Reinwardt Take-Over at Museum Maluku
Just before the summer, Museum Maluku had the honour of welcoming three students from the Reinwardt Academie for the Reinwardt Take-Over. This unique project gives second-year students the chance to put their knowledge into practice by working on specific questions posed by heritage institutions. For Museum Maluku the Take-Over was an opportunity to put the complex challenge of managing our collections to the students.
Challenges in collection management Since the Moluks Historisch Museum closed in 2012, the entire collection has been in storage. From 2022 the sub-collections moved out of storage to three different depots in Rotterdam. A fine step in the right direction. From here, work on the collection can properly continue: arranging, registering, conserving and making it accessible and visible again. Part of the collection is in the Museum Depot of the municipal museums of Rotterdam. Space there is limited. The question Museum Maluku therefore put to the students was: what solutions can we come up with to improve storage so as to make the collection properly accessible for digitisation, registration and loans? A question the students worked on with great enthusiasm and creativity.
A deliberate choice For the students, choosing to do the Take-Over at Museum Maluku was a deliberate decision. Nyssa Schön, one of the students involved, explains: "During our studies we were given a selection of heritage institutions with their accompanying problems to choose from. For me and my fellow students Museum Maluku was high on our list, above all because of the challenging question." Nyssa stresses how this experience deepened her view of Moluccan history: "Although I had already read a lot about Moluccans, I did not know the museum well. Visiting the exhibition ONS LAND and exploring the collection taught me much more than I had learned at school."
Conclusions and a view of the future Good registration of the entire collection is important and necessary, for the museum objects, image and audio material and the archive alike. But, the students concluded, deaccessioning is an urgent matter too. The process of deaccessioning, or responsibly disposing of objects from the collection, is part of good collection management. It is essential in order to create enough space and keep the depot accessible. By carefully evaluating which objects should be kept and which can be deaccessioned, Museum Maluku can focus on improving the quality of the collection and on better collection management. Museum Maluku broadly shares this view and is already actively working along these lines. We are glad that this new generation of heritage professionals shares the same insights and underlines their importance.
