Eclectic collections: un-disciplining the museum

This article argues for the potential of eclectic display, the critical juxtaposition of cross-disciplinary and achronological objects, to un-discipline the museum and allow existing collections to tell new stories. In response to sector-wide calls for new approaches to heritage, we suggest the value of literary studies both in identifying entrenched narratives, particularly those invoked by chronological organization and disciplinary divisions, and in offering new narratological structures (repetitive, marginal, peripatetic) that would complement and complicate existing, dominant narratives in museum display (such as progress or relationality). Though it is traditionally viewed as unruly or outmoded, we suggest instead that eclecticism could be an important tool for museums to respond to calls for change, such as decolonization, and contemporary crises, like the climate crisis, in an agile and cost-effective manner.