Collection Redevelopment Project

Context

Golden Dragon Museum has a Collection of over 30,000 objects including Imperial Processional Dragons, textiles, metalware, jade, woodware, photographs and original documents. It is the most important holding of Chinese heritage and cultural material in Australia and has significance regionally, nationally and internationally.

The Collection Redevelopment Project focuses significant resources on the care, development and management of the Collection. It has been underway since November 2021 and will be current for two years. The Project is an ambitious undertaking to significantly improve all aspects of the Museum’s Collection management including storage, conservation, documentation, and cataloguing.

The Project is now past its first year, and this Update reports progress and major achievements through this period as well as maps out immediate next steps and some future plans.

Background

A Significance Assessment undertaken by Dr Sophie Couchman in 2021 made several recommendations on the care and development of the Museum’s Collection. These recommendations supported the urgent need for the Museum to employ a Collections Manager to undertake this work.

To achieve this and as a starting point, the Museum’s Chief Executive Officer, Hugo Leschen, developed the Collection Redevelopment Project as a two-year, intensive intervention by a professional Collections Manager into the Collection and all aspects of its care and management.

The Project

With funding from the City of Greater Bendigo and the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust, as well as support from the Museum’s Board, the then Mayor of the City of Greater Bendigo, Cr Dr Jennifer Alden, launched the Collection Development Project on 20 August 2021.  Megan Hall was employed as the Collections Manager to deliver the Project and its outcomes from November 2021 – November 2023.

Following are some highlights of the work undertaken by the Collections Manager over the first year of the Project:

• Upgrade and migration of collection management system (EMu) to hosted server.
• Coordinating and undertaking the required object movements for the Upgrade project and resetting the exhibition spaces after the completion of this project.
• Improving exhibition layout and labels.
• Liaising with Grimwade Conservation Services for the Loong Conservation Project
• Installing building-wide continuous environmental monitoring for temperature and humidity.
• Initiating Integrated Pest Management (IPM) protocols to manage pests in the Museum.
• Fostering the La Trobe University collaboration by engaging with Student Engagement support for possible work-integrated learning placements (internships) and volunteering.
• Fostering the University of Melbourne collaboration, particularly with the Grimwade Centre for Cultural Materials Conservation Masters program, through facilitating the following:
  • ‘Content in the Field’ intensive subject in July 2022, which involved students undertaking reorganisation work on the Collection Store, Activities Room, and Loong Gallery.
  • Minor Thesis in 2022, undertaken by a student, entitled “Caring for Bendigo’s Imperial Processional Dragons: A proposed strategy for living heritage care within an institutional context”. This thesis aimed to bring together cultural traditional practice and contemporary museum standards to propose solutions for the ongoing care of the Museum’s Dragons into the future.
  • Possible internship placement for one student in 2023 for a rehousing and cleaning project
  • ‘Treatment 2’ subject in early 2023 where a student will undertake a conservation treatment on a GDM collection item as part of their course.
  • Volunteer placements for students to undertake work experience while studying.
• Treasures of Dai Gum San exhibition:
  • Exhibition preparation, installation and deinstallation.
  • Presented a talk titled “Caring for Treasures” as part of the public programming for Treasures of Dai Gum San, hosted by Bendigo Art Gallery.
• Planning and preparation of Dai Gum Loong and Sun Loong during Easter 2022 to store the two Dragons differently, enable safer long-term storage and reduce ongoing damage.
• At the end of the Loong Conservation Project, it was identified that it would be beneficial to both Loong and the visitors viewing him to turn Loong around so that he faced the entrance to the Loong Gallery, and with the appropriate permissions this final move was undertaken. The Collections Manager later coordinated the ‘Content in the Field’ students to assist Bendigo Chinese Association members in moving the altar to a new and more appropriate location at Loong’s head.
• The previously installed wooden blinds on the windows in the Collections Store were replaced with block-out blinds to reduce the amount of light (including UV) coming into that space.
• The Collections Manager has been heavily involved in discussions around the installation of upgraded exhibition lighting underway in the Sun Loong and Loong Galleries to ensure they meet museum standards and are appropriate for the Collection.
• The Museums Accreditation Program (MAP) has scheduled the Golden Dragon Museum to be reaccredited in 2024. The Collections Manager should gain access to the portal through 2023 to begin preparations for this process.
• The Collections Manager has begun reviewing existing policies and identifying which of them need to be addressed/renewed. Some highlights of this work include:
  • Preparing to update the Collections Policy
  • Developing a procedure for considering and accepting donations.
  • Developing a guideline for acquisitions that can be shared with the public regarding this donation procedure.
  • Developing an ‘Offsite Conservation Form’
  • Working on developing a guideline for standardised documentation within EMu, in collaboration with the Research Officer.
• The Collections Manager participated in a Collections Development Workshop in November 2022 with Hugo Leschen, Dr Sophie Couchman and the Museum’s Research Officer, Leigh McKinnon, to discuss all aspects of the Collection. This discussion feeds directly into the work on the updated Collections Policy which will be developed in 2023 in preparation for our reaccreditation with MAP in 2024.
• The Collections Manager has been managing, screening and processing donation offers. This has included training staff and volunteers on the agreed procedure and how to manage ‘cold-drop’ donations at the Front Desk, a practice that will discontinue once better arrangements are in place.
• The Collections Manager met with officers from Australian Museum and Galleries Association (AMaGA) Victoria to discuss possible offerings from AMaGA for 2023, especially professional development opportunities which may be applicable to GDM.
• The Museum have been accepted into the Regional Digitisation Project, run by AMaGA Victoria, which provides regional museums with training on museum standard digitisation skills, with demonstrations that will photograph approximately 100 objects. This will take place in May 2023 with collections staff and some volunteers and will commence the overall digitisation of the Collection.
• During the IT Infrastructure Upgrade project, the Collections Manager assisted with managing cataloguing data for the collected archives and the Library catalogue. This data was held in databases that sat on the server and were incompatible with the new IT system, so the Collections Manager exported the data in preparation for migration into a new system. The Research Officer is currently investigating options for the storage of this data.
• The Collections Manager has been making various purchases to improve Collections care. Conservation material such as this has been specifically funded by the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust grant. Purchases include:
  
  • Unbuffered tissue, foam sheeting, archival boxes and other storage materials
  • Plastic sheeting, for hazardous materials, and for pest or disaster management
  • Cleaning supplies for the objects, including brushes and solvents
  • Pest traps and environmental monitoring dataloggers
  • Nitrile gloves
• Some upcoming planned purchases include:
  • New shelving for the collection store
  • 2x cameras, tripods, and related digitisation equipment
  • Vacuum cleaners
  • Additional Wi-Fi dataloggers

Future Project Goals and Collection Management at the Museum

The major goals for the remainder of the Project include:

• Complete customisation of EMu
• Initiate a Collection Audit
• Initiate digitisation of the Collection
• Process acquisition backlog
• Develop and prepare an exhibition for the new Temporary Exhibition Space
• Review and redraft policies and procedures relating to the Collection including the Collections Policy
• Improve storage organisation and efficiency
• Prepare for MAP reaccreditation
• Develop a Disaster Management Plan

The success and outcomes of the Collection Management Project to date have been significant.  The improvements already achieved in the management of the Museum’s Collection have been many, far-reaching and deeply impactful.

The Collection is the Museum’s most valuable asset, and it is critical that it is cared for, managed and developed to the highest possible standards, now and into the future.

With this in mind, the Museum’s Board has recently committed to making the role of Collections Manager permanent and on-going after the end of the Project.

Golden Dragon Museum thanks the supporters of the Collection Redevelopment Project: