My latest essay just got published. Through exploring the untenability of the growth mindset of heritage practices in light of the climate crisis, dechurching and collection ethics, it asks the question: what if we decide to not collect heritage for eternity?

For the last six years I worked in a museum of Christian art and heritage in the Netherlands, with a collection of almost 80,000 objects. The collection consists of several sub-collections, all related to the Netherlands, including: medieval sculpture, 16th-17th-century biblical painting, catholic devotional and liturgical objects, and modern and contemporary art. The collection is at the heart of the museum: it offers departure points for the exhibition program, for public activities and for shaping the narratives the museum tells about Christianity in national and international contexts. During my time there, I got to know and studied different parts of the collection with every passing year. Still, the collection as a whole remained somewhat of an enigma. Just imagine, 80,000 objects. Is it ever possible for someone to get to know such a number of objects? And why would you?

As of this writing, I have now been working for just over six months in a museum of city history, postwar and contemporary art. Here, the collection consists of roughly 16,000 objects. Again, a whole new terrain to become acquainted with, a process that is both daunting and tremendously exciting. When considering this contribution to the Collecting Religion project, my first inclination was to write about collection formation, a topic I have been intimately concerned with in all my museum work. Museum collections are not only about the objects they contain. Collections also shed light on institutional histories, different directorates, museum policies, cultural tastes and trends, and debates about the societal role of museums. Collection histories are a key for broader cultural, sociological or anthropological studies of attitudes towards art and heritage at particular times and places. Additions can make a collection more comprehensive and representative of the topic they claim to be about. Collections, especially in public institutions, are never finished.

Read the rest of the essay on the Collecting Religion website.

Images:
(left) Museum Storage, Stedelijk Museum Schiedam. Photo: Marco Steketee;
(right) Dominicanen book store in repurposed church, Maastricht. Photo: by author.