Programme Schedule and Abstracts

Workshop 1:

Intellectual Foundations to 'Difficult' Objects

Workshop 2:

Ethnography of the Ordinary

Workshop 3:

Scale, Size and the Ephemeral

Workshop 4:

Collecting and Source Communities

 

 

 

Extreme Collecting: Intellectual Foundations to ‘Difficult’ Objects (Friday, 14 December 2007, 1-6pm)

The opening session is concerned to debate the concept of extreme collecting, those ‘difficult’ objects that challenge issues of ethics, materiality, social and political sensibilities. We intend to create a forum to debate whether we ought to be collecting such difficult objects: those that court controversy, those whose material properties simply resist collection, or those that may relate to fragmentary events. The key questions we want to explore are:

Speakers:

Click here for abstracts of the workshop presentations

back to top of page

 

Ethnography of the Ordinary (Thursday, 31 January 2008,1-6pm)

The size of many museum collections today now means that a great number objects will never be displayed. Instead, collections – for instance of archaeology – act as a future resource, a database never intended for exhibition. This is highly problematic for many museum professionals but conversely, any reluctance to collect also conflicts with the sense that museums have a duty to preserve material for future generations. This sentiment is reflected in a recent report by the Museums Association (Collections for the Future, 2005) that stresses the need for museums to actively develop their collections, with a renewed commitment to acquisition and disposal. If museums are to adopt a more strategic approach to collecting for the future, how best are they to develop collections of the everyday and record the mundane without turning museums into unmanageable time capsules?

Speakers:

Click here for abstracts of the workshop presentations

back to top of page

 

Scale, Size and the Ephemeral (Thursday, 28 February 2008, 1-6pm)

The wealth of models, miniatures and dioramas in museum collections provide collecting paradigms modelled on numismatics and library ephemera. At one level these seem to be forms of ‘easy collecting’, at another they represent best practice. Size and scale give rise to portability, control and management of objects but conversely, allow for compelling evidence of the limitations and fragmentary nature of the collecting process. Moreover, large objects have important expressive functions in terms of place and architectural context, as anchors for museums. Should outsize items, of ephemeral materials such as foodstuffs, plant pith, featherwork and paper ever be collected and stored? Related to this is the question of the natural decay of ephemeral objects. Three-dimensional laser scanning techniques, such as the one now installed at University College London, now have the capacity to record objects in minute detail, over time to document surface decay. Art museums struggle to conserve works of unstable materials; how should anthropology and other cultural museums enter debate around the questions of size and natural decay? This session will explore the conditions under which size, scale and sustainability matter in contemporary collecting.

Speakers:

Click here for abstracts of the workshop presentations

back to top of page

 

Collecting and Source Communities (Monday, 31 March 2008, 1-6pm)

Museums hold encyclopaedic universal collections of material from across the world and from all periods of human culture and history. Museums are committed to sustaining the continuum of collection up to the present day and into the future. Outside the advantaged world of the West, and of East Asia and the Pacific rim, museums are under constant pressure to improve capacity and develop skills, often primarily for purposes of tourism. The preservation of archaeology and the past, and of natural history often takes precedence in this process. This may mean that systematic collection of contemporary heritage, of the extraordinary as well as ordinary, is a low priority. Rich museums in the advantaged world may therefore continue to be the primary place of deposit for collections of ethnography and material culture from, for instance, Africa and Melanesia. How do museums in these areas regard western collection of their contemporary heritage? How can western museums best serve source communities for a time beyond the 21st century? Factored into this debate will be contemporary collecting policies of aboriginal communities in settler societies of North America and the Pacific: Canadian First Nations, Native Americans, and Polynesians all own and run museums and have distinctive perspectives around collecting. Involved with these issues are those that relate to practicalities of commissioning collections, across culture.

Speakers:

Announcement: Participants are invited to a wine reception after the close of the final workshop at 6pm.

Click here for abstracts of the workshop presentations

back to top of page