Museum Collections Access

The Maryland Center for History and Culture welcomes scholars, museum professionals and interested members of the public to view collections that are not on exhibition. We also invite anyone with research inquiries about an object in our collection to reach out to our museum staff for assistance.

Access to collections is granted by special arrangement which must be made at least one month in advance.

Requests are handled in the order in which they are received and response time is approximately 10 business days. All requests to view an object must be made a minimum of one month in advance of your desired appointment date and are approved based on the availability of staff. The maximum number of objects viewed per visit will be determined by the staff after the request has been received. Viewing appointments last no more than 30 minutes.

The fee to view an object from the collection that is not currently on view is $50. If you would like to view multiple objects during your visit, this fee may increase based on availability and staff time required.

Research requests are handled in the order in which they are received and response time is approximately 10 business days. Response time may increase depending on the time required to answer the inquiry. Expedited (five business days) requests may be possible depending on staff availability with a charge of 100 percent added to the normal research or viewing fees.

The first half hour of research is free. This is often an adequate amount of time to research an Item ID request. You will be contacted with the results of that half hour of research. If you request additional research, the fee is $40 per hour for members and $50 per hour for non-members. There is a minimum charge of one hour. Please be aware that research is not always successful. Despite diligent efforts by the staff, the information you seek simply may not be available. No refunds will be made.

For information about viewing or research regarding an object in the MCHC collection, please fill out the Museum Request form.