Museum collections, documentation, and shifting knowledge paradigms

Documentation forms the basis in which museum collections are ascribed meaning. Practices, many of which are rooted in 19th-century empiricist modes of thinking, have not been revised at the speed that ideological, practical, and technological transformations are taking place in other areas of museum practice. At this point an opportunity exists for radical changes not only in the manner objects that are documented, but also the way they are perceived as forms of evidence. This chapter, drawing on the findings of the Knowledge Objects project and the writing ofleading museum theorists and historians revisits the acquisition and documentation process. It proposes the incorporation of new principles, practices, and structures that acknowledge objects as polysemic entities-as holding multiple meanings: the meaning of narratives and classificatory systems as projects of cultural, disciplinary, museum, and curatorial opinion and the role of a diverse range of users in the cycle of knowledge making and the responsibilities of curators and collection managers as knowledge experts and brokers.