Cultures of Care – Reflections from the Museum Ethnographers Group Conference, 6 May 2021 by Dr Nuala Morse

As part of MEG’s online annual conference this year, I had the opportunity to present a conversation with Dr Jennie Morgan (University of Stirling), exploring the idea of ‘cultures of care’ in museums. Our starting point was a previous set of discussion that had brought out work together, and responding to a sense that our need for care, and to care better, had become ever more dramatically apparent as the Covid-19 pandemic runs on.

In my own work, I have been thinking and writing about care in the context of community engagement work in museums, which I present in my recent book, The Museum as Space of Social Care (2020). Within the book, I consider care in the very intimate settings of engagement sessions with vulnerable or marginalised groups, notably in the context of health and wellbeing programming, to a wider reflection on the social role of museums in an increasingly careless world. 

Talking of care in the museum is, in a sense, entirely ordinary since care for collections is central to museum work. The idea that the museum should also care for its communities is well-established in rhetoric, though perhaps the practice is more patchy. Certainly, members and associates of MEG have been demonstrating care in practice through their work with communities, both diasporas and distant constituents. And yet, wider discussion of care for people are currently absent from museum discourse.

The book explores ‘care thinking’ through a number of directions.

First, care as practice and capacity: here I draw out the myriad of mundane acts that that take place within community engagement session, which are remarkable as acts of everyday care – making people feel safe, included, valued, respected, and listened to. This work is all too often overlooked in terms of its time, its skills and its qualities. Caring work takes time, effort – a proactive willingness to care for others and an awareness of the dynamics of caring relations, their ambivalences and their contradictions. This is not to say that caring cannot be learnt; but it does requires working at.

The second approach is through looking at its logics. The notion of ‘logics’ draws our attention away from codes and procedures, to consider what is appropriate or logical to do in a certain situation. The logic of care is therefore about distilling what makes ‘good’ care, with clear attention to its specificity Defining care is not a fixed thing, but rather something that happens in and through practice.

Key point here is that care is relational – in order to become good care, it has to be recognised and received as care. As such, care is a shared accomplishment. We might say that care needs to be co-produced (to use a familiar museum term). This is important, as it is very possible to care badly. Indeed, care is often criticised as being patronising, and it can be used to exploit, control and abuse. Good care happens only when it is shared.

Another direction I explore in the book is the ‘museumness of care’, drawing on previous work with Ealasaid Munro. This is the idea that the museum can provide its own version of care; that it has innate capacities to care that could be activated using museum objects and spaces, and culture more widely.

The final direction is to explore an ethics of care, as the basis for a new direction for museums practice and theory (towards a ‘care-ful museology’, if you will). The ethics of care presupposes that we all need care. Drawing on feminist work, care is here defined as a broader philosophy,

‘a species of activities that includes everything we do to maintain, continue, and repair our world so that we can live in it as well as possible. That world includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, self-sustaining web’ (Fisher and Tronto, 1993)

Applied to the museum, care ethics is about repositioning the museum as active within networks of mutual support, and within wider landscapes of care organisations, both formal and informal. This defines what I call the museum as a space of social care.

In essence, the idea of a museum for/in the community is not new (and this is a good thing!). But I suggest that through care thinking, we can provide different coordinates for activating this community role.

My work to date has focused on thinking through care in the museum from as emerging from community engagement settings primarily with social history collections, and primarily local communities, often marginalised and excluded groups accessing a range of social services and formal care organisations. Bringing this discussion to MEG colleagues, was an opportunity to explore how care thinking might already feature in their own work with ethnographic collections, and their own practices of community engagement.

As part of the MEG discussion and drawing on her work ass part of the AHRC HeritageFutures project, Jennie described how care is often expressed through collecting and preservation practices intended to navigate the challenge of curating profusion. We then opened up to the floor, and we had a wide-ranging discussion about care. (note: these are here reported in my own words, any misreporting or misunderstandings are therefore entirely my own)

1) How can care be expanded across the organisation?  What about care for staff at this time?

