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Museums as sacred spaces series

I have had in mind for a while to write a series of articles exploring ideas, quite freeform, of museums and galleries as sacred spaces. This concept has interested me for a number of years, since I started working in the sector and remember seeing outside a provincial art gallery a sign which went something along the lines of ‘come in for quiet contemplation and meditation’. I found that both alluring and inviting in an otherwise smelly, noisy and raucous city.

We surround ourselves with noise these days, either to mask out other people’s uninvited noise or because we find the silence too difficult to deal with. I use ‘we’ in the loosest sense here. I want civic spaces which are deliberately quiet, still and, I suppose temple-like or at least sanctuary-like.

Another way in which I have thought about museums as sacred spaces is related to the debate about the display of human remains. Entire volumes can be written about all the arguments about what we should do with archaeologically-recovered human remains, some of which I will go through in time in subsequent posts, but I want to offer a new framework. Can we ever perceive the museum to be a new temple of the deceased? Isn’t this where we go to learn about the past? And haven’t humans for all time looked to their ancestors for knowledge and wisdom? Whether you have a spirituality or not, there is no doubting that we can and do learn a lot from the remains of our (the broad humanity ‘our’) ancestors.

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Digital Britain and Collections

What role has Culture (capital C) in Digital Britain? And within Culture, what do digitised collections and content mean to the nation? Perhaps more importantly for the sectors involved in cultural provision (such as museums), can digital collections take part in the Digital Economy in a meaningful way? In January 2009, the UK Government produced an interim report setting out a kind of manifesto for placing UK Plc at the forefront of the “global digital economy.”

I would like to see the relationship develop more as that between supporter/donor and custodian, rather than just producer and consumer.

In response, Collections Trust made an interim response. And here is a summary of my response to the interim response. I attempted to take the long view, looking back at my own experiences with digitised collections and other content. My full reply and Nick Poole’s (CEO Collections Trust) response can be read in the list archives of jiscmail’s Museum Computer Group list.

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Conservation and communication

Recently Tom blogged about the prospect of the National Trust’s massive investment into digital technologies, including the web. Electric Acorns is a great new blog started by a an NT employee and devoted to peeling back some of the layers of the great institution in an effort to allow the public and fellow professionals a better insight into all the work the Trust does (see his comment below).

Institutions involved with promoting, undertaking or advising on the conservation of historic environments and artefacts are not great at communicating their work. I often wonder, if they were, whether the tensions between access and preservation could be better ‘managed’ (to use a phrase en vogue) but at the very least, better understood by the wider public, and whether funders and politicians would regard conservation as being a cultural activity of the highest value to society and therefore less willing to withdraw or withold support (see my post on the Textile Conservation Centre’s closure).

Interest in history, the past and the environment has never been more keen than it is now. Neither has it been more easy to have your say in front of a global audience with the internet revolution. Why aren’t more institutions involved with conservation adopting open and honest communication with the public through the web in the form of blogs, web forums, podcasts and more? Matthew of Electric Acorns is taking a step forward for his organisation (I do hope they appreciate it). What is everyone else doing? Here’s a short survey.

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Why close the Textile Conservation Centre?

Conservation has been high in my thoughts recently. Largely through my current work with ICOMOS-UK (International Council on Monuments and Sites UK) I have been exposed to the vicissitudes that affect the preservation and interpretation of our heritage, whether they are the result of inappropriate development, lack of funds or lack of collective and political will to stand up for cultural heritage as a fundamental part of modern society.

However, most upsetting, shocking, and all those things has been the news that the University of Southampton has decided to close down the Textile Conservation Centre at its Winchester Campus in late 2009 only a decade after it moved here from Hampton Court Palace. The reason given is financial, in short, that the University expects all its schools to fund themselves and the TCC, it was deemed, was not able to do this. I do not want to go into all the reasons given here. You can read up on it from the links below. A quick Google search will also show the coverage of the closure in the national press.

