DEACCESSIONING. Sharing Experiences from Finland PREFACE
Preface
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is a topical issue in the museums sector. The background of this publication is a project carried out in 2014, in which Helsinki City Museum, the Historical Collections of the Tampere Museums and the Museum of Technology discussed the philosophy of deaccessioning and the various procedures associated with it. We aimed at the first Finnish overview of how material is deaccessioned in Finnish museums of cultural history 1 and how this process could be developed on the basis of the ICOM Code of Ethics for Museums. We soon noticed that many questions were worth considering together with art museums. As a result, a further project was launched in 2015 involving three art museums, HAM – Helsinki Art Museum, Tampere Art Museum and the Aboa Vetus & Ars Nova museum of history and contemporary art in Turku. Finnish Museums Association published two reports of the project in Finnish. 2 Issues of deaccessioning were also addressed in some twenty professional seminars and training events in the museums sector. The related discussions inE ACCESSIONING
1 Museums of cultural history refer in Finnish praxis to museums with mainly ethnographic and historical collections. Some of them have the duties of national specialised museums in their specific areas. 2 Kokoelmapoistojen hyvät käytännöt, Västi & Sarantola-Weiss (eds.) 2015 and Kokoelmapoistojen yhteiset käytännöt, Västi & Sarantola-Weiss (eds.) 2016.
creasingly pointed out that these issues are shared by all museums, although solutions can differ. We therefore want to make Finnish discussion on these matters available to international readers. Our project was launched at a stage where collections-related work has been developed in highly active ways in Finnish museums. Various procedures and tools have been developed in recent years that will also be useful for developing deaccessioning practices. During the 2010s, museums of cultural history in Finland have created a network for collection management collaboration (Finnish acronym TAKO), within which museums agree to a nation-wide division of tasks in collecting. Financial support for the project was provided by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture and the National Museum of Finland, but actual division of tasks was largely carried out by the participating museums. The related agreement with the National Board of Antiquities on collecting and documenting has been signed by over a hundred professionally managed Finnish museums. There are over 1,000 museums in Finland, 151 of which are professionally managed and partly funded by the state, which means that the network can truly coordinate the accessions in professionally run Finnish museums. A well-functioning network can increase knowledge of the actual contents of collections in various museums and the ways in which they wish to develop them. These aims are also served by the FINNA portal of all
Finnish memory organisations 3 , through which both the public and museum professional can study the cultural heritage collected and stored by museums, archives and libraries. The significance analysis tool published in 2015 4 is, in turn, an aid for museums in assessing and evaluating individual objects and whole collections. All these initiatives have led to increased discussion within the museums sector, developed skills in networked activities and expanded our understanding of cultural heritage preserved by museums. Collaboration is a source of strength. We express our thanks to the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture for funding the initiative and the Finnish Museums Association for including our publications in its web publications series. We are grateful to the Cultural History Collections of the National Museum of Finland, the Finnish National Gallery and the TAKO network for participating in our work and providing their support in the steering group of our project. The steering group has also included the directors of the museums in the project, the Development Unit of the National Board of Antiquities and the Finnish Museums Association. Guidelines are currently being drafted with the TAKO network for 3 https://www.finna.fi/?lng=en-gb. Cit. 1.6.2016. 4 The Finnish significance tool: Häyhä, Jantunen & Paaskoski 2015; On international examples, see e.g. Russel & Winkworth 2009; Reed 2012; Assessing Museum Collections 2014.
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