Well, first and foremost, an art museum deals with the very real issue of space. Collections tend to grow much faster than storage areas. If a collection supercedes its brick and mortar confines, off-site space is often considered. But that places the artworks and artifacts far from the hands of the people who need to access them on a regular basis, like curators, students, teachers and researchers.

Second, most art museums have a written collections policy guiding decision-making. This typically defines a scope or focus for collecting which might concentrate on a specific medium, a cultural group or particular movement in art history. Here, because we are a public art collection located in Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas, it makes sense that we'd be drawn to art that best represents the interests of the people in Topeka, Shawnee County, Kansas. But we also have West African artifacts, Chinese decorative art, international paperweights and Santos sculptures from Jorge López of New Mexico. A focus helps guide but it isn't intended to limit us when considering a new acquisition.

The Very Small Object Archive is an unusual acquisition that falls into a greyer area than most art works we've considered. Never before have we made something together as a community. Everything collected came from Library visitors or staff, so according to our collections policy, everything  is pertinent to our community if you look at the results strictly from a location angle. Because the objects are no larger than 8 x 25 millimeters, space isn't so much an issue. So why would we need to weed anything? Why can't we just keep it all?

Bugs. Mold. Mice. Sugar. Food. Water. These are all nightmare intruders in an art collection. Water attracts bugs and microscopic life forms which like to feast on paper, canvas, leather and fiber. Humidity warps canvas and paper. Mice are attracted to food and will make nests out of photographs and printed matter. No mice were submitted for consideration, but we received a lot of crickets, beetles, flies, food fragments, candy bits and a couple things that appear to be wet which now resemble specimens from a petrie dish. All of these will need to go because introducing them to the climate/pest controlled Gallery Storage is asking for trouble. We simply can't risk keeping these wonderful submissions on site. What we are keeping, however, are all the drawings, data, scanned images and commentary collected over the past three--almost four!-- months.

I'm still getting submissions (one from a science class of 150 students!) and have begun the process of sorting and refining the nearly 300 objects taking over my desk. The drawings are marvelous and the breadth of answers to "what is art?" is exciting. Thanks to everyone who participated and I look forward to sharing the results.