It’s a very simple enterprise, light weight but high energy and without any constrictions of institutionalism or stakeholder expectation. It’s free and for all-comers.
In October 2014, I wrote about the idea of #museumhour, a (yet another) Twitter movement following the model of weekly, fortnightly and monthly chat forums. Today we celebrate museumhour’s second birthday and our 100th #museumhour.
It was Sophie Ballinger’s tweet from the Eureka! Museum account back in May 2014 that I found a couple of months later (wondering if anyone had started up a regular museum slot on Twitter) that started it all off.
Over the last two years and 100 museumhours things have evolved but not a huge amount. I thought it would be useful to outline museumhour’s current philosophy and how it works. It’s a very simple enterprise, light weight but high energy and without any constrictions of institutionalism or stakeholder expectation. It’s free and for all-comers.
Our philosophy
To provide a regular, open forum for the discussion of museum issues. It is for anyone with an interest in museums, not just museum workers. You don’t have to participate to benefit from it.
Free from influence. Museumhour is run entirely on a voluntary basis, week in week out with occasional breaks. We don’t receive any funding or in-kind support beyond our own resources.
Platform for communication, not broadcast. There are very few rules that govern museumhour. All we ask is that the topics that are suggested to us are broad enough to encourage as wide an audience as possible. However we also welcome specialist topics that don’t often get public airplay.
We will not accept themes that are solely for the promotion of one initiative, project or organisation. It’s fine for your thing to be used as an anchor for debate but prompts, cues and links must range broadly. The best museumhours are those where the host engages with a range of the responses tweeted in return – it’s not always easy though when it gets very frenetic!
It’s also ok to use the #museumhour hashtag to help promote and plug your events and activities but when you’re hosting you must be mindful not to broadcast but to exchange and communicate.
Why Twitter?
Twitter is a relentless quick-fire ‘of the moment’ forum for rapid exchange. That’s why we chose it – or rather it chose us.
Managed well, Twitter also promotes the sense of an open and diverse community that we need for museumhour to work and provides a healthy and productive environment for people to share their views and information without fear of thinking they or what they have to say isn’t important enough or might be subject to sneers, reprisal or other puerile behaviour.
The other benefit of Twitter, over, say, Facebook, is that it is open for everyone to see, not just those who have an account and are logged in. This way anyone with access to the internet can head on over to twitter.com/museumhour and see the discussions, or, follow using the saved hashtag #museumhour.
Museumhour only exists on Twitter and that’s where it is staying. We do not maintain separate channels such as website, enewsletter or other social networks. We or our Guest Hosts will occasionally Storify museumhour debates or include content in their own Storify account or other work which is great.
Featured
Museumhour benefits from occasional blogging by us and others. We’ve been really pleased to be featured by the Ministry of Curiosity, Fran Taylor, and others, as well as featuring in museum articles such as Museum Practice.
Our 46 Guest Hosts have also done a brilliant job using their websites, blogs and social media channels to promote the subjects of their museumhours.
Is this a good format for museumhour for the foreseeable future? And can you suggest changes to refresh the experience? Do you want to join our team?
What next?
Our format is simple. After the first couple of weeks of museumhour we realised that the big wide open world of topics made it difficult for people to engage meaningfully with each other so we started to introduce themes.
We or our Guest Host comes up with a range of prompts, cues and links to information prior to (usually) and most importantly during the hour – approximately one every 5-10 minutes. Some of these are in the form of questions, others are statements that are responded to.
Museumhour happens and then it ends. We move on to organising the next week.
Is this a good format for museumhour for the foreseeable future? And can you suggest changes to refresh the experience? Do you want to join our team?
Two years of relentless weekly organisation is bound to take a toll on the schedules and lives of its two founders. Two people who haven’t even met each other in the flesh but who have somehow made this thing work.
