Topic

The collection and management of specimens and relics are not only the basis for museum entity but also the core of museum industry; their values are further acknowledged in the burgeoning cultural and creative industries.

Recent related discussions focus their attentions on the complexity of collecting practices, view collection as a unique form in the construction of thoughts and behaviors, and further discuss the socio-cultural meanings of collection and the institutionalizing process of collective collecting. The boundary of value between unusual and ordinary objects is rather obscure, while conscious collecting practices further reveal the discrepancies between epistemology and purpose. Thus, museum collection takes on what Suzanne Keen (2005) refers to as the phenomenon of “ the fragments of the world”, while “the equivocality of objects” becomes one of the paradoxes that the construction of knowledge faces.

A successful museum collection often depends on the operation of multiple “non-collecting factors (eg. research, exhibition, and education);” while the quality and quantity of collections shape the range of research, exhibition, and education. Museum collection is not neutral. The collection and management of specimens and relics in museums not only refer to aspects such as knowledge construction, taste cultivation, memory shaping, and inducement to academic and communal recognition, but also concern the aspect of techniques. Further, perhaps we should be better aware of the collectivizing and institutionalizing forms and processes of museum collection in different societies, and we should think about how they are influenced by certain value option and global market, and how they are manipulated and controlled by ideology and socio-politics. In fact, museum studies is a highly practical discipline which involves the analysis of “by whom, when, what, why, where, and how” museum collections are constructed. Also, the collections are rather fragile and constantly in insecure states facing continuous physical, chemical, biological, and man-made threats and destructions.

Subthemes

1. The collection category, history, and concept of collection in different types of museums.

2. The relevance of museum collection to specific internal affairs in the museums.

3. The relationships between museum collection, and the concept of object, time, space, and ethicality.

4. The knowledge and techniques of managing museum collection.

5. The new roles of museum collection.