Every so often, following a Board meeting, we’ll stay behind to discuss the latest items on offer to the CMMM. Acquisitions meetings determine whether or not the Museum will accept or decline an artefact or the archival materials about which we’ve been contacted. Guidelines are in place to help make decision-making easier…
Our display space, our storage space and our volunteer resources are limited. By following our Significance Worksheet, we eliminate duplication and we maintain the museum’s focus on the stories directly relevant to the area… we work at creating a unique, manageable collection reflective of the people, events and history of the Cut Knife area.
Acquisitions: To Accept a Donation . . . or Not?
… but it’s never really easy. One night after the accept / decline process we chatted on afterwards about having to make these decisions in our personal lives about our own parents’ possessions and collections:
- How do you refuse your Mom’s table settings when she asks if you will take them?
- What do you do if you end up, anyway, with multiple sets of china, or silverware, or crystal glassware after she passes?
- Do you have a place to display, or even to store your Dad’s collection of carved wooden decoys, or license plates, or calendars?
- How do you let something go that meant so much to them, and holds so many memories for you? What will happen to it if you don’t keep it?
These are the same kinds of questions the Museum struggles with too, each time we review an artefact. We want to be able to preserve the item, to display it, and to share it, not simply to store it.
Sadly, this Trustee had the final word that night. She was describing the conversation she had had with her daughter, when she asked if she’d take home her Grandmother’s set of silver. Her daughter reacted with “What am I going to do with a set of silver?” Her mom replied, “You can do exactly what I do with it. You take it out once a year. You polish it. Then you put it back until next year.”
~ Debbie M.
Clayton McLain Memorial Museum 