Curation
When you go to a museum, you probably only think about the artifacts that are on display. What you may not realize is that there is an entire collection of materials stored behind-the-scenes. Museums usually rotate some of their exhibits. So where is this stuff kept while it is not being displayed? How is it taken care of? The work of keeping these valuable pieces clean, organized, catalogued, and safe is called curation.
The Department of Anthropology at the University of Minnesota has a large, diverse collection of artifacts that are used for research. New elements are continually being added to the collection, but when they are received, they are usually unorganized and not in stable condition. One task of the curators in this department is to make special boxes for them to fit into so that they can be stored without being damaged, which is what you see here.
Many of the artifacts are stored in drawers in cabinets in the rooms along this hallway. Before curation, artifacts are disorganized, but after many hours of work making sure the artifacts are stored properly, the collection becomes neat and efficiently accessible.
