Sustainable Curation of the DMNS African and South and Central American Collections

FAIN: PB-275373-20

Denver Museum of Nature and Science (Denver, CO 80205-5732)
Stephen E. Nash (Project Director: May 2020 to January 2023)
Melissa Bechhoefer (Co Project Director: July 2020 to January 2023)

The retention of 11 staff who would move to improved storage conditions 3,200 African and South and Central American ethnology objects, the remainder of the museum’s unprocessed world ethnology collections.

The project continues the Museum’s focus on the preservation and access of its anthropological collections, a well-documented institutional priority. This project will support a large number of existing humanities-based staff in moving, stabilizing, and documenting approximately 3,200 objects in the Museum’s African and South and Central American collections into the preservation environment of the Avenir Collections Center. Collections, curatorial, conservation, and archival staff will: 1) research collections cultural affiliations and significance; 2) install collections in custom trays with barcodes; 3) implement both preventive and active conservation measures for stabilization; 4) take both reference and select professional images of the objects; 5) update database records with new information and images; and 6) make the collections records, as well as information on our process, available to other humanities-based institutions and the general public.