2. Should museums collect material with the intent of keeping it on hold for public access in the future?

Yes, museums that have the means to collect and properly store artifacts and materials for public access in the future should do so.  We never know what can be gained or learned from these artifacts, and although they may not be that interesting now, they definitely are a piece of history that may hold interest at some future time.  Campaign buttons are one example.  When these buttons first appeared, who would have known that they would have so much public interest years later.  But museums and collectors who held onto them have created many interesting exhibits over the years.  This was accomplished by holding onto the buttons when they first appeared, preserving them carefully and then displaying them at a much later date.  Museums should continue to study their collections and make them available for study so that at the appropriate time they may be used for exhibit.

3. Are the objects themselves controversial or does this change depending on our interpretation and where the object is displayed?
Some objects are definitely controversial and evoke an immediate emotional response.  A Ku Klux Klan hood is a good example of that.  If the killing object was something very unique and identifiable to these specific murders, then that object may very well be considered controversial.  However, firearms that were used in a murder spree are not necessarily controversial except in the context of that murder spree.  The same type of firearm could be owned and used by many others for acceptable activities such as hunting.  The whole exhibit could be considered controversial, but the firearms themselves are only controversial within the context of the exhibit.      

4. Are there objects too heinous to collect?
My heart says yes, buy my brain says that there will always be someone interested in viewing the most disturbing and heinous objects.  They definitely have an audience which creates possible museum customers.  Sometimes we need to collect and preserve heinous objects to remember, so as not to repeat history.  The Nazi prison camps come to mind as a good example.  I’m sure there were many who wanted them razed and erased from the earth after WWII, however they serve as a tragic reminder of the inhumanity and evil that can exist in and must never be repeated.  Based upon this idea of remembering, I can’t think of any object too heinous to collect for possible study.  It is the way objects are exhibited that needs careful and thoughtful examination.

 

2. Should museums collect material with the intent of keeping it on hold for public access in the future? Yes. There are times when an object or collection of objects’ display should be held for a later date. Perhaps, the appropriate display needs to be constructed or waiting until the anniversary of an event will give the exhibit and collection the attention it deserves. There are some times that we should allow some time to pass and the shock of an event to pass before creating an exhibit. I can imagine there are many things from 9/11 that would make for a great exhibit, but putting them on display on 9/12 may be cruel to those mourning. 

3. Are the objects themselves controversial or does this change depending on our interpretation and where the object is displayed? Display tactics and interpretations play a big part in the controversy. It is the meaning our society places on an object that makes it controversial. For example, all guns may not be seen as a controversy whereas the gun that shot a president may carry the controversy of being disrespectful. A stick is not a problem until it is the stick used to kill someone. The meaning we give the actions behind the object fuel the controversy. 

4. Are there objects too heinous to collect? Yes. But only based on my personal beliefs. I find the collection of human remains to be completely out of line. Drives me bonkers. This is driven by my opinion of those who dug up Indigenous remains and put them on display. I find this to be upsetting and not informative in any way. 

I would recommend the director to remove the piece from the exhibit. Crime stories attracting a younger audience is not a strong enough reason to show a murder weapon which was used within the last century. I am of the belief that if there are people still alive who would have known the victim, it is not appropriate to show. In addition, the display of the weapon would serve the purpose of creating a spectacle, rather than provoking more in-depth discussions about race relations such as the other objects would. That the family are members and financially support the museum is irrelevant as the real point is that the display of the object is not appropriate for the context. 

I do believe that museums should collect objects of importance, whether or not it can be displayed at that moment. Scholarship can be the purpose of the object until enough time has passed that it can be used to educate and critically engage viewers. The best example of this in my mind is that of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. The objects held in the collection are extremely vital to communicate the horrible experience those persecuted by the Nazis went through but the world immediately following WWII was not able to handle their presentation. Had they not been collected and kept at that time, they would not be available for education about the truth of the Holocaust. Without the keeping of culturally-laden materials to deepen understanding, it becomes so much easier to distort and forget the truth of the past. 

