30 Jul
2010
30 Jul
'10
12:25 p.m.
On 7/29/10 11:39 AM, Richard wrote:
Doron Swade, "Napoleon's Waistcoat Button: Modern Artifacts and Museum
Culture," Museum Collecting Policies in Modern Science and Technology
(London, 1991)
I beleive he is involved with the Science Musuem in London (or was when
that paper was written). All I will say is that given the current state
of that museum, I wouldn't necessarily agree with everything he says.
For the classic example, Google "Napoleon's Buttons"
Given that
lots of computing history is currently in private
collections, and that private collectors like to do things like
retr0brite their objects, how do museums deal with personal
collections that are on loan?
Exactly as an object in the museum's permanent collection as far as
preservation practices. We would not bleach an object we didn't own,
for example. However, given
the conversation about conservators above it seems that
this is something a museum would never allow to be done to one of
their artifacts. Is it that bad, or am I off base here?
It depends on the goals of the museum. If they want to show running iron,
you'll have to replace things that fail. The PDP-1 project at CHM is the one
we use as an example of best practices for restoring and maintaining a running
artifact.