Ment of Collections in Tampere Museums

NORDI S K M US EOLOGI 1998•2, S . 51-68 How TO MANAGE COLLECTIONS? - THE PROBLEM OF MANAGE MENT OF COLLECTIONS IN TAMPERE MUSEUMS Ritva Palo-oja & Leena Willberg What do you do, when collections include 200, 000 objects, and only halfof them are within the management system? What do you do with objects that have been damaged by fire or in transfers between collections? These questions prompted the collection management team of Tampere Museums to develop a value classification system in 1994. This system has been applied since, and has proved to be a practical tool for collection management. The system has already been refined through experience. We hope that this article will provoke discussion and motivate museums to develop common collection management methods. TAMPERE MUSEUMS further strengthened by the establishment of a railway network. The first railway con The collection policy of the Tampere nection was opened in 1876 between Museums is to accumulate the cultural Hameenlinna and Tampere. Industrialists heritage of the Tampere Region, maintain realised the power potential of the Tammer it and put it on display. koski Rapids, and one by one the textile The city of Tampere was founded in industry, the engineering industry and the 1779, and is the largest inland city in paper and shoe industries started to develop Scandinavia. It is located on the historical and became important branches of Finnish junction of centuries old waterways and industry as a whole. After decades of struc roads on the isthmus of lakes Nasijarvi and tural change, Tampere has become an Pyhajarvi, on both sides of the Tammer important centre in the IT industry and a koski Rapids. It is surrounded by the eco centre of higher education. nomic area of Tampere Region. This area Today, the Tampere Museums include attracted inhabitants as early as 6,000 years the Harne Museum, the Amuri Museum ago. The position of Tampere at an impor of Workers' Housing and the Vapriikki tant economic and traffic intersection was Museum Centre. RITVA PALO-OJA & L EEN A W!LLB E R G 52 Harne Museum was founded in 1904, established. The museum sector took over and is the oldest museum in Tampere. It is the supervision of the Harne Museum, the housed in a palace called Milavida that Tampere Technical Museum, the Finnish was built by the Finlayson family of cot School Museum, the Museum of Natural ton factory owners. Nowadays, Milavida is History and the new City Museum. The better known by the name Nasilinna. The role of the museum sector grew when in collections of the Harne Museum include 1982, it assumed responsibility for the archaeological and ethnological material whole Tampere Region and was renamed and specimens of cultural history. The Tampere Museums - the Regional Museum most valuable collections are those that of Pirkanmaa. Tampere Museums under represent folk art: the 'rya' type rugs and stood its role to be more of a manager the peasant furniture collections. than a collector of local cultural heritage. At the heart of the Tampere Technical The problem of scarce resources hit tho Museum was the private technical collec se museums that were under the supervisi tion of Juho Holmsten-Heinio that was on of the municipal museum sector in the first put on display in 1883. The 1970s and the problem became even wor Technical Museum has a varied history: it se in the following decade. Rapidly gro changed location from Nasilinna to the wing collections and maintenance of six boiler room of the Frenckell paper mill separate museum units gave impetus to and from there to the factory building of the search for a new, more centralised Kenkateollisuus Oy (Shoe Industry Ltd). mode of operation and common facilities. In addition to technology, the collections The fire at the Technical Museum in 1989 shed light on the industrial history of the hastened this development. A new loca Tampere Region. tion was selected from the Tampella facto The Finnish School Museum was ope ry area, and this new centre was named ned in the cellar of Tammela School in the Vapriikki Museum Centre. The collec 1960. Its collections include study materi tions of the Technical Museum, the City als, teaching equipment and scale models Museum, the Natural History Museum of school buildings and classrooms. The and the Finnish School Museum were all Tampere Museum of Natural History was transferred to this new centre. The basic opened in 1961 in the Kaipio House. In exhibitions of the Vapriikki Museum 1988 the Museum re-opened, in the same Centre will gradually be opened to the location but now as part of the new Metso public between the years 2000 and 2002. library, and with improved collections. The management structure of the The Museum has large collections of Tampere Museums was reorganised