Museum authority

Museum staff exercise authority when they accept a possession, assign a category, arrange display, publish an account, authorize handling, preserve some material while returning other material. Those decisions affect later access and interpretation. Conventional collections operate under different collecting purposes, histories, resources. ACHOiR examines its own decisions while proposing temporary custody for ordinary personally significant possessions.

Organizers can invite a depositor to review a description, give visitors a way to contest an interpretation, record reasons for refusing a use. They also need to decide the extent of a custodian's interpretive authority. A person may disagree with independently documented manufacture information while controlling publication of their private recollection. Staff discuss those issues through attributed accounts and interpretation review.

An initially familiar New York network can reproduce exclusions through referral and taste. City access therefore belongs to institutional design. Admission, material care, available space, social selection receive practical explanations and review. A critique of earlier institutional authority provides a reason to examine these operations as the new collection develops.