TY - CHAP
T1 - Ethics and Collecting in the 'Postmodern" Museum
T2 - A Papua New Guinea Example
AU - BONSHEK, Elizabeth
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - It is commonplace today for museums to have collection development policies governing acquisitions and collecting, accompanied by statements concerning the need for ethical standards in acquisition, the latter referencing ICOM standards and appropriate legislation. This chapter turns from museum policy to focus on the events and issues met within the process of making a collection of pottery from Papua New Guinea, for a museum holding ethnographic objects. I delineate the preoccupations of the pot makers concerned and compare these with the aims and objectives of the museum as a collecting institution including the role of the collector as museum agent and fieldworker. In presenting this case study, I illustrate that the specific actions of ‘ethical’ collecting cannot necessarily be stipulated in advance, beyond the broadest/abstract statements of intention: but such statements of intention must be able to accommodate divergent local views, without being able to predict what these may be.
AB - It is commonplace today for museums to have collection development policies governing acquisitions and collecting, accompanied by statements concerning the need for ethical standards in acquisition, the latter referencing ICOM standards and appropriate legislation. This chapter turns from museum policy to focus on the events and issues met within the process of making a collection of pottery from Papua New Guinea, for a museum holding ethnographic objects. I delineate the preoccupations of the pot makers concerned and compare these with the aims and objectives of the museum as a collecting institution including the role of the collector as museum agent and fieldworker. In presenting this case study, I illustrate that the specific actions of ‘ethical’ collecting cannot necessarily be stipulated in advance, beyond the broadest/abstract statements of intention: but such statements of intention must be able to accommodate divergent local views, without being able to predict what these may be.
KW - collecting
KW - Museum
KW - contemporary
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84944588655&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.mendeley.com/research/ethics-collecting-postmodern-museum-papua-new-guinea-example
U2 - 10.1007/978-1-4939-1649-8_9
DO - 10.1007/978-1-4939-1649-8_9
M3 - Chapter
SN - 9781493916481
VL - 4
T3 - The Ethics of Cultural Heritage
SP - 145
EP - 163
BT - The Ethics of Cultural Heritage
A2 - Ireland, Tracy
A2 - Schofield, John
PB - Springer
CY - United States
ER -