Donate or loan an object to the museum

Loans

Bristol Museums, Galleries and Archives (BMGA) does accept objects into its collections on loan on occasion, if outright acquisition is not possible. There are standard conditions of loan, which are available on request. No loans are accepted on a permanent basis, all will be for a fixed period of time renegotiable at time of expiry.

BMGA does loan artefacts to other museums and galleries and considers requests on their merit.

Donations

If you have an object which you think may be of interest to us, eg an artefact made or used in Bristol, or something which relates to our wide-ranging collections already held by Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives and would like to donate it to us please contact Bristol Museum & Art Gallery. It is likely that you will need to make an appointment with the museum curator, so that you can bring your item in for assessment. The curator will find out as much as possible about the object and its history, e.g. how old is it, what was it used for, who owned it and any interesting stories attached to it.

It is always helpful if you have any paperwork that might be associated with the object, such as receipts for purchase, instruction books, photographs. All of this adds to the richness of the object.

We will make a decision whether to accept your donation based on our existing collections, our collections priorities, legislations and council policy. If we are unable to accept the item, we will try to put you in touch with another museum which maybe able to.

Bequests

Should you wish to make a bequest please contact the Museum Service to discuss the nature of the bequest.

Your views

We are keen to know your views on the types of collections BMGA currently hold. Are there areas of the collections which you think are particularly important and should be built upon? Are there collections which you feel are under-represented or need to be developed.