Tribute
I would like to pay tribute to my co-founder Sophie Ballinger for being a brilliant colleague and friend making the museumhour enterprise both fulfilling and fun! We seem to fill each other’s gaps naturally and with minimum fuss. That can be quite a rare quality in a team.
But museumhour isn’t all about us. We have prided ourselves on taking a back seat and gently herding from behind. We think it is about time our team expanded. We are therefore shortly going to be advertising for new members of our small team. If you have read this and feel excited about museumhour please stay in touch.
The decision to recognise the unique identity of the Cornish, now affords them the same status under the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities as the UK’s other Celtic people, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish.
Barely a ripple ran through the cultural sector nationally or here in Cornwall when, on 24 April 2014, then Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, announced that “the proud history, unique culture, and distinctive language of Cornwall will be fully recognised under European rules for the protection of national minorities.”
Currently researching diversity issues, in rural contexts in particular, and working in Cornwall, I couldn’t understand why museums and the cultural sector here seemed ambivalent to this historic development. I have therefore been formally and informally advocating for greater consideration and awareness of Cornish National Minority Status in my work and to my peers, both here and nationally.
Thanks to an invitation by Cornwall Museums Partnership, I gave a keynote presentation on what National Minority Status means, how its governed and what features of Cornish identity museums could better embrace in their make-up and their work.
I have also advocated to the Museums Association in my capacity as regional representative for the South West. It was also a significant factor in my representations to English Heritage about their new interpretive treatment of Tintagel Castle.
Given the systemic inequality and unintentional bias that has been proven to exist in the museum sector (and in culture more generally), now is absolutely the right time for responsible institutions and individuals to better understand what Cornish National Minority Status means for them and their audiences.
Equality without prejudice
“The decision to recognise the unique identity of the Cornish, now affords them the same status under the European Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities as the UK’s other Celtic people, the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish. For the first time the government has recognised the distinctive culture and history of the Cornish.”
“It is without prejudice as to whether the Cornish meet the definition of “racial group” under the Equality Act 2010.”
In the UK, the Equality Act 2010 contains the diversity themes that dominate discourse around equality and social justice for those participating and working in museums, culture, arts and heritage and concern discrimination and systemic inequality against nine protected characteristics.
Under the act, National Minority status is not currently a protected characteristic but it is implied, with colour, ethnicity, national origins and citizenship under race. However, it has been made incumbent upon a successful case of discrimination being prosecuted before the Cornish would be considered a race in the same way as the English, Scots, Welsh and Irish are. Interestingly none of those groups have been made to prosecute a successful case to provide their identity – they can bypass this process by virtue of their “national origins.”
What is a National Minority?
“to promote democracy and protect human rights and the rule of law in Europe.”
The Council of Europe is not part of the EU. It is based on Strasbourg. It comprises 47 member states of which 28 are in the EU. Founded in a post-WW2 world, along similar lines to the UN, in 1949. Its particular responsibility is “to promote democracy and protect human rights and the rule of law in Europe.” It is responsible for:
European Convention on Human Rights
Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities
Other charters and commissions: European Social Charter, European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages and European Commission against Racism and Intolerance.
About the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities
Instituted in February 1995
UK ratified the convention 1998
Contains 32 articles
Member states have to report back periodically on request of the Committee of Ministers (UK submitted 4 to date)
Does not define a national minority
Each member state decides
The right to ‘self-identify’ important
Must be based on objective criteria connected with their identity, such as their religion, language, traditions and cultural heritage.
Articles in the Convention with resonance to the museum and cultural sector
My emphasis.
Article 5:
“The Parties undertake to promote the conditions necessary for persons belonging to national minorities to maintain and develop their culture, and to preserve the essential elements of their identity, namely their religion, language, traditions and cultural heritage.
Without prejudice to measures taken in pursuance of their general integration policy, the Parties shall refrain from policies or practices aimed at assimilation of persons belonging to national minorities against their will and shall protect these persons from any action aimed at such assimilation.”
