ABSTRACT
Collections care processes refer to a wide variety of activities involving objects from the moment they arrive in a museum and gain the status of museum artifacts. Artifacts are described and assigned unique accession numbers, incorporated in the museum catalog, photographed, conserved, exhibited or placed in storage. Some may need to undergo a quarantine and insect eradication prior to their examination; others may require testing for radioactivity. These activities illustrate the passage of an object before it becomes part of a “museum collection.”