2) Is care/the idea of the museum as a space of social care another form of instrumentalisation of culture, this time to plug the gaps left behind by cuts to health and social care services?

3) How do we prioritise care, and does caring for some come at the expenses of caring for others?

4) What can we learn from Indigenous forms of ‘caring with’? (short answer here is surely lots)

I am grateful for colleague’s engagement in the session, which has given me much to think through, in considering the potential of care as a way of articulating the future work of museums. Of course we only scratched the surface – to my mind care opens up real possibilities for different approaches to outlining the museum’s responsibility (and obligation?) to care, but also some challenges, to ensure that care work doesn’t become parochial, patronising, or worse. We need to understand cultures of care as shared accomplishment in the future of the museum.

I welcome any further thoughts and discussion, and thank delegates again for their engagement – you can reach me at nuala.morse@leicester.ac.uk

If you are interested in hearing more about the book, please do join me in conversation on July 1^st, 12 pm BST for a virtual book launch Book through eventbrite. 

New Book: Returning Southeast Asia's Past: Objects, Museums, and Restitution

 Edited by Louise Tythacott and Panggah Ardiyansyah

With contributions from Gabrielle Abbe, Jos van Beurden, Socheat Chea, John Clarke, Charlotte Galloway, Chanraksmey Muong, Duyen Nguyen, Phacharaphorn Phanomvan, Melody Rod-ari, Wieske Octaviani Sapardan

The last 150 years has seen extensive looting and illicit trafficking of Southeast Asia's cultural heritage. Art objects from the region were distributed to museums and private collections around the world. But in the 21st century, power relations are shifting, a new awareness is growing, and new questions are emerging about the representation and ownership of Southeast Asian cultural material located in the West.

This book is a timely consideration of object restitution and related issues across Southeast Asia, bringing together different viewpoints including from museum professionals and scholars in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam and Indonesia – as well as Europe, North America and Australia. The objects themselves are at the centre of most narratives - from Khmer art to the Mandalay regalia (repatriated in 1964), Ban Chiang archaeological material and the paintings of Raden Saleh. Legal, cultural, political and diplomatic issues involved in the restitution process are considered in many of the chapters; others look at the ways object restitution is integral to evolving narratives of national identity. The book's editors conclude that restitution processes can transform narratives of loss into opportunities for gain in building knowledge and reconstructing relationships across national borders.

"Every Southeast Asian country has a different experience of the loss of antiquities, but we all share in the deeply-felt benefits of contemporary restitution initiatives. This book makes an important contribution to bringing these questions out into the open."
- Dr. Phoeurng Sackona, Minister of Culture and Fine Arts, Cambodia

Louise Tythacott is the Woon Tai Jee Professor of Asian Art at Northumbria University, United Kingdom.

Panggah Ardiyansyah is an MPhil/PhD student of History of Art and Archaeology at SOAS University of London.

NUS Press

CFP: Edited book on Sensorial collections. Research-Museum-Art

The idea of this book is to consider the ways in which sensory experiences can be captured and reproduced by ethnographers, curators, artists and collectors, or, more broadly, all those involved in modes of transcribing the world. It is a matter of illustrating how these diverse practitioners collect senses.