Article 6:
“The Parties shall encourage a spirit of tolerance and intercultural dialogue and take effective measures to promote mutual respect and understanding and co-operation among all persons living on their territory, irrespective of those persons’ ethnic, cultural, linguistic or religious identity, in particular in the fields of education, culture and the media.”
Article 12:
“The Parties shall, where appropriate, take measures in the fields of education and research to foster knowledge of the culture, history, language and religion of their national minorities and of the majority.”
Article 20 has be criticised by some as a kind of get-out clause i.e. there will always been a reason, if increased consideration and recognition of a National Minority is considered politically unappetising, this clause may be invoked. Decide for yourself:
Article 20:
“In the exercise of the rights and freedoms flowing from the principles enshrined in the present framework Convention, any person belonging to a national minority shall respect the national legislation and the rights of others, in particular those of persons belonging to the majority or to other national minorities.”
How did the Cornish prove their case?
“It is an anomaly – some say an injustice – in a society that extols the merits of equality and tolerance, for the identity of the Cornish, the People at the heart of this long and proud story to remain unrecognised, unequal and uncounted, at the outset of the 21st century.”
What features of Cornish identity were put forward when campaigning for minority status?
This milestone is the result of a long and sustained campaign with a long history in the modern era for official recognition of the distinctiveness of the Cornish, rooted in a historical past, and Cornwall as a territory with particular characteristics that distinguish it from the “English counties.” A modern political consciousness of Cornish separateness goes at least back into the 19th century and dissent and rebellion against English rules goes back even further than that.
Evidence was gathered in at least two influential reports (see sources below):
The 2011 report by Ian Saltern on behalf of the Cornish Gorsedh, was the most hard-hitting in terms of evidence gathered and the strength of the case put forward, for example:
“It is an anomaly – some say an injustice – in a society that extols the merits of equality and tolerance, for the identity of the Cornish, the People at the heart of this long and proud story to remain unrecognised, unequal and uncounted, at the outset of the 21st century.”
The case was also built on a positive vision of what official recognition could bring to Cornish and British society as a whole:
“National minority status will enable the Cornish to play a full and active part in British society, contributing to the diversity of the United Kingdom.”
Led by Cornwall Council and its predecessors, with a large collaboration of others the case for National Minority Status was based on:
Self-identification
Religion
Language
Traditions
History and Cultural heritage
Long-term association with a specific territory
The need was based on barriers to: “Maintaining, celebrating and asserting a distinct identity.”
Self-identification is a particularly important feature of Cornish identity, measured through the Census – and thereby addressing Cornish people outside Cornwall and also the Pupil Level Annual Schools Census (PLASC) as a barometer of the growing consciousness of Cornish identity among young people: 37% in 2011 up to 48% in 2014.
Not England
The aspect of Cornish identity I find most compelling is that based on historical territorial integrity and resistance against England and English assimilation – something museums need to be acutely aware of, for example:
Kernow—suggested in use for “at least 2000 years” (unknown sources)
Early Anglo-Saxon references to Corn wealh – peninsula of foreigners
West Wales
River Tamar as border with West Saxon kingdom since 10th c (no source given probably referring to a later 12th reference in William of Malmesbury including expulsion from Exeter—use of medieval history is needs more rigour)
Norman Conquest – creation of Earldom in 1068
Creation of Royal Duchy in 1337
Stannary Parliament and Courts
Laws of England intermittently applied to ‘Anglia et Cornubia’ into the 16th century
Foreshore Case arbitration case held between 1854 and 1858 between British Crown and Duchy of Cornwall over mineral rights.
Bona Vacantia – intestate property in Cornwall goes to Duke of Cornwall’s private estates, not to the Treasury via the Crown.
International recognition of Cornwall in over 30 languages as a separate entity to England is a hard-hitting fact that is difficult to refute, and formed part of the case made for national distinctiveness. This is not afforded to other English counties which is why many Cornish people will rail against designations of Cornwall being in England.
