Thinking outside the (museum) box

Abstract

Traversing between museum, archive, and community, this flash ethnography explores the tensions and possibilities of museum collections research today. As museums increasingly strive to repair relationships with descendant communities via collaboration and renewed access to collections, lingering questions remain. Where do cultural items belong, how should they be cared for, and by whom? I draw attention to the potential limits of familiar museum tools of documentation and preservation—databases, storage boxes, and cotton gloves—that become illuminated when cultural items travel home to communities. Ultimately, I seek to complicate the museum's capacity to care for the complex, lively, and storied belongings that “collections” indeed are.