City writing new rules for disposal of museum artifacts

The city is crafting a strategy to unload museum artifacts if the keepsakes no longer hold meaning for the municipality or if they’re simply too ragged to bother hoarding.

“Over 200,000 objects in our artifact collections tell the story of the city’s evolution and the people who shaped it — from the earliest settlers to local celebrities,” the city says in its description of the artifact collection.

Much of the collection is on display at the city’s five museums, everything from rare children’s toys and children’s clothes to old spoons and musical instruments.

Many items at the Billings Estate National Historic site have Canadian Cultural Property designation, deemed to be important artifacts in the development of the national capital.

Dan Chenier, the general manager of recreation, culture and facility services, explained that the city is developing a new deaccessioning policy to update existing, and dated, procedures that vary between each museum.

“The new policy and procedures will provide direction in terms of the types of artifacts that should be retained in the collection and how to dispose of items that are no longer required or reflective of the museums’ mandate,” according to Chenier.

“The policy will be based on a new methodology commonly adopted by public museums using a weighted criteria assessment to evaluated artifacts and quantify their relevance for retention in the collection.”

The city said it has not sold museum artifacts, but the new policy will consider several options for unloading artifacts that are either too beat up to retain or don’t meet the museums’ mandates.

The options include giving artifacts to a public museum or a not-for-profit public institution, selling them to a public museum or not-for-profit institution, selling them through a public auction, selling through a dealer or throwing them out.

Unlike the city’s art collection, the city doesn’t have an appraised value of its museum artifacts.

Chenier said one-off appraisals happen when a donor requires a receipt for tax purposes.

Otherwise, the city hasn’t been trying to assess the collection.

The city’s arts, culture, heritage and recreation advisory committee has proposed to provide feedback on the city’s deaccessioning policy as part of its 2017-2018 work plan.

The plan will be up for approval by council in September after the community and protective services committee reviews it on Thursday.