The 2011 report makes direct reference to how Cornish culture and heritage should be treated by institutions with Cornish collections:
“National minority status will confer upon the Cornish the dignity of visibility. It will acknowledge that Cornish language, culture and heritage are the products of Cornish people – a group with historic national origins no less deserving of official recognition than the Welsh or the Scottish.”
No museum or archive collections were used as examples of Cornish distinctiveness and museums do not feature in the heritage and culture Case for Cornwall, March 2015 (relating to devolution powers to Cornwall Council).
It also directly challenges museums who abide by the Museums Association Code of Ethics which states a museum’s important position of trust in relation to, amongst others, source communities.
Ways museums, culture and arts organisations can reflect Cornish diversity
Embrace it! Don’t ignore it.
Look at your governance – ask yourself who makes the decisions?
Do you have a Diversity Policy or Action Plan? Do you state your commitment to the Cornish National Minority and Protected Characteristics?
Look at your programmes – what are the themes of your collections, exhibitions, learning programmes and events?
Partnerships: Who do you tend to work with? Who else could you work with?
What is the make up of your community (not just local area)?
Which audiences do you tend to aim for repeatedly, who isn’t joining in?
Develop a toolkit to help you apply the principles of Diversity in a Cornish Context to your work—funds permitting
Explore Welsh, Irish and Scottish contexts
European comparisons – minorities and under-represented
International comparisons – minorities and under-represented
Open dialogue with national agencies to raise awareness of the view from Cornwall and suggest how it can be brought to bear on their policies
Looking for interview subjects
Organise outreach and education programme and set up Rural Diversity Network using Cornwall for action research–funds permitting.
If you work in or use cultural services like museums and art galleries, or you are a practitioner with an interest in diversity in a Cornish context, please get in touch. I’d love to hear from you.
A migration story at the NZ Maritime Museum in Auckland.
A migration story at the NZ Maritime Museum in Auckland.
How do museums represent, present and interpret migrant stories? Museumhour from 25 January 2016.
I was inspired to host this topic following my visit to museums in New Zealand in Auckland (National Maritime Museum of New Zealand) and Wellington (Wellington Museum and Te Papa National Museum). All these museums featured the stories of migrants heavily. In fact the whole human history of the islands is one of migration from the first Maori voyages to the latest migrations from other parts of the Pacific and the Far East. It was good to see them presented so honestly.
I found myself enchanted and enthralled by the stories because you can’t get more human a story than that of deciding to move away from home.
We captured our great debate on #migration and #museums on museumhour’s Storify:
Culture and museums find themselves off the menu this election.
This is a summary of excerpts from the policies and manifestos of political parties standing candidates in the UK General Election on 7 May 2015.
Monday 4 May at 20:00 in the UK will see a #GE2015 election special #museumhour so please do come and join the debate if you are on Twitter.
I was looking for mention of specific policies and commitments towards museums, and in lieu of that, their views on culture.
This is not an exhaustive list of all parties standing in the upcoming election and I would welcome news from other parties and especially independent Prospective Parliamentary Candidates if they are standing on a culture or museum platform, to leave their pledges in the comments below.
Business as usual for museums after the election?
What is clear is that culture and museums find themselves off the menu this election. Museums are not a political hot potato or even on the radar of politicians, and particularly pundits who control what we hear from the media about this election.
This is in spite of the last 5 years seeing a significant transformation in the governance and landscape of the museum sector in the UK, especially England, namely cuts to grant-in-aid and revenue funding for those museums who were used to receiving it.
Coupled with the huge inequality between museum funding in London compared with the rest of the UK, both remain moot political points, except for the Green Party which makes a specific pledge to reverse this situation (see below).
Purdah (the pre-election period) has prevented the participation of government and local government civil servants engaged in administering, advising and funding museums from commenting or passing opinion on this election.
