Donate to the collection

The Cultures and Histories staff at Queensland Museum are potentially interested in anything to do with Queensland’s cultural heritage – both historical and contemporary. We are particularly interested in objects that tell a story – about people, places or events. The more information we have about an object the better.

Much of our natural heritage collection is developed from fieldwork undertaken by our researchers, so we do not acquire specimens for our Biodiversity and Geosciences collection through donation.

Queensland Museum will only accept objects that you legally own. We cannot accept objects that belong to someone else, have been stolen, illegally exported from their country of origin or illegally removed from archaeological, historic or significant sites.

We prefer objects that are in good condition, but even an object in poor condition may still be of great significance in telling a particular story. In fact, the damage an object received during its life might tell an important story in itself.

There is no guarantee that your object will ever be on public display. However, a major role of the museum is to make the collection available to the public for research and education purposes. All objects which are accepted as donations are important to us, whether they are on display or not.

Part of our museum work is in making those objects and specimens more accessible – through digitisation and by featuring stories about our collection in our on-line collections, through our Learn and Discover section and through our regular social media channels.

No. Once you have donated an object it becomes the property of the Queensland Museum. However, visitors can access information about objects in the collection through the Discovery Centre.

To assess donations, we ask for some specific information. This helps us understand the significance of the proposed donation.

Unfortunately, we cannot accept all donations, so we need to investigate things like the condition of the object (we consider how much conservation work it would need) and how big it is (we think about what storage will be needed to keep it).

Before we accept an object, we need to know some information about is history, who used it and where it came from. This helps us to develop a significant, well preserved and representative collection for all Queenslanders.

Items accepted into the collection must meet our significance criteria and strategic themes. And, of course, our assessments of donations are guided by our collection policy.

Significance Assessment.

Donated items assessed as significant will be registered as part of the collection. Under the terms of a Gift Agreement these donations become the property of Queensland Museum.

In return, we ensure the long-term preservation of your donation by:

• creating a record of the objects, including photographs, on the museum database
• providing conservation treatment where required
• packaging and storing the materials according to museum standards
• maintaining your donation in the Collection Store
• ensuring access to items in the state collection is controlled in a way that maintains their long term preservation.

Donated materials that are part of the Queensland Museum State Collection may be:

• publicly shown in exhibitions and displays occasionally
• researched by museum curators and university researchers to contribute to our understanding of Queensland’s history, society, culture and environment
• borrowed under standard Museum loan procedures
• viewed in the Collection Store by prior arrangement with the relevant Program Head.

Queensland Museum will always serve future generations, this does not mean every object in the collection will be kept forever. Some objects may be removed from the collection for legal, ethical or practical reasons.

The museum has been collecting since 1862. In that time, we have acquired millions of scientific specimens, cultural and historical items. As part of the museum's commitment to providing long-term care of our collections, we continually evaluate them for their significance, condition and relevance. This ensures we can continue to add objects and specimens to the collection that can be used for research, display and education, telling the stories of Queensland.

The reasons why an object or specimen may be removed from the collection include:

• it is a health risk and needs to be removed for safety reasons,
• it was acquired illegally and can be returned to the rightful owner,
• it was acquired unethically and can be returned to the source community,
• it needs to be destroyed for scientific research,
• its condition has deteriorated to the point it cannot be preserved,
• it is one of many duplicate or very similar items,
• it was originally added to the collection for reasons no longer relevant to the museum's role.