Challenging Collections: Approaches to the Heritage of Recent Science and Technology

Challenging Collections offers a multidisciplinary exploration of the material culture of recent science and technology. It examines the practical challenges that museums and academic communities face in collecting and storing the artefacts, images, electronic expressions, and other byproducts of the 21st century. The book is based on the 2011 Artefacts XVI Conference at the Museum Boerhaave, which addressed the central question of the existence of rationales for modern museum collecting. Building on the research presented at the meeting, this volume focuses on the question of collecting post-WW2 scientific and technological heritage, and the equally challenging question of how such artefacts can be displayed and interpreted for diverse publics. Some possible approaches are illustrated by case studies from museums. There are also case studies from other professions, in the hope that these will encourage museum and university professionals to look beyond their usual networks for examples of innovative approaches and best practice. However, the ambiguity of the title Challenging Collections indicates this volume's other aim to take a step back from institutional case studies or practical considerations, which have arguably inhibited constructive discourse with excessive detail, and to consider and challenge the role of museum collections in the 21st century. The book inspires historians and curators to reflect on how trends in museological and historiographical practice have affected collecting and display, and open a discussion on whether, given the nature of the postwar material culture of science and technology, detailed rationales for collecting are in fact needed or useful at all.