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- Convenors:
-
Anne-Sofie Hjemdahl
(Telemark Research Institute)
Torgeir Rinke Bangstad (UiT The Arctic University of Norway)
Terje Planke (NTNU og Norsk Folkemuseum)
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- Format:
- Panel
- Stream:
- MUSEUMS AND MATERIALITIES
- Location:
- Room K-207
- Sessions:
- Thursday 16 June, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
Throughout the museum's history, different strategies have been used to handle the museum objects physically and to maintain their meaning in the museum's overall knowledge project. This panel focus upon the epistemological or ontological part of museum conservation and care.
Long Abstract:
Among other things, museums are places where objects are cared for. Contemporary museums have huge magazines, complex store management-systems and a meticulous set of procedures to handle museums objects. Throughout the museum's history, different strategies have been used to handle the museum objects physically and to maintain their meaning and position in the museum's overall knowledge project. As a consequence, today's museum objects carry with them both an epistemological history as well as physical residues of past conservation and care practices. Museum objects might have changed chemically due to pesticide treatment, they might carry signs of repair processes, and objects might undergo physical change upon being moved to a new climate and context.
Most of these conservation practices have been to keep the fragile objects together and give them an extended duration, and to preserve them with a linear museal eternity in mind.
In this panel, we seek papers that focus on museums' strategies for dealing with and caring for their objects. How do different forms of conservation affect the perceived value of objects? We welcome empirical projects that focus upon special museum strategies and practices for care and conservation, and we welcome papers that question perpetual care of museum objects and research that offer alternative forms of conservation and care within museums. Papers might focus upon historical museum practices or contemporary strategies of museum care, and they might focus upon the epistemological or ontological part of museum conservation and care.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Thursday 16 June, 2022, -Terje Planke (NTNU og Norsk Folkemuseum)
Paper short abstract:
To protect the vernacular, built heritage, large amounts of toxins has been used within the open-air museums. Today, some of these buildings are not useable, due to the toxic remains. I will here investigate how this effects the authenticity and value of the objects and strategies for caretaking.
Paper long abstract:
Museum preservation has gone through severe changes. Vernacular buildings have been moved, transformed and repaired, by handling wood in traditional a traditional manner. From following tradition, seemingly without reflection, the concept of material authenticity has been favored within the open-air museums. This has led to an professional antiquarian practice of patchwork-conservation on one hand, and of fighting the natural processes on the other. Here, the museums have used pesticides and biocides to preserve the materiality to a degree that we today do not dare to use some of the buildings.
In the process of taking care of the elements of culture, the museums declared war against the processes of nature, fighting bacteria, fungi, insects, and other harmful organisms with toxins. These practices can both be understood as a warfare and as a form of caretaking: Or a form of war-care. In this presentation, I will discuss different strategies of how to handle this toxic heritage in the open-air museums in the past, present and future and present how the intangible cultural heritage can show some new perspectives for caretaking within the heritage management. One part of the discussion is on how the indigenous, local culture can be reestablished within the open-air museums through making new cultural objects (or copies) rather than preserving the old, “authentic” ones. The material for this presentation comes from the interaction between two research projects: “Toxic Heritage” and “Gift i bygningsvernet” and my daily work with protecting the buildings collection and the craftmanship at Norsk Folkemuseum.
Anne Folke Henningsen (University of Copenhagen)
Paper short abstract:
The paper reflects on the history and current status of anthropological sound collections with an emphasis on (shifts in) technology and formats of recording, preservation and storage – from the fragile wax phonograms to the (perceived) promises of longevity and multiplicity through digitization.
Paper long abstract:
With the invention of the phonograph in the late 19th century, it became possible to record and store sound, and ethnographers engaged in anthropometric and anthropological projects around the world quickly incorporated the new technology in their measuring, documenting and recording practices. With the help of recording devices, copies of what was considered typical examples of sounds from different people could be made and stored in formats separate from the humans that produced them: the new technology made human sound copyable, preservable, collectable, storable, and mobile. As a result, large collections of sound recordings can be found in anthropological and ethnographic museums primarily in Europe and North America.
With a few exceptions, the recordings have been living long, forgotten lives in museum archives and storage facilities, partly due to the obstacles provided by the many different and often outdated recording formats the sounds are preserved in: from fragile phonograms/wax cylinders with extremely limited playback possibilities over steel wire and shellac records to cassette tapes, vinyl records and CDs reflecting changes in recording technology. Recently however there has been a growing interest internationally in reactivating the sound recordings in exhibitions as well as in preserving, disseminating, and perhaps ‘repatriating’ them through digitization.
But how to care for such neglected sound objects in museum collections? Which collection temporalities do the different recording and storing formats occasion or afford? And what new issues – practical, ethical, ontological, epistemological – of care are being brought to the fore by the perceived promises of digitization?
Sigurjon Hafsteinsson (University of Iceland)
Paper short abstract:
The architectural heritage of the Icelandic turf house was rejected and consequently eradicated. In this paper I will critically discuss the care museums have for the fragments of these houses.
Paper long abstract:
Preservation and care of the architectural heritage of Iceland is best described as difficult. On the one hand, the architectural heritage of the turf house was rejected on the basis of modernist dogma, and consequently it was violently eradicated. As a result, only a handful of turf houses still remain, the majority of them safeguarded by museums. On the other, museums and heritage advocates have strived to salvage architectural remains with limited resources and an epistemology of hope. In this paper I will discuss these contrasting movements with ethnographic examples from the museum scene in Iceland. In particular, I will examine architectural fragments of turf houses that have become part of museum collections but, as fragments, their performative truths as artifacts for research and/or display is materially limited. The fragments display resilience to notions of collective truths and responsibility, but at the same time reveal contestation and paradoxes in heritage preservation and care of cultural understanding. This paper is based on a long term research on the histories of turf house eradication and preservation technologies between 1850-2022.