This thesis examines the efficacy of collection management in improving the maintenance of cultural heritage collections. Diligent management of collections of cultural materials is vital to the sustainable development of the institutions housing them. Sustainability, in the context of museum collection management, is characterized by the ability of the collection to perform in such a way that it contributes to the public’s understanding and enjoyment of culture. In this project, I focus on three museums with large ethnographic collections in order to explore how approaches and tools used in these institutions facilitate their role in public service and the museum as a public institution. These three case studies are the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York, the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (UPMAA) in Philadelphia, and the Brooklyn Museum in New York. Each case study presents (1) the history of the collections, (2) the current mission of each museum, (3) the collections' maintenance practices, and (4) the ways in which each museum looks to strengthen the public performance of its collections. These case studies provide examples of public-oriented models for the stewardship of cultural heritage, models that dramatically improve access to collection materials and can enable cultural heritage institutions to continue to serve the public for generations to come.