Why Nova Scotia museums are turning down most artifact donation offers
Museums in the province are seeing a surge in the number of people wanting to hand over artifacts, but most of those donations are being turned down.
The Nova Scotia Museum runs 28 museum sites across the province, including several historic homes and three historical villages. During the summer, it sees an uptick in donation interest and receives 20 to 30 inquiries a month from people looking to hand over historic objects.
Those items include old clothes, jewelry, antique tools and even large pieces of farm equipment. However, only about one in 10 objects will find a new home at a museum.
"It often just comes down to the limits of our storage facilities because in order to properly preserve many of these artifacts they need to be in climate-controlled facilities," said Martin Hubley, the museum's curator of cultural history.
"It would be impossible for any museum, even the Metropolitan Museum in New York or the British Museum, to take absolutely everything that they're offered."
He said the number of people wanting to donate objects to the museum has doubled in about the last two years.
Most museums across the province are running out of storage space, said Anita Price, the executive director of the Association of Nova Scotia Museums, a non-profit organization that supports the work of about 100 museums.
"If you called pretty much any museum in the province and asked them how their storage space is, they would all say it's pretty full," said Price.
She said most people understand museums simply don't have enough room to take everything.
"It's too good to throw out is a line that I've heard many times," said Price.
Aging population driving donations
She said people are sometimes just looking for a responsible home for their objects where they'll be used and enjoyed, and that home may not be in a museum.
Under ideal circumstances, the Nova Scotia Museum would like to have three items for a given object: one for display, one for storage in case the display item is damaged and one in storage for long-term preservation.
Hubley believes the Nova Scotia Museum is seeing a jump in people wanting to make donations because of aging baby boomers.
"As that group ages, there seems to be more of a tendency for people to want to pass on objects that they think are significant, their family keepsakes or what have you, to museums rather than try to pass them down through their family," said Hubley.
Acceptance criteria
The Nova Scotia Museum has strict rules around what it accepts.
Each of the sites follows the general rule that an object up for consideration must either be made in Nova Scotia, used in Nova Scotia, found in Nova Scotia, or have been historically significant to the province.
It also matters if the object is unique and what kind of work will be needed to store the object. Generally, it's easier for the museum to accept smaller items.
The more criteria an object meets, the greater its chance of being accepted
However, different sites have different criteria about what artifacts they want.
Sherbrooke Village, a recreation of a Nova Scotia community from the 1890s, is only interested in pieces from that period.
Museums also try to avoid items that are of the same style and from the same time period. Antique apple and fruit peelers are just one example of an item that's overrepresented in the museum system, said Hubley.
He said people are discouraged from bringing items to the front desks of museums as it eats up the time of front-line staff.
"Nine out of 10 times, it's something that we already have in the collection," said Hubley.
He said it's better for people to call the museum or email them.
If the museum can't accept an object, it tries to find another museum or organization that might want it.
