Evolving Standards: Incorrect Cultural Care as an 11th agent of deterioration

When asked to teach a museum administration class about collections management, Melanie Deer centered the discussion on the 10 Agents of Deterioration (10 Agents), which focus heavily on the traditional “preservation forever” approach. She mentioned culturally based care and then said, “but that’s another discussion.” That weekend she asked herself, “Why? Why should it be a separate discussion?”

This Point of View originally appeared in the Sept/Oct 2025 issue of Museum magazine, a benefit of AAM membership.

» Read Museum.

Museums’ acquisition of Indigenous collections, while often done legally, was also often unethical. Historically, Indigenous items housed in museums were neglected, and museum professionals did not understand the appropriate cultural care and handling, let alone follow the appropriate protocols.

Even collections that are not subject to the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) can still require specific cultural care. It is now understood that these collections still hold a spiritual connection to their cultural practices. The lack of cultural care becomes clear when we take into consideration the traditional uses of, and belief systems attached to, these items.

Many museums now understand that they should take into consideration the care practices of the cultures from which the collection came. However, doing so is typically framed as going above and beyond, not part of the expected standard of care. To change that, we are proposing an 11th agent to the 10 Agents: Incorrect Cultural Care.

How to Address Cultural Care in Collections

There are a myriad of ways to address cultural care. They include but are not limited to:

Consultation
Memorandum of Understanding
Policy Changes
Collaboration
Care Guides
Shared Care

Why Do We Need This?

The 10 Agents have been the standard of understanding in the conservation and collections field since the 1990s. While the 10 Agents guide conservation regarding what can cause deterioration to items, they do not explain how to protect items from these factors, nor do they set the parameters (e.g., temperature ranges for an item). The general understanding of the 10 Agents is that addressing them all would preserve the item for all eternity. But there is more to preservation than the physical body or institutional knowledge of the item.

The standard idea of preservation for all eternity reflects a Western approach to collections management. This approach is appropriate for some types of collections, such as Abraham Lincoln’s top hat (housed at the Smithsonian), but it is inadequate for items that must be cared for according to traditional knowledge and practices.

Non-Western approaches to collections care emphasize that not all items are intended to be preserved for eternity, and some cultural beliefs may inherently lead to some forms of physical degradation for items. For example, in archaeological repositories, it is standard for items from Native American ancestral sites to be housed in polyethylene bags to protect them from outside forces. However, some traditional beliefs hold that those items have a spirit and need to breathe. Alternatively, these items can be housed in trays or muslin bags that allow for airflow. Various cultures also believe that incorrect cultural care can negatively influence both the environment and the peoples of the originating culture.

The 10 Agents of Deterioration

The 10 Agents of Deterioration were established by Stefan Michalski and R. R. Waller in the 1990s and adopted by the Canadian Conservation Institute. They are:

Dissociation
Physical Force
Theft/Vandalism
Fire
Water
Pests
Pollutants
Light
Incorrect Temperature
Incorrect Relative Humidity

» More information on these existing agents of deterioration.

Caring for collections according to traditional knowledge is not limited to US museum practitioners. Non-Western collections can be found in a wide variety of European museums, including ethnographic or “world cultures” museums, natural history museums, science museums, and even small village museums.

Few museums have staff trained to care for these items in a culturally respectful way. Museums need to work with source communities. Over the past decades, Scandinavian museums have intensified collaboration with the Sami people, leading to a better understanding of what is needed to care for their collections. Recognizing appropriate cultural care as a standard of care can increase such collaboration with Indigenous groups worldwide.

What’s Next?

We need your thoughts and opinions on the 11th agent. We have developed a survey to gather feedback and initiate discussion. If you have not done so already, we hope you can take 15 to 30 minutes to complete our survey by the end of the year.

To take the survey, scan the QR code or visit this link.

Of the 94 survey respondents so far, 80.8 percent have expressed complete or potential support for the 11th agent. We are also conducting one-on-one conversations with interested parties to gain a deeper understanding of thoughts, opinions, and concerns. And we are attending conferences to spread the word and gather feedback. Please feel free to share the survey link with museum professionals in your network.

We will be gathering feedback this year and next. We then intend to synthesize our findings and outline the 11th Agent of Deterioration: Incorrect Cultural Care as a proposed standard in 2027. The results of this work will be made available in late 2027 or early 2028. We hope that once this has been established as a standard of care, we will create working groups around the world to facilitate consultations and collaborations around the culturally appropriate care of items.

Of the 94 survey respondents so far for the question, “Do you support the addition of this 11th agent?”, 63.8 % said Yes, 17% said Maybe, and 19.1% said No.

We acknowledge this is not simply a matter of naming incorrect cultural care as an agent of deterioration and assuming all is fixed. Just like the other agents, strategies and tools must be developed to protect items from the threat. We also acknowledge that this is a more complex agent than, say, fire, where it’s easy to assess risk from a purely scientific standpoint.

Cultural institutions have a responsibility to properly care for all of the items in their collections. Understanding the appropriate cultural care of certain items is paramount if museums are to be worthy stewards and educators.