Read the University of Southampton’s statement
Read ICON’s statement
Save the Textile Conservation Centre blog

The whole business is personally distasteful to me. I am currently undertaking freelance work for the university, it is my alma mater. I therefore feel deeply embarrassed. I was a graduate of the Textile Conservation Centre in 2001 (MA Museum Studies) and maintain that my time there was intellectually the most stimulating experience of my life. Following this, my work on their research project on deliberately concealed garments produced one of the early attempts at getting collections online – and lit my passion for using the web to communicate our heritage. It has taken me a while to gather my thoughts – even now it seems daft to be writing about this. I could be writing about the government’s decision to close the British Museum or a local authority’s decision to level an ancient monument to make way for houses or offices. The feelings such things conjour are much the same. The futility of it all. Value for money, after all, is what exactly? After the anger and astonishment, the profound sadness.

As conservation (in the sense we understand it in heritage) is in every sense about ‘past thinking’ it seemed a good idea to talk about this here. Whatever the financial case made for the TCC’s closure, what is very clear is that this was certainly not a purely financial decision. The university was not itself going to go under because the TCC was using slightly more than it was contributing in monetary terms at least. Where there is a will there is a way. Sadly, Southampton had no will to continue to support one of its own ‘key distinctors’. Neither does it have the wisdom to realise the consequences of this action. The loss is not just Southampton’s or the UK’s, but the world’s. Organisations across the globe sent their people to the TCC to gain requisite skills in textile conservation and in museology, and take them back home. The combination was unique and they produced uniquely skilled graduates, the majority of whom have found very fulfilling careers in heritage, culture and conservation.

Here is a clear case of not taking responsibility, of not listening, of mis-judging and of being dishonourable. Universities ought to exist to further the bounds of human knowledge. It perplexes me to try and understand what has gone so wrong at Southampton. The one major source of funding for the TCC was the History of Art and Design degree. With its dissolution, it lost its link with Winchester School of Art which it formed part until last year. What, therefore, was the Centre able to do? Rugs (pardon the metaphor) pulled out from under them.

The world will only realise the impact of this in many years and decades to come when the skills required to preserve deteriorating garments, upholstery and other materials are no longer readily available. What is more, the extensive research and experimentation that is required to pioneer new techniques (something that the TCC excels at by a distance) will have not been undertaken. Just as we are realising this is happening in other parts of the conservation world (look out for ICOMOS-UK’s Action on Skills conference at the Prince’s Foundation on 29-30 April) why is this happening?

I look forward to reading 10 Downing Street’s response to a petition that was set up for the government to intervene. It closes on 6 May and already has over 3200 signatures. Please sign.

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Construction of identity network

A group of postgraduates from the Faculty of Law, Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Southampton (which includes the School of Humanities) has established a network for research into the Construction of Identity as it relates to our various disciplines. I have been involved in the early stages of this group and we have set up a community weblog on the academically based ‘elgg.net‘ site. As a group we aim to compare our various experiences of understanding how identities are constructed and what problems we have in common when trying examine issues of identity in our fields of study. The community weblog will be on trial during the month of June and then formally launched to the world. The second most immediate aim is to compile a cross-disciplinary bibliography of titles we have used in our various fields and make this available via our community weblog. There has already been significant interest in this network from academics and postgraduates from within and outside the faculty. Please add a comment below if you are interested in find out more.

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The medieval ‘southern Italian’ collections of the British Museum

Where did they come from? The medieval ‘southern Italian’ collections of the British Museum

Disk brooch, Canosa di PugliaOn 15 February 2005, I delivered a short paper to the Associazione Internazionale di Archeologia Classica (AIAC) at the Swedish Institute of Rome. The paper was largely based on my research at the British Museum where I was examining artefacts with a southern Italian provenance. My aim is to test and demonstrate methods with which museum objects can be interrogated as historical evidence.

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Tim Potter Memorial Award

In March 2004, the British School at Rome (BSR) awarded me the Tim Potter Memorial Award. The award is aimed at scholars who have not previously had much opportunity to visit Italy to stay at the school and undertake research on Italian material culture and archaeology. The award includes full board and accomodation at the BSR, plus £500 travel allowance and £150 per month stipend. I will take up the award between February and March 2005.

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Leverhulme awards £65,000

Gold belt end, 6th-7th c., the British MuseumIn July 2005, the Leverhulme Trust awarded Dr Patricia Skinner and Tehmina Bhote a Research Project Grant of just over £65,000.  This is for their three-year project entitled ‘Medieval Cultures in Contact: Merchants, Objects and Cultural Exchange in Southern Italy’.