Deaccessioning is a problematic topic for many museums – particularly those in the UK, where the law prohibits many of them from disposing of artefacts except in certain very specific circumstances. It is however, an issue that remains on the agenda – not least because whilst budgets of museums are cut, the size of their collections is ever increasing, yet much of it is never on public display. Institutions such as the British Museum hide behind the anti-deaccessioning clauses in their governing act of parliament, as a way of avoiding any sort of serious debate in many restitution cases. Surely though, there should be some more easy mechanism for downsizing vast collections, or loaning the items out on a more long term basis.

Many museums arguing that by keeping items in the public realm, they are serving an important educational purpose. It must be considered however, that if many of the items are not on display, the public is generally unaware of their existence (yet at the same time continues to pay for their storage & upkeep).

From:
BBC News

19 January 2011 Last updated at 06:30
London museums urged to show more ‘hidden’ artefacts

Museums in London are being urged to get more of their collections out of storage and on display as funding cuts will mean fewer landmark exhibitions.

Many museums in the capital keep more than 90% of their collections stored away.
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More coverage of the controversy surrounding the exhibition of the Dead Sea Scrolls at the Royal Ontario Museum.

From:
Forward – The Jewish Daily

Furor Over Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibition
By Michael Kaminer
Published July 15, 2009, issue of July 24, 2009.

Toronto — Crowds at the Royal Ontario Museum’s heavily hyped Dead Sea Scrolls exhibition — Dead Sea Scrolls: Words That Changed the World, which runs until January 3, 2010 — have far exceeded the museum’s own expectations. In the show’s first nine days, more than 18,000 people flocked to the museum’s spectacular new Daniel Libeskind-designed Michael Lee-Chin Crystal pavilion — about 52% above the exhibitors’ own projections.

But hosannas for the showing, featuring four scroll fragments on loan from the Israel Antiquities Authority and displayed in public for the first time, have not been universal. Last April, the Palestinian Authority appealed to Canada’s prime minister, Stephen Harper, to cancel the show, citing international conventions that make it illegal for a government agency to take archaeological artifacts from a territory that its country occupies.
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The Dead Sea Scrolls are on display in the Royal Ontario Museum – this is not without controversy though, as Palestinian Groups claim state that these artefacts come from the occupied territories.

In many ways, this is a case that could be solved easily – the issue is that the true reasons behind various aspects of the recent history of the scrolls are not ignored – but the museum is ignoring these problems for fear of upsetting other people (by stating the truth rater than ignoring it).

From:
Independent

Robert Fisk’s World: You won’t find any lessons in unity in the Dead Sea Scrolls
I looked at the texts in Toronto – a tale that was bound to pose a series of questions

Saturday, 11 July 2009

At last, I have seen the Dead Sea Scrolls. There they were, under their protective, cool-heated screens, the very words penned on to leather and papyrus 2,000 years ago, the world’s most significant record of the Old Testament.

I guess you’ve got to see it to believe it. I can’t read Hebrew – let alone ancient Hebrew (or Greek or Aramaic, the other languages of the scrolls) – but some of the letters are familiar to me from Arabic. The “seen” (s) of Arabic, and the “meem” (m) are almost the same as Hebrew and there they were, set down by some ancient who knew, as we do, only the past and nothing of the future. Most of the texts are in the Bible; several are not. “May God most high bless you, may he show you his face and may he open for you,” it is written on the parchments. “For he will honour the pious upon the throne of an eternal kingdom.”
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