Collectors and Collecting for the Raffles Museum in Singapore: 1920-1940

Scholars interested in the place of the museum in society have not neglected the collections that make up the rationale for that institution's existence. They have also begun to study the process of collecting itself. Both collections and collectors are now seen as integrally bound together with curators, trustees, and the wider public in social networks that create an encompassing framework for their work. This article illustrates the social nature of the collecting process for a major regional colonial museum. Through the use of the preserved correspondence of one of its foremost pre-war directors, it shows how collecting relationships were created and maintained through the use of a number of resources: money, institutional authority, specimen exchange, expert knowledge, library facilities, and the space of the museum itself.