Behind the Scenes:Collection Basics

How does the Illinois State Museum get all of those wonderful objects in its collections?

The Illinois State Museum builds its collections through:

fieldwork
transfers from other museums
purchases
inheritance of objects from wills or estates
donations or gifts from individuals and organizations.

The Museum also serves as a repository for collections from other organizations that do not have the trained staff and facilities to care for collections.

In Collection Basics, you can learn the steps the curator takes to accept a gift into the collection, how an object in the collection was restored for exhibit, and how an artist used a collection for study.