Next week, the Penn Cultural Heritage Center (PennCHC) at the University of Pennsylvania ‘s Penn Museum will launch a first-of-its-kind survey exploring the collecting practices in place at museums and libraries across America. This endeavor, titled the National Survey of Museum Collecting Practices , is one of several initiatives under the auspices of the Museums: Missions and Acquisitions Project , also known as the M2A Project, which PennCHC launched in October 2024. The forthcoming survey will collect information on policies, acquisitions, deaccessions, and more from May 20 through August 20. Results will be available in 2027. “We know a great deal about what museums display, but far less about how they acquire, borrow, deaccession, and return objects,” PennCHC’s executive director and the project’s co-principal investigator Richard M.…