. Museums must grapple with the power they hold and ensure that their actions do not exploit or endanger the very people they seek to represent.
By examining the ethics of contemporary collecting, museums can confront these power imbalances. It’s a process of accountability, ensuring that collecting practices do not reinforce systems of oppression or exclusion. Museums have traditionally been places where knowledge is shaped and presented through a specific lens, marginalizing people and imposing narrow cultural authority. Ethics of Contemporary Collecting is part of a growing body of work that sheds light on how contemporary collecting, if done ethically, can disrupt this damage by amplifying underrepresented narratives and ensuring that collections reflect the diversity of our world.
From Colonization to Collaboration
Museums are no strangers to controversy when it comes to their collections. Many institutions house objects acquired during colonial times, often taken through violent or exploitative means. The Sarr-Savoy report of 2018, which called for the restitution of African cultural heritage in French collections, amplified global conversations about the need for decolonization in museums. Restitution is just one step, and reforming how museums collect today is equally crucial.
Contemporary collecting offers a unique opportunity for museums to move beyond the outdated extractive models of the past. Instead of taking objects from communities, museums can now work collaboratively with them.
Contemporary collecting offers a unique opportunity for museums to move beyond the outdated extractive models of the past. Instead of taking objects from communities, museums can now work collaboratively with them. Living people – those whose stories are being told through museum collections – can provide invaluable insights, which museums can work to ensure that their perspectives and meanings are preserved alongside the physical items. This collaboration allows museums to enrich their collections with deeper, more meaningful narratives.
However, the currency of this approach prompts new ethical considerations. How should museums handle rapidly changing contexts? What happens when the meaning of an object shifts over time, or when the act of collecting itself alters the object’s significance? Museum workers must constantly negotiate these questions, ensuring that their collections remain relevant and respectful of the communities they represent.
Three emerging themes in today’s contemporary collecting:
1. Navigating Contested Histories
Whether it’s confronting colonial legacies, documenting ongoing conflicts to preserving the stories of marginalized groups, or documenting ongoing global events like the COVID-19 pandemic, museums navigate difficult and contentious subjects in their collections. Ethical considerations here are paramount, asking whose voices are heard?, and whose stories are left out? Are important in interrogating how museums deal with sensitive materials and how they navigate the power dynamics at play.
2. Working Sustainably and Responsibly for the Future
Contemporary collecting is not just about what we preserve now, but how we do so in ways that are sustainable for future generations. This raises critical questions, such as: what does it mean to collect responsibly in the age of digital and environmental challenges? Recent work in the field has interrogated fundamental collecting assumptions about the need for ownership of collections, and the idea of perpetuity with unstable materials on an unstable planet. As our planet faces a climate crisis, museums must rethink their roles and responsibilities, not only to their collections but to the world at large. How can museums can adopt more sustainable collecting practices, ensuring that they are not overwhelming their resources or contributing to environmental degradation?
3. The Human Element: Considering the Impact on Communities and Museum Workers
Collecting contemporary material can be emotionally charged, especially when it involves communities experiencing trauma. In many contemporary collecting projects museum workers must navigate these difficult situations, balancing their desire to collect important stories with their ethical responsibility to the donors and communities involved. Museum workers, often under tight deadlines and limited resources, also face their own emotional toll in this process.
Looking Ahead: A Call for Reflection and Action
As contemporary collecting becomes an increasingly important part of museum practice, the ethical considerations surrounding it should be at the forefront of these efforts. I encourage those active in this area – whether museum workers, participants or simply those interested in cultural heritage – to reflect on the importance of collecting ethically, with a focus on inclusion, accountability, and sustainability. By embracing these ethical considerations, museums can ensure that their collections not only preserve the past but also reflect something of our complex and diverse present.
Dr Ellie Miles
Curator of Contemporary Collecting, London Transport Museum
Ethics of Contemporary Collecting (2024) Edited by Jen Kavanagh, Ellie Miles, Rosamund Lily West and Susanna Cordner is published by Routledge
ISBN 9781032456980
First published in the 2024 print edition of Museum-ID magazine (10 October 2024)
