COLLECTING STORIES : CONNECTING OBJECTS

An On-going Destination

What is exciting, suggested those who participated in the MLN gathering, is the prospect of putting such challenges and opportunities together – discovering what an object is really all about. Harvesting stories is something museums have done in the past, but community-focused cataloguing would go beyond that, serving as inspiration for a great deal more than simply recovering chapters neglected by official narratives.

Curators are reluctant to get beyond the factual side of an object – beyond artist or maker, universal meaning, and the like; to say something has individual and personal significance is very difficult, even though that is the very excitement that brings people into the museum field. Adding oral histories to cataloguing is thus a long-term process.

Building toward what is inherently a normal way of doing things will have big payoffs along the way, however: the larger life of objects conserved in their stories, more relevant and authentic relationships with communities for museums, and greater sense of shared stewardship. Museums should be seen as the safest place to go, where you are always welcome to share your stories. Working toward that vision, the bywords should be respect, sensitivity, the intent to establish trust, and transparency at every stage.

An emerging model suggests that through a public service orientation museums can contribute to individual lives and communities. Community-focused cataloguing – representing “animated” objects, diverse communities, and community-based voices being heard and honored, as it does – is both a fundamental and a crucial element. Gordon Yellowman had suggested the ultimate value of what is offered to museums in sharing the words of an elder, a Sundance priest. “Continue to live your life, to tell your stories, to keep your traditions and cultural ways. If you do that, what was lost will eventually come back to you.” [end†]