Week 11: October 28th and 30th

     Good afternoon everyone! This week at the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse and Museum I continued gaining valuable experience working in a museum. This week, we focused on the process of deaccessioning items from the museum's collection. Sometimes, museums end up with more items in their collection than the need or can use, so they need to find new homes for these items, instead of doing something drastic like throwing things away. In this case, the lighthouse had a number of pieces of furniture dating from the 1880s all the way to about the 1950s.

    The first step to deaccessioning an item from the museum's collection was to learn where the items had come from. In the case of these furniture pieces, they had all been graciously donated by residents of Ponce Inlet, so we looked back at the museum's accession records and reached out to all of the donors to learn if they wanted any of their items returned to them before we moved on to other potential homes for the items. This is a respectful way to let donors know that their donations were appreciated, but unfortunately could not be put on display or used by the museum. After reaching out to each of the donors, none of them had wanted their items, so we moved onto step two. After learning that none of the original donors wanted their items back, Felipe had myself and fellow intern Holly create a list of all the items that would be going up for donation. We attached photos of each item and included a brief description of what the item was and the approximate time period they originated from. Once this was complete, Felipe had us track down nearly 20 museums and historic houses in the Central Florida area and beyond so that he could reach out to them and see if any of them wanted any of the items up for donation. Felipe told us that this was an important part of being a museum professional, making sure to reach out to other institutions that might be able to make use of these items was a sign of respect to both the museum and the items that would be potentially donated.

    Once we had completed both the list of items and the list of museum contact info, Felipe had us watch as he wrote up a simple email letting each museum know that the Lighthouse had some historic furniture that he wanted to donate. The email informed them of who Felipe was, what the museum had been doing with the Pacetti Hotel and that they had an excess of furniture they wanted to donate. Then Felipe went ahead and BCC'd each museum in the email and sent off the email along with the list we had made. Felipe then informed us that we would wait for responses and then donate any remaining furniture to places like Good Will since throwing away items is the last thing museum professionals want to do.

    Overall, this was not a very action packed week at the Lighthouse, but it was yet another chance to learn about a museum procedure I was unfamiliar with. I definitely did not think about what a museum does with their excess items before becoming an intern, so it was very insightful to see the process up close.