It is these arms-length or quango organisations that administer public funding to museums that are most likely to be affected by the election result, namely Arts Council England, Historic England, Historic Scotland, Scottish Arts Council, Museums Galleries Scotland, CyMAL, Cadw and RCAHMW in Wales and the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure in Northern Ireland.
UKIP pledges to abolish the Department of Culture, Media and Sport which governs public museum bodies in England, suggesting the role of DCMS would be absorbed into other departments (not stated, see below).
For alternative analyses see the Art Newspaper and the Heritage Alliance. Museums Journal also published an analysis of the BBC Culture Debate on 7 April in May’s edition (article access only to Museums Association members).
Free entry for Nationals (again)
Several parties affirm the commitment to free entry to National museums but little else. The Conservatives alluded to an extra-manifesto commitment towards the creation of an India Gallery in Manchester Museum (in partnership with the British Museum).
Northern Ireland and Wales talk museums more
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) makes specific reference to the Ulster Museum and its role in promoting the Northern Ireland brand in its manifesto and one Sinn Féin candidate has made a public commitment towards the Derry Walls.
Plaid Cymru make a tantalising pledge to create specific apprenticeships in the fields of historical documentation and culture in order to preserve specialist skills and knowledge. Indeed the party makes nine separate pledges towards the arts, culture and heritage of Wales–the most of any of the party policies I have read so far.
So what are the other parties saying about museums? Listed in alphabetical order.
What parties say about museums
Conservative party
From their manifesto 2015, they pledge to voters in the section Enabling you to enjoy our heritage, creativity and sports, to:
Keep major national museums and galleries free to enter.
Democratic Unionist Party
From their manifesto 2015:
“Whether at Westminster, Stormont or Europe, the DUP is pro-active in developing Northern Ireland’s cultural wealth and encouraging creativity to develop new opportunities in our economy.”
Display appropriately our cultural assets at the Ulster Museum to promote the Northern Ireland brand
Reduce the number of arms-length bodies associated with DCAL (Dept of Culture, Arts and Leisure)
Green Party
From the Culture principles stated on their website:
“CMS414 The body of historical creative work forms the basis of our culture at national, regional and local level; the preservation of this culture is a responsibility of the state through support for cultural stores such as museums, archives, libraries, heritage and major performing arts venues and companies.”
From the Media, Sports and Arts section in their manifesto 2015:
Increase government arts funding by £500 million a year to restore the cuts made since 2010 and reinstate proper levels of funding for local authorities, helping to keep local museums, theatres, libraries and art galleries open.
Labour Party
From the section on the Arts and Culture sectionin their manifesto 2015:
We reaffirm our commitment to universal free admission to ensure that our great works of art and national heritage can be enjoyed in all parts of the country.
Liberal Democrat Party
From the Pride in Creativity section of their manifesto 2015:
Maintain free access to museums and galleries, while giving these institutions greater autonomy.
Mebyon Kernow – The Party for Cornwall
No specific mention of museums. From the Recognition for Cornwall section of their manifesto 2015:
Greater local control over all aspects of Cornwall’s heritage, culture and identity, including the transfer of responsibility for work currently undertaken in Cornwall by agencies such as English Heritage.
Quizzing one of the candidates on Twitter I asked if that would include include Arts Council England and the reply was affirmative, that all organisations dealing with Cornwall should be devolved:
Plaid Cymru – The Party of Wales
From the principles stated on their website Plaid Cymru says:
“Wales has a huge amount of priceless national treasures, including our National Museum, the National Library, and countless CADW monuments, and we believe that every child ought to have the opportunity, free of charge, to visit one of the National Museums or Libraries during their school years.”
In the Arts, Heritage and Culture section of the manifesto 2015:
We will ensure that free access to National Museum Wales continues.
We will create apprenticeships in the field of historical documentation and culture so that staff skills, knowledge and experiences are retained and nurtured.
