ABSTRACT
Whilst histories of museums foreground their function as spaces of display, museums are also places where objects are held, preserved and documented for years to come. The formation of museum collections has been understood as a logical and rational process of acquisition, and much critical attention has been devoted to the figure of the ‘collector’, systematically acquiring representative material. However, collections are often created through serendipitous donations by those who carefully choose their moment to give, and for whom a great deal of emotion is invested in this decision. Often solitary objects, rather than large collections, the cumulative impact of such things can be significant. For many museums, these donors are family members.
This chapter is based on my PhD research into the intersection between families and museums in the creation and sustenance of histories of Polar exploration. I will discuss the kinds of space that families imagine the museum to be when they offer things for acquisition and, in particular, will explore the affective notion of the museum as ‘home’. This positioning suggests a care for things that moves beyond objects themselves, but that incorporates them into ideas about appropriate behaviour towards kin, and which extends the temporal range of the museum into the future. I will argue that releasing objects into the care of museums is an extension of highly entangled practices of history-making and kinship. Families rarely view museums as display spaces, but as places where things will be cared for and, by extension, where family histories and kin will be looked after, too. The structures of preservation that the museum offers, both physical (through object conservation) and intellectual (through cataloguing systems), can thus ensure that histories are not lost, even if they are not visible, and that processes of caring for kin are sustained.
