distributing the rights and responsibilities to this heritage in new ways (Marstine 2011b, 17), strongly resonated with participants at the third workshop. A particularly challenging notion for conventional museum structures, the concept of shared guardianship required critical reflection and problem-solving in the network. It also led to creative and aspirational thinking about the need to reject the conventions of museum possession/ownership of collections so as to embrace a concept of joint stewardship with communities. In a 2008 essay, Haidy Geismar argued that the Māori principle of shared guardianship (kaitiakitanga), based on the concept of a “dynamic link between people and things” (Geismar 2008, 116; Tapsell 201, 86–93), has the capacity to transform Western proprietary notions of museum collections. During the workshop, Poole suggested that shared guardianship “represents a shift from museums conceived as gatekeepers of culture to enablers of culture” and, as a result, “museums become part of a cultural commons with shared rights of access and shared responsibilities for stewardship.” Technology increases this potential, Poole explained, opening up a fluid way of thinking about collections, while shared guardianship reminds museums that they acquire title to collections on behalf on the public.
An exciting finding from the workshop was that senior museum leaders want to see museums develop policies and practices of shared guardianship. This was clear from a group provocation in which participants were asked to identify their aspirations for shared guardianship of collections at the end of the twenty-first century (Figure 4.5). Contributors hoped for greater access to collections for all possible interest groups and redistribution of collections to where “they are most loved.”
The majority of participants agreed that aspirations toward shared guardianship depend on museums valuing the many different ways of knowing that exist within communities. Accordingly, valuing community expertise helps to promote personal connections to objects, develop mutual understanding in connection with tangible and intangible heritage, and encourage collaborative collecting with communities, sometimes called “relational collecting” (Gosden and Larson 2007). The discussion also made clear that conventional museum structures are holding back change, because their underpinning principles were formed at a time of confidence in Western cultural superiority when it was thought the world could be known in its entirety through empirical research. These principles and structures evidently conflict with the concept that communities hold knowledge about collections of equal status and value to that of the museum, and that authority should be shared. Within the context of shared guardianship, facilitation is a form of expertise, although, as Poole suggested, this idea may be threatening to curators who prioritize research over public engagement.
FIGURE 4.5 Participant responses to “Hopes and aspirations for shared guardianship.”
Marstine remarked that the ethics of museum collecting and collections is a highly contested area that often leads to polarization between economic and cultural rights. Janet Ulph, Professor of Law at the University of Leicester, discussed how contrasting legal and ethical approaches to collections have contributed to these oppositions. She explained that, from a legal perspective, objects are viewed as property and are assigned economic value, but from an ethical perspective, objects are seen in terms of the relationships they produce among stakeholders and the “social good(s)” that these relationships generate. The group agreed that the concept of “social good” in the context of collections needs to be explored further, as do the values (such as aesthetic and nationalistic) that museums attach to objects that may mitigate against shared guardianship.
Megone argued that case studies of repatriation debates demonstrate that disagreement is fundamental to applied ethics and that conflict should be explored as a means of overcoming polarized positions. A process of identifying how and why clashing positions develop can facilitate a shared understanding of common ground. Megone showed how the protagonists on either side of an argument might desire the same outcome, but disagree on how to reach it. Alternatively, they might articulate the same view, but frame it within different political or belief systems. There was general support for the idea of unpacking conflict in order to identify potential points of connection as a fruitful and constructive approach that could be developed in the museum sector, although some participants felt that certain views may be too entrenched to be reconciled. Several contributors remarked that the difficult work of reconciliation hinges on transparency in communicating organizational values and agendas. MA Head of Policy and Communications, Maurice Davies, added that in the UK government policy is also key. When museums encounter legal imperatives to rethink ownership of collections (for example, in cases of Nazi spoliation), they respond with a coordinated and successful approach; however, when government policy is more ambiguous (for example, in cases of the possession and display of human remains), museum responses are less clear and consistent (on these topics see chapters by Bienkowski and Pickering in this volume).
Paul Tapsell, Dean of Te Tumu, School of Māori, Pacific and Indigenous Studies at the University of Otago, New Zealand, elucidated policies and practices of shared guardianship from a Māori perspective and discussed how these policies and practices have shaped the bicultural society of New Zealand, including its museums (Tapsell 2011). He presented a persuasive argument from a rights perspective for implementing shared guardianship across the museum sector.
Paul Basu and Nick Merriman presented case studies of shared guardianship in a UK context. Basu, Reader in Material Culture and Museum Studies at University College London, discussed an initiative on “reanimating cultural heritage” through a digital access initiative among five UK museums and archives and collaborating institutions in Sierra Leone. (See Chapter 15, “Reanimating Cultural Heritage: Digital Curatorship, Knowledge Networks, and Social Transformation in Sierra Leone,” by Paul Basu, in Museum Transformations.) The project speaks to broader agendas of access, inclusion, capacity-building, and knowledge sharing. Merriman outlined the Manchester Museum’s work on relational collecting. He described a collaboration with local communities on collecting trees as a means both to promote sustainability and to apply a different lens to the legacies of colonialism within the permanent collection, including botanical collections, live collections of animals, and trees in mythological and symbolic representation (see Merriman, this volume). Both Basu’s and Merriman’s examples illustrated the importance of producing a “social good” by enabling communities to reconnect with their culture and heritage. Jette Sandahl, who has worked in museums in New Zealand and Europe, argued that, so as to avoid becoming mausoleums, museums need to keep collecting, and that relational collecting is an ethical practice. She voiced a powerful reminder that we need to “keep remembering the violence sitting beneath the surface of museum collections” as well as the “loneliness of exile and life as a thing” when alienated from their communities.
What else emerged from the robust discussions about the challenges and opportunities of shared guardianship? Questions arose about how an aspiration to shared guardianship could be implemented in practice. Some participants described challenges in identifying who can represent or speak for a community and in building trust within groups that museums have wronged in the past. Overall, there is a need for museums to develop more sophisticated ways of understanding cultural value, and to think more deeply about how and why museums collect and display objects. Manchester City Galleries conservator Amanda Wallace remarked that museums have become overly obsessed with the materiality of objects. Many contributors concurred that relational collecting could play a significant role in shared guardianship, with museums developing their collections in relation to important themes to their communities. Poole expressed the idea that if museums do not open up their collections toward shared guardianship, they risk becoming irrelevant in an era that values participation and agency. Davies suggested that the new museums ethics is, first and foremost, about deconstructing power issues, and