Scottish National Party
From policy outlined on their website the SNP makes a commitment towards museum loans:
“We will continue to support the International Touring Fund for Scotland’s National Companies and co-ordinate overseas cultural and economic promotion activities. That means bringing together, where we can, national company tours, museum and gallery loans and trade missions for an ‘all Scotland’ approach to cultural and economic promotion.”
There is no mention of museums, heritage, arts or culture in the SNP’s manifesto 2015.
Sinn Féin
I could not find any mention of museums, heritage, arts or culture on Sinn Féin’s website nor the policies published on their website. The only glimpse into the party’s view of museums is the brief event stated above of a Prospective Parliamentary Candidate in the Foyle constituency using the Derry Walls (see above).
I tweeted the official party account for link but have yet to receive a reply.
United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP)
There is no mention of museums in the published policies of UKIP. From the Heritage and Tourism section of their manifesto 2015 they pledge to:
Abolish the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Want to have a say?
Join #museumhour to take part in a special #GE2015 debate on Monday 4 May 20:00 in the UK. Some of the questions we are asking:
Why aren’t museums politically important?
Should all museums be politically neutral?
Has your museum petitioned local candidates?
Have your local candidates visited your museum and its staff and volunteers?
Which party will offer the best deal for UK museums?
Should politicians be more interested in museums or is it better to be left alone?
Has your museum got involved in campaigning to encourage people to vote?
What, if anything, will change after the election for your museum?
What, if anything, will happen to national museum funding and advisory bodies after the election?
What message would you like to send out to your local candidates before election day?
#museumhour is (yet another) new UK-based museum movement which took 24 hours to set up by Sophie Ballinger (@sospot) and me (@tehm).
Sophie had a while back posed the question of whether a #museumhour existed in Twitterverse and received the sound of tumbleweed in return.
I was travelling back to Cornwall from London after a meeting of Museums Association Regional Reps in which there was much discussion about the best forums for museum people to get together online to exchange news and views, particularly to debate the Museum Association’s new agenda Museums Change Lives (I almost wrote Loves).
Place-based Twitter hours have been well-established across the country, from #CornwallHour to #ScotlandHour as have profession-based ones such as #legalhour.
Searching for the existence of a #museumhour Tehmina found Sophie via Eureka! Museum’s twitter feed and after a few tweets exchanged after working hours during commutes and baby feeds we claimed the hour every Monday 7-8pm. Sophie set up a Twitter account @museumhour to help field the exchange of tweets and an automatic retweet of its accompanying hashtag #museumhour
As long as people used the hashtag #museumhour or replied to @museumhour participants can follow tweets easily.
After some initial campaigning in between our day jobs Monday 6 October, 7pm arrived. We had about 57 followers at the beginning and by the end of the evening this grew to over 100.
We had no idea what would happen. We didn’t want to control proceedings by forcing a topic but to encourage people to share #onecoolthing about their museum or their favourite museum.
Although a UK-based social meet we had willing tweeters from Virginia, USA to South Australia. And those working in museums were joined with museophiles.
Astonishingly 99 people sent 349 tweets during the first #museumhour
Tweets ranged from Brighton Museums’ football table in their World Stories gallery, Kids in Museums’ Youth Panel meeting at Geffrye Museum, the launch of iBeacons at Roman Caerleon, the famous cat mummy of Derby Museums (it is essential to include cats in all Twitter conversations–Ed), Lowewood Museum’s community project and exhibition on World War 1 display, finding out Sir Walter Scott used to be a Sheriff and his courtroom museum is there to be visited in Selkirk, a museum geek’s Elk, two major development projects at Surgeons Hall Museum and Epping Forest District Museum, and news from the Welsh Museum Festival. And more.
The idea is to let #museumhour grow organically and steadily and begin to introduce some hard hitting topics to the weekly discussions.
Policy-making museum people were notably absent or quiet and yet tend to be the ones always wanting our opinion on things. We hope they join the talk.
I also hope that #museumhour will remain good fun, be a new, additional way, for museum people to meet each other and network, as well as providing a forum for opinions to be exchanged.
