Disposal from collections
Accredited museums act within an agreed legal and ethical framework and have approved policies for developing their collections.
Disposal toolkit
Disposal toolkit
This ensures that the public continue to have access to public collections – and that they continue to trust museums as responsible long-term guardians.
Collections review, rationalisation and disposal are part of responsible collections management. Usually this is not controversial and items are offered freely to other relevant Accredited museums.
On occasion a museum may wish to sell an item for financial reasons. This is a high risk area. In these cases, they should be aware of our recent statement regarding the unethical sale of objects from collections.
If a museum believes they have a legitimate reason to sell an item, they should review the Disposal Toolkit and Appendix (available to download below) and contact both the Museums Association and their Accreditation Assessing Organisation for guidance before making any irreversible decisions.
Downloads
Unethical sales from collections
Unethical sales from collections
On 27 March 2015 a group of funding, membership and development bodies for UK museums released a joint statement. It responds to recent concerns about the unethical targeting of cultural collections for sale.
It states that these bodies will not work with museums whose governing bodies choose to sell objects from their collections, where the sale would go against the UK Accreditation Standard and Museum Association Code of Ethics.
The statement is the first of its kind from such a broad group of cultural organisations. Download and read the full statement below.