at the plants, insects and minerals. The Tampere beginning of the 1990s, and each museum City Museum was founded at the end of unit is now managed by an independent the 1960s. The exhibitions at the museum curator. For the first time in the history of usually present the history of the city of museums in Tampere, collection manage Tampere and local cultural history. ment was now perceived to be an inde The museums amalgamated in 1969, pendent sphere of operation. when the municipal museum sector was How TO MANAGE CO LLE C TIONS GROWING COLLECTIONS different museums using different collec 53 tion principles. The collections have beco The collections of the Tampere Museums me quite large; at the moment they inclu do not form a clear entity, but are a sum de 200,000 objects, specimens and archi of collections that have been added to by ved items. When the collections were The Museum Centre of Tampere, known as Vapriikki, is housed in what used to be the engineering works (on the right) ofTampella Ltd., in the very heart ofthe Tammerkoski Rapids National Park. The 10,000 square metres ofthe Museum Centre will be filled with exhibition and educational facilities, an auditorium, collection mana gement and conservation facilities, a photo archive and an exhibition workshop. The Vapriikki area will be com pleted by the year 2002. Photo Timo Lehtinen. RITVA PAL O - O J A & L EENA WILLBER G 54 transferred to the Vapriikki Museum collection was augmented by scholarship Centre at the beginning of the 1990s, it students under the supervision of the was time to unify the collections and curator of the Harne Students' Association arrange them into functional groups. The at the University of Helsinki, Julius Ailio. collections are currently divided into the Their objective was to develop a basic col following groups: archaeology, ethnology, lection featuring the culture of the Harne cultural history, local history, industrial reg10n. history, technology, natural history and Between 1910 and 1920, grants became educational history. smaller and collecting gradually ceased. The following chart shows the accumu Since then, collections have mainly been lation of collections in the museums of added to through donations. The impor Tampere. It should be noted, however, tance of a collection representing urban that until the beginning of the 1960s, the history was realised. In the 1920s, items only collections documented were those of were mainly collected from the Harne the Harne Museum. The technical collec region, with some specimens also collected tions have only been included since 1970, from the Satakunta region. The financial when the Technical Museum started to list state of the Harne Museum had improved them in a collection register. The collecti thanks to a private bequest, and it was ons of the School Museum and the again possible to collect objects from the Museum of Natural History are not inclu region. In the 1930s the Harne Museum's ded in the chart at all, because their col collection changed emphasis. Documen lections are closely connected to their own tation on the life and culture of the region subject areas and are therefore restricted. was left in the background, and funds The same is not true of the collections of were used to add to the collections of the Harne Museum, the City Museum urban history and photographs. After the and the Technical Museum: their collec Second World War, inflation wiped out tions of cultural history partly overlap and the museum's disposable funds, and object form a separate problem area altogether. acquisition was minimal, although the city The figures show the initial collecting of Tampere assisted in covering the run enthusiasm of the Harne Museum. The ning costs of the museum. Museum 1904 1911- 1921 - 1931- 1941- 1951- 1961- 1971- 1981- 1991- -1910 1920 1930 1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 1997 Harne 11,305 9,409 7,396 4,876 1,61 7 3,374 4,229 1,061 Museum City 619 5,242 3,450 30 Museum Technical 23,305 18,38 1 6,506 Museum +55,oob• +20,000* +35 ,000* Total 11,305 9,409 7.396 4,876 1,617 3,374 4,848 84,608 41,831 41,536 items/year 1,61 5 941 740 488 180 337 733 8,620 4, 183 4, 459 *an estimate based on diaries Fig: Items collected by the Tampere museums between 1904 and 1997. How TO MANAGE COLLE C TION S The collection rate fell decade by decade technology to the history of industrialism. 55 until the 1950s, when the new museum Large product sample collections increa manager, the first manager properly edu sed the number of collected but unlisted cated in the profession, reversed the trend. objects. At the end of the 1970s, the num The museum was totally dependent on ber of documented collection objects the financial assistance of the city.

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