In this scene I examine a finger ring, reusing a late Roman agate seal, from southern Italy, late 7th century in the Museo Nazionale Archeologico di Napoli. In the next scene, the custodian of the stores tried it on and asked if it suited her (not pictured).
It was a challenging exercise to condense into 8000 words the essence of the study of material culture in a Mediterranean geo-historical context and also to represent all periods of human history at the same time.
I have always been interested in the making and circulation of objects and this interest has never really obeyed traditional geographic or period boundaries. I feel as comfortable analysing an inventory of a 12th-century monastic treasury as I do trawling through 19th century order books. I know my way around early medieval metalwork as much as I do modern souvenirs in social history collections.
My background in museology has without doubt influenced my points of view and perceptions. As someone professionally involved in the presentation and interpretation of artefacts I am responsible for finding out what stories objects can tell, while also presenting a lens on the world through human creativity and productivity.
Finger ring, reusing a late Roman agate seal, from southern Italy, late 7th century (credit: Museo Nazionale Archeologico di Napoli).
This attitude towards historical material culture and our sources for it is summed up in the first paragraph of my chapter:
The creation and use of complex tools are distinguishing traits of the human animal. As such, material culture is intrinsic to the humanities, whether approached through archaeology, anthropology, history, art or museology.
Fundamentally this chapter attempts to blow apart academic tendencies to narrow down–but this doesn’t mean that it eschews detail and depth. It provides food for thought on how we understand people’s relationships with things, with production and with consumption. That the basic need for humans to have and exchange commodities is as crucial to life as food and water. Most studies of material culture tend to speak in non-human terms, are clinical and distant from experience, or otherwise concerned with artistic conceits.
Ore procurement book of Grenfell and Co. copper company (credit: Centre for Buckinghamshire Studies, Aylesbury).
I was inspired in part by Fernand Braudel’s approach to studying and comparing economic and material life, and in part the seminal work edited by Arjun Appadurai, The Social Life of Things. The abstract to my chapter explains its contents.
This chapter explores how the study of material culture illuminates Mediterranean history in new ways. Early discoveries in the Mediterranean influenced the development of material culture studies from archaeological classification to the phenomenon of making collections of classical artefacts during the Grand Tour which formed the basis of modern museums. Taking inspiration from Braudel’s other paradigm on the inter-relationship between economic and material life, this chapter then presents a series of vignettes on the materiality of eating, sitting and sleeping, which address how and why Mediterranean object cultures should be perceived in a globally-comparative context. There follow three epochal studies that apply Braudel’s global approach as well as object biography and documentary reconstruction to provide new perspectives on the prehistoric, ancient, medieval, early modern, modern and contemporary Mediterranean, taking examples from ceramics, the copper industry, the consumption of silk, textile conservation, souvenirs and mass craft manufacturing.
Preparing for digitisation: Record photograph from an album in the Elizabeth Treffry Collection, Hypatia Trust.
Originally written and published in 2010 on Past Thinking. Republished here for archival purposes.
Digitisation usually refers to making collections data, including images and other media, available online. But it may also refer to making any quantitative (e.g. historical datasets) or qualitative information (exhibition and learning resources) available and discoverable via the web.
A digital collection usually comprises an object record describing the object, its composition or makeup and other descriptive elements. It may have an associated image, video, audio or document with it. Sophisticated digital collections will display links to related objects and information. Some are aggregated into larger digital repositories which allow you to search across several collections such as Culture Grid or Europeana.
The digitisation movement in the UK heritage sector started in earnest under the New Opportunities Fund Digitisation (NOF-digi) programme, funded by the National Lottery between 2001-3/4. One of my previous projects, Hantsphere, was part of this. NOF-digi projects taught heritage and cultural technologists a lot about good and bad practice, and most importantly about sustainability. A significant amount of data remains undiscoverable and in some cases has been lost altogether through lack of onward funding and resources within the organisations that ran these projects.
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.
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.
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?
