[meteorite-list] A Curator Replies

From: Peter Davidson <P.Davidson_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 9 Jul 2009 09:23:17 +0100
Message-ID: <B3AE086B03B2B44D87427A2DF66678AC474165_at_nmsexch01.nms2k.int>

Mark, I would like to answer some of your allegations if I may and
perhaps open a debate about where collected material goes. There seems
to be a rather broad misconception about museums and their collections.

Let me just start by saying that collectors have made an inestimable
contribution to the furtherance of science. There is no disputing this.
As science developed from the late 17th Century, collectors and
explorers went out into the wide world to search for the unusual, exotic
and unseen. Of course this material went to universities and museums,
where else could it go? It was these fast developing institutions that
were at the cutting edge of scientific research up to and beyond the
Victorian Age. There were private collectors, but they were often former
academics and almost certainly university educated. At their deaths,
universities and museum were often the beneficiaries of their wills and
many private collections came into public hands this way. It also has to
be remembered that museum collections, including our own, were
originally set-up as teaching collections. There was no real market
place for geological specimens in the sense we know it today, so prices
were lower - comparatively. The clientele, such as it was, was also
largely middle- or upper-class and financially very well off.

However, the notion that there is a "flow" of newly found material into
museums is not entirely true. I do not work in an artefact-based
department. It would therefore be unfair of me to comment to any great
degree on their collecting policies. As I stated above, much of the
material in museum drawers are donated/bequeathed objects or collections
acquired by purchase. In any collection, there is a variable proportion
of material that can be described as "contextless" or "difficult". But
what may at the time be considered of lesser value may after subsequent
research prove to be of greater value. It is on that basis museums often
appear to hoard excess material. It is also often the case that once
material is registered, it is very difficult and, I would personally add
undesirable, to sell-off this material. If this material is contextless,
then it can surely have no value in the market place anyway. Would you
buy a shapeless lump of rock or pottery whose only provenance is "found
in museum drawer"?

On the scientific side, the "value" of an object can be viewed
differently. As a mineralogist, as well as the obvious aesthetic
qualities of some objects, there is also the scientific value. Some of
the rarest and most "precious" of our objects are (to an aesthete)
uninspiring and dull. Yet to a mineralogist, they may be the finest
examples of a mineral species in the World. As for a never-ending flow
of objects disappearing into museum collections. Let me assure you that
if this is happening, then it is being done by elves at night when there
are no museum staff around.

As far as owning the objects. Well in that sense the museums doesn't own
the specimens. The people of Scotland own them, all five million of us,
and they are available for viewing either in galleries, online or by
appointment for free. You only have to ask.

Peter Davidson
Curator of Minerals
 
National Museums Collection Centre
National Museums Scotland
242 West Granton Road
Edinburgh
EH5 1JA
Phone: +44 131 247 4283
p.davidson at nms.ac.uk
www.nms.ac.uk
 
 

-----Original Message-----
From: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] On Behalf Of Mark
Ford
Sent: 08 July 2009 16:01
To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] A Curator Replies


Also we should never underestimate the contribution made to science by
collectors! This is particularly true of meteorites, if no-one collected
them, and created the resources needed for hunting them, our museum
draws would actually be much emptier I suspect - Yes the market price
would (arguably) be a little bit lower but how exactly does that help
find more meteorites??

Imho, one of the reasons the market prices keep going up (particularly
with historic artifacts) is newly found stuff simply flows in one
direction into museum collections and archives. further limiting the
market availability, this will only get worse if the supply of material
to collectors gets even further choked off, by stupid blanket laws -
for example if museums where allowed to trade and sell off some of the
artifacts that are not needed then the market value would drop to
sensible levels.

(Ironically, there are countless thousands of useless orphaned
contextless artifacts, that can serve no useful purpose sitting in
museum draws all over the world, some are probably worth a small fortune
on the open market - surely we should consider using some of this to
fund much more important work, before we target private collectors).

I believe we actually all have a personal responsibility to only keep
and collect what we actually need to collect, museums included, that way
everyone gets the chance to own these treasures without needing a
mortgage, After all there is only so much to go round.


Mark











-----Original Message-----
From: meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces at meteoritecentral.com] On Behalf Of Peter
Davidson
Sent: 08 July 2009 12:02
To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Subject: [meteorite-list] A Curator Replies

This is my first posting on this list - please be gentle with me. I have
only been on the list a matter of a week or so and I seemed to have
walked into a veritable storm. I would like to share my views with you
as a curator. Please forgive this rather long mail.

 

Taking a posting from Martin Altmann dated 7th July as my starting
point, here goes.

 

I have never heard a law being described as "exotic". Do you mean
idiotic?

 

I can in no way speak on behalf of all curators, far less Australian
ones. I can only give you my own viewpoint but I do know many curators
from Australia, mostly mineralogists, and please believe me when I tell
you they are fine people and not the narrow-minded, nationalistic people
hinted at in a number of e-mails. I also noted that Martin Altmann
stated that everybody on the list was a "lousy layman" which is not only
patently untrue but just a little sexist. But I digress.

 

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Received on Thu 09 Jul 2009 04:23:17 AM PDT