Creating a Collection: A Tour Through the Smith College Museum of Art Main Menu How This Works Instructions on How to Use this Website How to Read a Museum Label This will help you navigate the SCMA and other museums What is "Public Trust"? Why Museums Collect How Museums Collect Why Museums Remove Objects from their Collections How Museums Remove Objects from their Collections

How do museums build and un-build collections?

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Hi, welcome to “How Museums Collect: A Tour Through the Smith College Museum of Art.” This digital tool will introduce you to the rules that guide museums of all types in how they get new objects, and how they remove objects they no longer need.

To guide you through the museum “rulebook,” we’ll take a tour of the Smith College Museum of Art! By looking at what artworks are on view—and what’s not on view—we hope you will begin to understand how a museum collection comes together.

We hope by the end of this tour, you’ll come to find that knowing these rules and practices helps you understand and appreciate museums even better. 

This page has paths:

  1. Why Museums Collect Samantha Page

Contents of this path:

  1. Why Museums Collect
  2. How Museums Collect
  3. Why Museums Remove Objects from their Collections

This page has tags:

  1. How This Works Samantha Page
  2. What is "Public Trust"? Samantha Page
  3. How to Read a Museum Label Samantha Page

Contents of this tag:

  1. Why Museums Collect
  2. Why Museums Remove Objects from their Collections
  3. De Forest "Ramesseum at Thebes"
  4. How Museums Collect
  5. Song of the Lark - Homer
  6. Thayer "Winged Figure"
  7. Hassam "Union Square"
  8. Lady with Lute - Dewing
  9. Hassam "Street Scene"
  10. Tiffany "Duane Street"
  11. Church at Old Lyme - Hassam
  12. J. Alden Weir "Delft Plate"
  13. Shipyard of Gloucester - Homer
  14. Dewing "Lady with Cello"
  15. Gimbels Ad