Key Concepts of Museology - ICOM

PRESERVATION
n – Equivalent French: préservation; Spanish:
preservación; German: Bewahrung, Erhaltung;
Italian: preservazione; Portuguese:
preservaçāo.
To preserve means to protect a thing
or a group of things from different
hazards such as destruction, deterioration,
separation or even theft; this
protection is ensured by gathering
the collection in one place, inventorising
it, sheltering it, making it secure
and repairing it.
In museology, preservation covers
all the operations involved when an
object enters a museum, that is to
say all the operations of acquisition,
entering in the inventory, recording
in the catalogue, placing in storage,
conservation, and if necessary restoration.
The preservation of heritage
generally leads to a policy which
starts with the establishment of a procedure
and criteria for acquisition of
the material and intangible heritage
of humanity and its environment,
and continues with the management
of those things which have become
museum objects, and fi nally with
their conservation. In this sense the
concept of preservation represents
that which is fundamentally at stake
in museums, because the building up
P
of collections structures the mission
of museums and their development.
Preservation is one axis of museal
action, the other being transmission
to the public.
1. The acquisition policy is, in most
cases, a fundamental part of the way
any museum operates. Acquisition,
within the museum, brings together
all the means by which a museum
takes possession of the material and
intangible heritage of humanity:
collecting, archaeological digs, gifts
and legacy, exchange, purchase, and
sometimes methods reminiscent of
pillage and abduction (combated by
ICOM and UNESCO – Recommendation
of 1956 and Convention of
1970). The management of collections
and the overseeing of collections comprise
all the operations connected
with the administrative handling of
museum objects, that is to say their
recording in the museum catalogue or
registration in the museum inventory
in order to certify their museal status
– which, in some countries, gives
them a specifi c legal status, since the
items entered in the inventory, especially
in publicly owned museums,
are inalienable and imprescriptible.
In some countries such as the United
States, museums may exceptionally
deaccession objects by transfer to
65