The challenge
Since it’s founding in 1981, Sandy Spring Museum’s mission had evolved from being a traditional collecting institution to a dynamic community museum centered on connecting diverse communities and sharing the region’s cultural heritage and future. The collection, however, had been built over more than forty years under several different missions and collecting philosophies. The Museum needed a plan for what the collection should look like going forward, including what it should continue to collect, where there were gaps, and what no longer supported the mission. Equally important, this was a collection that meant a great deal to longtime members, founders, volunteers, and community members. The challenge was finding a new direction that respected that history while making room for the stories of a changing community.
What I did
I started by listening. I reviewed the Museum’s collecting history, mission statements, policies, and collections data and met with staff to understand both the strengths of the collection and the challenges they were facing. I then facilitated a community meeting with 22 staff, board members, volunteers, museum professionals, and community members. We talked honestly about what should stay, what was missing, what the Museum should collect in the future, and the difficult question of deaccessioning.
I translated those conversations into a practical 10-year Collections Plan, including a new vision and scope for the collection, collecting priorities, measurable objectives, and implementation timelines. I also developed structured decision-making tools for both acquisitions and deaccessions so future collections decisions could be made consistently and transparently rather than case by case.
Outcome
In addition to the written plan, we ended the project with consensus about where the collection should go next. The final Collections Plan gave Sandy Spring Museum a guide for the next ten years, but it also gave staff, board members, volunteers, and community stakeholders a shared language for talking about difficult collections decisions.
The collection could continue to preserve the history that had always mattered to Sandy Spring while becoming less redundant, more connected to the archives, and more representative of the community the Museum serves today.
