What Do We Save? Reflections from a Collections Manager

By Kimberly Stroud, Collections Manager

What gets saved? 

And who decides what is worth saving?

As we reflect on the 250th anniversary of the founding of America, it's important to remember how our history is written and how the physical objects that reflect our history are preserved. Museums play a role in writing history, by sharing and preserving the objects that hold our history, also known as “material culture.” But museums also have limited space and resources. 

A museum cannot take every piece of art or historical object that comes their way, which means it comes down to a choice: what to keep and what to discard. 

The answer is not black and white: the staff at each museum have to make a choice on what is best for their institution. Museums, including the Heurich House Museum, rely on experts in their field to make decisions: museum collections professionals, conservators, historians, and more. As the collections manager at the Heurich House Museum, I work with colleagues to make the final decision on whether or not we acquire new collections. 

Our Collections Management Policy gives a framework for what we collect and how we do so. When we review a potential acquisition, the process is detailed and we must ask ourselves many questions before we make any final decisions. Does it fit our collecting scope? Is there anything else like it? Is it too fragile to preserve? Do we have a better example of a similar object already in the collections? Do we have the resources to store it?

But the ultimate question is: is it historically significant? 

Why are we the ones who get to decide what is important?

Many people may think that museums would be willing to acquire anything into their collections, and in the past many collecting institutions were much less strict on their collecting policies. But this led to a myriad of issues many museums face: limited storage space, more things in storage than on display, and not enough resources to care for all their collections. Many modern museums, including the Heurich House Museum, have developed a very specific collecting scope so that they may use limited resources to their maximum effect.

So if the scope of what a museum is very limited, how would a museum decide what gets saved? 

It may seem like such a straightforward answer. If you imagine a large museum with famous collections, you may think of famous pieces of art, artifacts uncovered from ancient landmarks, or relics that belonged to iconic historical figures; but it's never as simple as finding an important object and then placing it on display in an exhibit. For one thing, most museums do not put the entirety of their collections on display. At the Heurich House Museum, the majority of our collections are on display, but much of our archival and photographic collections are in storage to better preserve them. Part of the decision to preserve objects must come down to the ability to store or display it.

Here are some examples of items in the Heurich House Museum's collections, and the questions that must be posed when acquiring collections.

What are the standards for something to be worthy enough to be saved or displayed?

The suit of armor in the Heurich House front hall is a replica, created from a mix of styles popular during the Middle Ages. It's possible the Heurich's bought and displayed this suit of armor as a status symbol, so that when guests stepped into the home, they were reminded of European castles and generational wealth. Is it less 'worthy' of being saved because it is not 'original?' Or is it more valuable because of what it represented to the Heurich family?

Belongings of historical figures may have stayed in the family for generations before landing in a museum's collections. Nowadays it is popular to hold onto the belongings of celebrities, and the people of the past were no exception, saving items of presidents, orators, and actors alike.

Did the family save the pieces because they knew it would be on display at a museum one day or was it for sentimental reasons? 

For people who were only recognized after their death, many of their belongings weren't saved. What happens when there is no material culture to display in a museum?

Amelia Heurich, the wife of Christian Heurich, saved this lock of hair from her wedding day in 1899. Based on the writing on the box, we can guess it was likely for sentimental reasons. What does it tell us about her personally but also about the culture of the time? She wanted to save it, but did she think it would be saved for over 120 years? 

When it comes to archaeological or collections of fragments, sometimes there are so many pieces that it can be hard to choose what gets acquired into a collection and what gets discarded. Not everything gets saved and even less gets displayed, as it is usually only the largest or best preserved pieces that get mounted on exhibit.

Who decides the standard of what is 'well preserved' and 'large enough to display?'

These fragments are from the Dining Room ceiling and are in our Building Remnants Collection. The goal of this collection would be to return fragments to their original location, with enough time and resources. They are currently in our collection storage.

Some collecting institutions have experimented with taking community feedback into their collections processes, such as creating advisory committees, which can discuss these questions around difficult histories or include considerations for cultural traditions. Some museums have reassessed their catalog descriptions, rewriting them to better include information about the stories of people and places that were not originally included. When it comes to histories of marginalized communities, which have routinely been disregarded or deliberately erased, using community feedback is one way a museum can bring equity to museums and the collections they preserve.

The Heurich House collection primarily consists of objects related to the Heurich family, but over the past few years we have made efforts to expand the scope of what we collect, research, and interpret so that it is more equitable. We have acquired more collections from workers of the Chr. Heurich Brewing Co., preserving parts of the beer and labor history of the District. We have conducted oral history interviews with descendants of craftspeople, preserving the history of those who built our historic structures. We opened an exhibit entitled "Working Title" which explores the history of the historic household staff members as a way to encourage a more equitable and empathetic understanding of the house's history. 

These steps are just one way we preserve our history through material culture. There is not just one linear story, but many narratives that create the whole picture.