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- Convenors:
-
Nainika Dinesh
Susan Degnan (University of Oxford)
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- Stream:
- Who Speaks and for Whom?
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 30 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Museums in a post colonial era have struggled with navigating the troubled histories of colonial collecting that inform most collections. From ‘contact zones’ (Clifford) to repatriation, this panel seeks to examine what it means to be an ethical museum institution in the contemporary world.
Long Abstract:
This panel seeks to unpack the theme of this conference: ‘responsibility,’ in the context of the modern-day museum institution. Ethnographic museums have particularly been criticised for the problematic arrangement and management of their collections but they - along with all types of museums - seem to only be gaining in popularity. We need to ask - how, then, can museums respond to the changing concerns of an ever-globalising public? Considering the difficult heritages for many of a museum institution’s objects, we ask what responsibilities these museums have to the outside world. How is knowledge produced in the museum (museum ontologies)? Whose voices are heard? Who gets to organise collections, write labels, etc? What new and emerging methods of display may allow for new ways of knowledge construction and dissemination (i.e. Clifford’s ‘contact zones’, or the ‘sensory turn’)? What responsibility does the museum as an institution have to the outside world? What responsibility does it have to the people from whom their collections stem (i.e. what does responsibility does the British Museum have to Athens, or to India), and vice versa? Do museums have a responsibility to respond to crisis situations/be social activists? We encourage any papers thinking about the ways in which museum institutions (not micromuseums) have and could respond to calls to responsibility; as well as papers exploring where a museum’s responsibilities come from and to whom they are directed.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 30 March, 2021, -Paper short abstract:
This paper asks what responsibility means for our national science collections during their current transformation. Drawing on 6 months of work at the Science Museum Group, interviews and digital sources, I explore the competing responsibilities felt towards publics, objects, and the institution.
Paper long abstract:
History of science collections have been relatively understudied within crossover literature between anthropology and museum studies. But they hold a particular place within the UK’s self-conception, relating to a specific sort of history about industrialisation and contemporary framings of the UK as a small but scientifically-leading country.This paper looks at responsibility in relation to the Science Museum Group, one of the largest museum collections in the UK with many objects of international significance. It will investigate how questions about responsibility are being raised within the context of some major changes taking place: 1) the consolidation of multiple museums around the country into a single Science Museum Group, 2) major overhauls of permanent galleries at the London Science Museum site, 3) the closure of the London Blythe House store and the building of a new nationally-accessible store site at the National Collections Centre (NCC) Wroughton—this is set to hold >80% of the Group’s collections and offer new levels of access to collections not on display, while the move involves the largest photography, cataloguing and digitisation process undertaken by the SMG to date.These moments provide an opportunity to explore the differing responsibilities felt at levels of the museum: to diverse publics, to the objects themselves, and to the SMG as an institution. My paper will reflect on six months working at the NCC, as well as interviews and digital sources, to ask what responsibility means for our national science collections today.
Paper short abstract:
Clifford suggests that museums as “contact zones” might someday resemble libraries “circulating art and culture beyond their walls” (1997:212). This paper explores the Anishinaabe idea that museum objects as “non-human persons” can play an active role in circulating cultural knowledge.
Paper long abstract:
When James Clifford explored the idea of the museum as a “contact zone” he suggested that in a decolonized future, some museums would come to resemble “a depository and lending library, circulating art and culture beyond their walls” (Clifford 1997:212). In an article about Indigenous -controlled heritage institutions, he remarked on the vitality of relationships between their objects and their community created by these flexible, local institutions (ibid 107-147). In an essay about Alaskan museums he observed that even the most severe critics “recognize the potential for alliances when they are based on shared resources, repositioned indigenous and academic authorities and relations of genuine respect.” (Clifford 2004). This paper looks at the role of a provincial museum with a large and politically active indigenous arts community in creating new “relations of respect” by encouraging skills and knowledge repatriation through Indigenous scholar residencies and enhanced community access to collections. This paper employs an ”ontological turn” - accepting and acting upon the Anishinaabe idea that museum objects as “non-human persons” will, given the chance, form new ceremonial and educational relationships with the contemporary Indigenous arts community. Every museum has its historical and organizational limitations and every museum community offers its own unique possibilities but there is something to be learned from trusting the relational possibilities of museum collections and the enthusiasm and creativity of Indigenous artists.
Paper short abstract:
The contradicting responsibilities of a national museum in the West may only be alleviated by theorizing a museum without objects. This paper argues that liberating museums from their increasing technological fetishism of physicality allow them to ethically address both access and ownership.
Paper long abstract:
Since their establishment, national museums in the West have borne contradictory responsibilities. Of late, heavily framed by cultural-political agendas, these responsibilities have focused on the collection’s cultural heritage and on the visitor experience. In this paper, drawing on research on the Freer/Sackler Gallery’s (Washington, DC) recent renovation, I examine the Promise of Paradise Exhibition in the Chinese art section. This exhibition, showcasing Chinese Buddhist Sculptures from the 6th to 8th century, utilizes technological integration and interactive labeling. While designed to address one responsibility--enhancing and, ideally, democratizing the visitor experience--I argue that, the exhibition’s heightened focus on materiality, prevents engagement with a more pressing responsibility, an ethical concern for the problematic nature of the objects’ possession and provenance. These renovations create a new contact zone, increasing distance from what those objects meant, and continue to mean, within the culture to which they originally belonged. If the objects are removed, we can unite these contradicting responsibilities by liberating museums from an increasing technological fetishism of physicality, allowing them to use other ways to ethically address both access and ownership. This deliverance is critical all the more so as COVID-19 is compelling museums’ to break away from their reliance on a room of objects by forcing them to reimagine conventional methods of narration. Drawing together perspectives from anthropology, art history, and post-colonial studies, I ask how we might theorize a museum without objects.