I believe an object only becomes controversial once its context is known. I don’t believe a controversial object changes because of how it is interpreted as it is a feature of its past use. For example, even if a painting of Hitler’s is presented in a gallery according to its contexts, say an exhibit of paintings featuring architecture, it remains controversial because of who painted it. As there are many different kinds of controversial objects, I cannot argue that where the object is displayed does not matter in whether it is controversial or not. For example, displaying a KKK hood in a glorifying or accepting fashion. 

Yes, those whose only value is in the spectacle or cannot contribute to education against whatever reason they became heinous for. For example, a mass-shooter's weapon as it only gives more fame and a sick kind of glory to the killer, rather than advocacy against school shootings, as pictures and belongings of the deceased would. Display is a way of granting power, telling the public that an object is worthy of study or admiration. Because of these power relations, museums need to be mindful in their presentation and collection of objects. 

For better or worse, the weapons from this crime spree are a part of history, beyond the crimes themselves. The Sixth Floor Depository display’s an identical rifle to the one used by Oswald to kill Kennedy; the weapons used in the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre are exhibited occasionally by their owners. Should these weapons be displayed, the context of the exhibit must not glorify the criminals, but focus on the victims, and the crimes, and how society has learned from these grisly moments of the past. To hide them away is like saying that the artifacts of the Holocaust should be stored until such a time as people aren’t made uncomfortable; the past is not a nice thing, and to reduce it and hide from it is doing a disservice to the victims.

Of course; the important objects of the past must be preserved for posterity, even if they are never placed on display, these objects will be the last extant components of an event; the street in Sarajevo has long been changed, and the perpetrator and victims are long dead, but the small pistol used by Gavrilo Princip to assassinate Archduke Franz Ferdinand still serves as a grim reminder of how a single act can have devastating worldwide consequences. To not collect these items is along a similar vein of not displaying them; it does a disservice to the victims of our past.

While I think that to the descendants of the victims these objects themselves are controversial, I think that there is an opportunity to change this view with an effective exhibit that focuses not on the perpetrators, but the context of the crimes and how these crimes affected the social fabric of society. 

No; there are objects too heinous to exhibit, but public museums should collect items of heinous acts if only to ensure that they are not allowed to continue in the private sector, where their context can be twisted and mutate into further heinous acts; in particular my mind goes to the collecting of Nazi artifacts from the Second World War. Such artifacts in private hands have ended up in the hands of white nationalists, members of the Ku Klux Klan, and other hate groups; to allow these groups to obtain these tangible artifacts allows them to venerate and fetishize them, continuing the cycles of past injustice.

I think location and timing have a huge impact in how objects are viewed.  Items can be viewed by audiences that have no cultural or historical ties to the objects or viewed by audiences with strong ties.  Historical and cultural items that are tied to propaganda are particularly hard to display.  These items, however, are an important part (albeit a very sad part) of our history, not to display them is akin to ignoring that history.  Any displays that include KKK hoods, weapons from the Indian Wars or “White’s only” signs; should be part of displays that educate the public to ignorance and intolerability propagated in this country.  We are only a few generations removed from those objects being common in society.  It would be silly to hide them as if they didn’t happen. 

4.   Are there objects too heinous to collect?

I can see this answer going a couple of different directions.  I can see many people believing that human remains being off limits.  Specifically if collected from indigenous populations.  Native American remains should not be collected and if they are encountered every effort should be made to have them returned to the ethnic group that they belong.  I however do think that human remains are well within the sphere of items that can be collected by museums, with the caveat; the collection of the remains must be validated by the ethic or aboriginal group that spawned the remains.  
I don’t think anything about an object or item can be heinous, they are only things.  Humans can be heinous, the connotations that an item or object evokes can be heinous, but not the item.  People provide the impression that objects proved.  A KKK hood is just a hood; it is the motivations and meaning of this hood that is heinous.  Use these items as teaching devices.

