Historic

Donor Decision-Making, Motivations, and Meaning-Making in the Context of  A Historic Fashion and Textiles Museum on A University Campus: A Case Study

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Abstract

Despite the importance of object donations to historic fashion and textiles collections/museums housed on university campuses (Welters & Ordoñez, 2011), very little academic attention has been given to exploring perspectives of donors to such collections/ museums (Marcketti, et al., 2011; Welters & Ordoñez, 2011; Szczepanski, 2017). The present qualitative case study explores the behaviors and experiences – including decision-making, motivations, and meaning-making – of object donors to the XXX Museum, one of the premiere university historic fashion and textiles collections in the country (The Collection, 2022). The major contribution of this study is a grounded theory model illuminating the Decision-Making process to Donate Objects to a university historic fashion and textiles museum. Unique to the decision-making model are the incorporation of the meaning of the object to the overall decision-making process and the identification of eight motives specific to the donation of historic fashion and textiles objects.

Keywords: Donor decision-making, Fashion and textiles museum, Motivation, Case study

How to Cite:

Benjamin, B. & Paff, J. L., (2025) “Donor Decision-Making, Motivations, and Meaning-Making in the Context of  A Historic Fashion and Textiles Museum on A University Campus: A Case Study”, International Textile and Apparel Association Annual Conference Proceedings 81(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.31274/itaa.18563