[cannonpr]

I am from a European country with a long… very long history, some of the family heirlooms date back to Byzantium. I don’t live in that country anymore, and I live in terror of inheriting them… I could give them to a museum, yet asides from that feeling like a betrayal, I know it will mostly just sit in a box till it rots away. Maybe making it out to an exhibit once per 30 years. I feel like we are all losing interest in our past.

[zdragnar]

Don't many museums accept items on loan? Which is to say, they'll display them for an agreed upon time and return them rather than claim ownership?

[cranky908canuck]

That doesn't solve the problem of where to put it in the long term.

[adastra22]

If the item is truly antique and display worthy, it can be accepted in “permanent loan.”

Most of the art you see in museums is technically on permanent loan.

[zdragnar]

Ostensibly, you could keep loaning them out...

[yulker]

How much of it can you mount on a wall? Wall mounted artifacts and art require trivial maintenance effort and don't clutter up the floor, while honoring those objects and making them visible and enjoyable.

[FiatLuxDave]

This is the comment on here I most relate to myself. I'm also from a family with old roots, although our family heirlooms date back only to the Fourth Crusade at earliest. My mother passed away a few years ago, and I was made responsible for an awful lot of items that people would generally be surprised to find outside of a museum.

So, yeah, it's a lot of mixed feelings. There are certain things that it's easy to know what to do with. For example, I inherited a box, which is worth maybe $1k at most on the market, but which was part of a story which has been passed down in my family for 800 years. It's really nice to be able to finish that story with "and we still have the box." So, yeah, its easy to know I'm never getting rid of that one.

But there are other things that I kinda wish I didn't have to take care of. Now I have at least four more colonial dressers than I have room for. Marie Kondo would say that if it doesn't give me joy, I should get rid of it. And they don't give me joy. But getting rid of something that has been in my family for 300 years just because it doesn't fit in my house right now, that would give me guilt. I'm not sure that's healthy, but it's true.

I grew up in a house that was a lot like a museum, full of antiques, don't touch, hey that's older than the US, don't play on that. My mother did too. I don't know if that was always the best environment for a kid, but it did teach me a reverence for the past and for history.

So, I try to be a good custodian of the past. Visitors to my house might not know much about Ras Gugsa, Mother Seton, or Boudwyn of Constantinople, but I have interesting items on display that often prompt questions, so I can then tell stories. It's the other things, the dressers and silver chafing dishes, that are a burden rather than a privilege to have. I'm not sure how to have one without the other.

One thing that I've noticed is that a lot of the more guilt-burdensome items, not just for me but for people in general, are those things that used to be valuable and prestigious but aren't anymore. In 1920, a top hat or silver chafing dish showed you had class. Now, those things don't signify anything. But their importance to our ancestors of a previous time lingers on a bit. We feel like even though they are worth little that they should be worth more somehow. I suspect that in a few generations our grandkids' generation will be stressing over what to do with our Rolex watches and Coach bags.