 

I would recommend the physical weapons be taken out of exhibit, particularly since “members of the victim’s family objected” to the display. The people who have suffered direct or even considerable indirect impacts from the events displayed should be a primary concern and necessary viewpoint/input to take heed from when designing any sensitive kind of exhibit. The last sentence about how ‘no one can say any distinct object killed a direct relative’ seems contradictory to the previously mentioned sentence, but it shouldn’t really be the deciding factor anyway whether someone can show ‘concrete’ threads such as that, when there are many complex ways and levels of being impacted (like having a relationship to someone more closely connected, or having had a similar experience). In this course we’ve talked about the profound impact of an object’s physical presence, and this factor comes into play now where the consideration should lean more towards a sensitivity to those who may be harmfully distressed by seeing the objects presented before them rather than ‘strengthening’ the exhibit space with physical materials for other visitors to be able to look at. I do not think the entire exhibit should be displaced, because even though they’re not light to reflect upon or study, conversation about these things is very necessary so they can be understood and prevented from happening again. 

2. Should museums collect material with the intent of keeping it on hold for public access in the future?

Yes, the museums should still collect these kinds of documents, and—as saddening as it is—they are perhaps especially important to document, since they are involved in something that had such significant consequence. Regardless of whether the consequence was negative or positive, it is important to be documented as history cannot and should not be ‘erased.’ Additionally, no one really knows when something might be useful for future research. 

3. Are the objects themselves controversial, or does this change depending on our interpretation and where the object is displayed?

I think there can be some level of the objects themselves being controversial as they’re held in trust as part of a museum collection, because seeing how museum collections are treated with utmost care, many people may feel these objects with such atrocious attributions held in museum collections are treated with a kind of “respect” they don’t deserve. Fewer people, however, would argue it inappropriate to hold more distantly historic objects, like ancient swords and pirate cannons, because there is such a minuscule chance of any personal connection to victims. This can post an argument that it may be better to hold these kinds of objects in storage for a longer period of time (while, of course, letting them be available for public access), rather than on a display where they can be poignantly upsetting to visitors who have lived through the events/similar events that the use of those kind of documents resulted in. The way the objects are displayed (lighting, focus amid other exhibit elements, height, etc.) and the interpretation (message, text, context, etc.) both strongly and sensitively affect audience impression, who will——based on the sensation they’ve observed from those two main factors——resolve a personal viewpoint of whether the way the objects displayed felt pointedly controversial or appropriate/justified. 

4. Are there objects too heinous to collect?

There are objects that shouldn’t be collected, not because the objects themselves are heinous but when the act itself of collecting them can be ‘heinous’——such as materials obtained in the past from burial or religious sites without addressing the living descendants, which, in many cases, these objects/sites continue to hold spiritual significance to people today, or at the very least simply deserve to maintain their dignity and respect and not become ‘resources’ for filling collections. In a course last semester called ’Native Peoples of North America,’ we discussed the history of some museum collections and NAGPRA/repatriation in detail, which shares a similar vein to sensitive objects being accessioned and shows just how complex and hard to settle these circumstances can be. 

2. Should museums collect material with the intent of keeping it on hold for public access in the future?
If someone is going to collect the materials involved, it might as well be someone who's intent is to educate others.

3. Are the objects themselves controversial or does this change depending on our interpretation and where the object is displayed?
I would err with the side of how the exhibit is displayed and what/who the focus is on. Items can be on display for educational purposes, but one must know the line where it starts to idolize the "wrongdoer".

4. Are there objects too heinous to collect?
I believe there are few items too "heinous", and many that are rather unethical to collect/display. One heinous item would be human remains which were not donated by the person before their death (and those of a murder victim). A few unethical items would include ones taken from burial grounds and religious locations. NAGPRA is a step in the right direction to correct unethical collections.