Activity: External talk or presentation › Oral presentation
Description
It is commonly assumed that objects entering a museum become part of its permanent collection, forever unique, irreplaceable and catalogued. Yet the widespread accumulation and dispersal of ‘duplicates’ by museums across the world throughout their history challenges this assumption. This paper introduced the historical museum practice of acquiring, dispersing and exchanging of so called ‘duplicates’ in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It situated the speaker’s doctoral research within a growing scholarship on duplicates and highlighted the critical gaps that remain in the literature. Using the British Museum as a case study, the paper outlined the methodological approach and the challenges and rewards of researching such curatorial practices in large institutional settings.