Donations and Transfers: Recent Challenges at One State Repository

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Navigating Ethical and Legal Quandaries in Modern Archaeological Curation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The care and preservation of cultural materials is viewed by the public as a vital role of the museum. Consciously or not, museums are seen as “society’s attic,” a high-quality, sophisticated storage space that contains valuable and irreplaceable objects while remaining infinitely expandable. In reality, space is always tight while funds to properly care for the collections are frequently lacking. The mission of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture is, in part, to safeguard the archaeological heritage of the state of New Mexico through caring for collections made over the past 100 years. This repository, like all archaeological curation facilities, also owes allegiance to the wider field of archaeology and its ethics. Our collections provide snapshots of stages in the evolution of the science during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Donations from private individuals and transfers from other institutions are surprisingly frequent occurrences. The MIAC staff uses a set of criteria to determine which collections to accept and which to decline. These criteria derive from museum-specific considerations as well as from the broader field. This paper presents our criteria and how they were applied to the decisions on whether to accept a variety of recent donations and transfers.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Navigating Ethical and Legal Quandaries in Modern Archaeological Curation   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32014