MuseumNext - Documentation-Free Documentation

‘We owe it to those who have preceded us and have left us those specimens of their painstaking and beautiful work and to those who will come after us to do likewise, to treasure good work and produce something into which we have put our best, our love, our intelligence, our power.’ - Mary Greg, Preface to Catalogue, October 1922′

The Mary Greg Collection of Handicrafts of Bygone Times comprises over 1000 objects, an apparently eclectic mix of domestic objects, crafts and costume, given to the Gallery in the 1920s. During the 1930s, the collection was displayed to great popular appeal. In the post-war years, however, it gradually fell out of use and went into storage. As a social history collection, it sits awkwardly in the art gallery, is difficult to display and there is no longer the breadth of specialist knowledge amongst staff with which to interpret it.

However, during the past 12 months the collection has been the subject of a patient, passionate and organic reassessment by a small group of curators, interpretation developers and artists. The artists in particular have entered into a creative documentation of the collection which falls far outside of a traditional documentation programme and are producing work that in some cases has seen them leave the comfort of their specialist disciplines and move into new digital production techniques.

Indeed, everyone who has been introduced to the collection – the physical stuff of it all – has fallen under its spell and been prompted to respond creatively whether through photography, making or writing. A kind of documentation is taking place, but it’s an excited, passionate and open documentation, one that doesn’t necessarily know where it’s heading.

Given that this collection is of low financial value and is out of copyright, is there a way in which it can be thrown open to a very public documentation, particularly a digital documentation, the results of which are not owned by the institution but are a free and open resource? How might this form the basis of an exhibition?

Partly inspired by the OpenStreetMap project we’d like to open the doors to the collection and give people both the access and the means to make their own recordings, response and documentation, to produce their own data.

Our questions are:

• How can we facilitate a genuinely open initiative that structures the experience sufficiently for people to comprehend it but avoids being so open that it is just an assault on the senses?
• How can we effectively overcome the institutional barriers and resistance that could bog down this aspiration in red tape?
• By sidestepping a traditional documentation programme, what is the resultant documentation? What’s its value? Does it matter?
• What constitutes the ‘record’, who owns it, and how might we best make it available for further use?
  

What do you think? Have you tried something similar? Do you have any advice for Martin and Liz?