Michigan State University Museum Cultural Collections Rehousing Project

FAIN: PG-266644-19

Michigan State University (East Lansing, MI 48824-3407)
Lynne Swanson (Project Director: January 2019 to April 2025)

The purchase of cabinets and preservation supplies to rehouse the university’s History, Folklife, and Anthropology collections, totaling some 100,000 objects and representing cultures from around the world.  The History collection contains clothing, textiles, tools, and utilitarian objects that date from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth century and that document the history of agriculture and rural life in Michigan, while the Folklife collection features audio recordings of oral histories and musical performances and photographs that document traditional cultures of Michigan and the Great Lakes region from the mid-twentieth century to the present.  The Anthropology collection includes field-collected materials—weapons, decorative arts, and textiles—from various cultures of Africa, Asia, and the Americas. 

MSU Museum hosted a team of conservators in 2016 to perform a General Conservation Survey of the Museum's holdings of natural science and cultural collections. The survey was funded by an IMLS Museums for America grant. The consultants surveyed collections and responded with written reports advising the Museum of next steps for the upgrade of the care and conservation of our collections. This proposal is a request for funding for rehousing supplies to accomplish rehousing of portions of the MSU Museum's cultural collections, as recommended by the consultants in order to meet accepted standards of care. The plan of work will involve appropriately rehousing portions of the collection through the addition of storage supports, replacement of acidic materials, and re-organization of collections to reduce overcrowding.