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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, -Paper short abstract:
Employing a "double vision of care", this paper explores the use of toxic chemicals in building preservation in open-air museums. Modern conservation is deeply entangled with developments in modern chemistry which transformed practices and enabled new ways to extend the life of fragile objects.
Paper long abstract:
Exposure to the elements has characterized buildings in Scandinavian open-air museums since their emergence in the late 19th century. Relocations always involve an environmental transition which affects buildings. Open air exhibitions are conditioned by the change of seasons, the vagaries of climate, airborne pollution, the surrounding flora and insect populations of a given milieu. In the course of history, vernacular wooden buildings were also exposed to preservative chemicals in an attempt to extend their life in the museum. In this paper, we will explore practices of care which introduced preservatives manufactured from coal tar on the wooden surface of historic buildings in Norwegian open-air museums. Measures which may strike present-day conservators as drastic, reckless or even “care-less”. We employ a “double vision of care” to interrogate past practices critically while also trying to understand the range of possibilities that coal tar wood preservatives constituted at a time when their precise properties were uncharted. Chemical conservation rendered fragile materials stable and predictable at a time when collections were growing and the rate of decay outpaced the curatorial capacity to care for buildings in perpetuity. The relation between care and chemicals is complexly entangled in the history of modern conservation. We ask how and to what effects these relations played out on building surfaces? What kind of new temporalities and epistemologies were engendered through this material alliance forged in the name of perpetual care and how do we deal with the legacy of toxic housekeeping in the museum today?
Paper short abstract:
By 2025 the fur industry in Norway is due to close down. Collecting and documenting how objects have been used by farmers can be an easy assignment for a cultural historical museum. But how can museums also collect the emotions connected to the fur industry?
Paper long abstract:
The collection at Jærmuseet contains objects documenting modern agriculture, showing the materialistic part of the Norwegian agriculture from the last 100-150 years. The main part of the collection is unproblematic, both emotionally and culturally.
These days Jærmuseet is working with documenting an industry that carries completely different cultural, political and emotional connections than the rest of the agricultural collection. In June 2019 the Norwegian parliament decided to shut down the fur industry. Jærmuseet has decided to document the industry before it is gone forever. Using and collecting interviews, artefacts, photography, and video as methods to understand how a fur farm works, we are also getting a sense of this part of Norwegian agriculture. But how can we also collect the emotions connected to a controversial industry?
A typical object from the fur industry would be the cage. What happens to its life when it goes from housing minks and foxes to being a part of a museum, as the result of a political process? What happens with the emotions connected to the object when they become a part of a museum's collection?
Collecting the emotions connected to the industry, I want to interview informants while also collecting objects related to the topic.
Paper short abstract:
Museums consists of collections of heritage, mainly objects, but also often old buildings. Buildings that are a rich source of information. What impact can the restoration of buildings have on the information we can gain from them and what can be (have been?) lost?
Paper long abstract:
Museums consists of collections of heritage, mainly objects, but also often old buildings. Buildings that are a rich source of information of its pre-museum life and of changes in attitude and museum policies regarding heritage buildings.
Modern conservation is governed by the principles of minimal intervention, the use of appropriate materials and reversible methods, and a full documentation of all work undertaken. These principles are fully adaptable to building restoration. Restoring buildings are in some areas different from the conservation of objects, but apart from the sheer size of the object, the scope of the work is the same. Simplified it starts with research and planning, continues with the decision-making and actual work, and ends with a completed project and a report.
There are many questions that should be investigated before the restoration of a building starts up, just as with objects. There is the research into the written and intangible information of the building and its use, what can we learn from this? Is there anything in this information that can have an impact on the decisions we make regarding what to do? And what about earlier restorations, should we re-do them? Have they altered the building in such a way so that information has been lost?
In this paper I aim to discuss the possible impact the restoration of buildings can have on the information we can gain from them and what can be lost.