TOPIC:

In a recent reaction on one of my posts, a site member suggested to me to get in touch with a museum regarding my pigeon mails flown out of besieged Ladysmith. It was a legitimate remark and an issue which I have been pondering for some time. I own quite a few ABW-related items that would clearly benefit a museum collection and I know of other private collections for which any dedicated museum director would swiftly offer the hand of his only daughter in marriage. Although there are definite benefits in transferring important items into public collections, I also see serious drawbacks. Museum collections are usually large and can only display a small fraction thereof. Also, Museums tend to try to cover a wide range of subjects to cater for the requirements of collectors, laymen as well as classes of gum chewing tik-tok addicts on their forced visits. A focused collector is often knowledgeable about a specific subject and is able to present (through sites as these) interesting items to an eager, appreciative audience without them having to leave the house. Because museum budgets are often very tight, the staffing levels do not always allow to restore, conserve, describe and photograph every single collection item, leaving many interesting items un-exposed. I have also found that some smaller town-museums in South Africa have retired knowledgeable, enthusiastic staff and replaced them with people who are very friendly, but have little or no affinity with the subject matter and have only the vaguest of idea of when the Boer War actually took place. This is worse than it sounds, as these people have keys to cabinets containing items each with a monetary -let alone historical- value well in excess of their annual salary. It is then not surprising then that some see in a Veldpond only 8 grams of gold, capable of keeping them in nappies and groceries for months. Another issue is that the larger the concentration of items of historical and/or monetary value in one place, the worse the effects of a catastrophic event such as fire, burglary, mass looting or whatever. Although such risks are probably equal or even higher for some private collections, by nature the spread of items lowers the impact of such event. All things considered, I feel that keeping museum quality items in private collections is not such a bad thing. Your opinions please.

One option you might think about is getting in touch with an archive and having them scan the documents and return them back to you. By digitizing them, an archive would allow researchers from all around the world to have access to the materials. If you're based in the UK, the National Archives at Kew and the Imperial War Museum would likely be more than glad to make copies of the documents, given their historical significance

I have had the experience that Museums and Archives will gladly take any information that you are willing to pass on to them..... But when you ask them for information they will either put a lot of hurdles in your way or outright say no with the explanation that we do not have any staff, time or it is against our privacy policy.....

Mike

Everhard & Mike,

I have many stories to relate regarding this very matter, most of which are of the horror genre. I cannot go into too much detail here without risking litigation….

Suffice to say, even the most highly regarded museums in the land can no longer be trusted to keep your precious items in perpetuity. Museums are now actively offloading parts of their collections, as the costs of storage space continue to soar. Agreements regarding bequests of collections, made many years ago, are being reneged on for the same reason. People reaching the ends of their lives are receiving letters to inform them that their gifts are no longer wanted. Feeding into this are changes in acquisitions policies which are attempting to keep in step with ever-shifting public sensibilities. I recently heard of a visit made by a major museum’s curators to a shop for the purpose of acquiring a selection of lead soldiers, which quickly turned to farce. A display of soldiers had been painstakingly prepared for the museum’s representatives, only for the retailer to be greeted with the question “but where are the people without guns?” A few years ago, a curator from another museum told me that their most exciting recent acquisition was a pair of a certain British athlete’s 1990s running shorts!

I looked into the disposal policy of one museum and was alarmed to discover that if they are unable to find an appropriate home for an item, their final course of action is destruction.

From the above you will ascertain that my experiences regarding the placement of items with museums have been difficult and frustrating. One museum was, ultimately, thoroughly ungrateful and disrespectful, and I left the protracted negotiations feeling very hurt. The lack of transparency was quite astonishing. It was only after three months that they "came clean" and admitted they no longer welcome objects relating to foreign armies unless they can be directly connected to named British soldiers.

So, please note, I am biased….!

..

Mike, Neville, pigeon man
Thank you for your reactions. My personal experiences have been mixed. I have found the people in Bloemfontein very grateful and forthcoming in both the acceptance and provision of information and copies of important ABW documents. In another museum, however, one staff member had the nerve of privately offering me items from the museum’s collection. I have heard horror stories of important items having been “deplaced” with present whereabouts unknown. For clarity, the “deplacement” problem is not a uniquely South African phenomenon and is not restricted to small-town 3-room-with-a-rusted-canon outside type of institutions. For this reason and the ones mentioned by Neville, I do not envisage donating items to a museum and will restrict myself to sharing information and photographs with fellow enthusiasts on platforms like this. This leaves me (and I venture other collectors wrestle with the same issue) with the question what to do with the collection when the time comes to join ancestors playing fiddle on the pink cloud. My offspring have other interests and don’t need “dad’s smelly stuff from the bore war.” With museums out, this leaves me with the thoroughly unpleasant prospect of an end-of-life garage sale where related items -carefully put together over decades- end up being split in multiple lots because the market for big ticket items is small.

The thing is, collectors will pay for an item because they actually want it. And so they will care for it and preserve it. As individual items they will form parts of larger collections, and get a new lease on life. A museum unless specifically dedicated to that subject is simply not able to do it justice. And if not on display it will likely rot or disappear if it is a South African museum who doesn't care for your colonial relics.