The senses have occupied a growing place within the social sciences and humanities since the 2000s. In France, this trajectory was opened up with the history of smells proposed by Alain Corbin from 1982 onwards. Yet, a consideration of the senses as a means to connect with the material environment has long been limited, relegated to the backstage in works exploring taste, as inspired by the sociology of social distinction of Pierre Bourdieu (1979), or masked by the perceptible which assumes their transformation by different imaginaries (Sansot 1985). Anthropological contributions to the study of the sensory, be it taste, sound, light, shape or touch, took a considerable step forward at around about this time, notably in Anglophone literature, helping to make the sensory a subject of research in its own right (Howes 1987; 1991) and a methodological imperative (Pink 2009).
In this way, a study of the senses enables us not only to have access to contextual atmospheres and human representations but also to the motivations of action. The range of perspectives in this field are multiple, be it phenomenologically-inspired approaches, interrogating perception itself (Ingold 2000); those that take a pragmatic stance, attempting to get a close as possible to the lived experience (Hennion 2004); those that follow a more Spinozian line, with human action is understood as emotional reaction (Laplantine 2005); or more cognitive approaches (Candau 2000).Thus, sensory experiences, and equally, emotions, perceptions and sensitivities - of both the observed and the observer - have secured a firm place within the analyses of social sciences and humanities (Gélard 2016; 2017).

However, in this context of the renewal of research fields, there has been little questioning of the ways in which sensorial experiences and phenomena are collected. Barbara Kirshenblatt- Gimblett has underlined the difficulty of "showing invisible sensorial experiences" (1999) that seem to end up unavoidably with the use of visual forms to translate taste, smell and feeling. But how do we collect the senses? Which forms are used to archive sensory data? What is the impact of the uses and values of the sensorial on the collections? Does the domination of the visual over touch (Krueger 1982) call for the collection of other senses in order to maintain an intangible sensorial experience?
If a society and a culture can be understood through their way of making sense of sensorial experiences and the place that these give to the manifestations of feelings, capturing these is by no means self-evident. Involving the perceptions of the researcher and their emotions, it is an approach that seems to contradict the requirement of objectivity on which the sciences are based. Their eventual analysis is confronted by their intangibility and the passage through the filter of subjectivity. It is an approach which therefore raises major epistemological and methodological questions for the social sciences.

Transcending the social sciences, the collection of the senses also questions the arts. Of course, we are thinking here of olfactory theatre (Jaquet 2015), of eat-art, or indeed of sound art, all of which require an upfront selection of sensorial artefacts.

Yet, more generally, whether they be interactive, immersive and/or scenic, all experiential devises raise questions about the heritagisation of the sensorial to the extent to which they are not aiming the singular confrontation of a spectator with the sensitive material, but rather their coproduction and collaboration (Borillon and Sauvageot 1996). In such a way, these practices interrogate not only how the senses are captured and recorded in order to be exhibited, but also how sensory creations can themselves be inventoried and archived.

Finally, the very places that serve to conserve sensorial artefacts provoke questions about collection practices, be these collections or archives, private or public. In relation to other institutions, museums find themselves particularly sharply challenged when it comes to the sensorial. While the visual and the material have long had their place within the museum sector, other perceptive registers seem less compatible with heritage (Miguet 1998). Objects, handwritten notes and photographs from the field are often accompanied by interviews, music and background sound, yet other sensorial data could be included.

This call is for classic book chapters but, given the subject matter, proposals for sound documents or annotated photographs will also be considered, subject to these documents being free from copyright.
Three main axes structure this book in order to circumscribe the challenges of sensorial collections. The first is concerned with the processes associated with sensorial collections undertaken as part of a critical reading of the world and of the society. The second focuses on the tools and materials of these collections and the way in which these inflect scientific and artistic practices. The third interrogates the conditions and premises of their conservation, or indeed, their heritagisation.

References cited
Borillo Mario et Sauvageot Anne, 1996, Les cinq sens de la création : art, technologie et sensorialité, Seyssel : Champ Vallon.
Candau Joël, 2000, Mémoire et expériences olfactives, Paris : PUF.
Corbin Alain, 1982, Le Miasme et la Jonquille. L'odorat et l'imaginaire social, XVIIIe-XIXe siècles, Paris : Flammarion, coll. « Champs ».
Eidelman Jacqueline (dir.), 2017, Inventer des musées pour demain, Rapport de la mission musées XXIe siècles, Paris : La documentation Française.
Gélard Marie-Luce, 2017, Les sens en mots. Entretiens avec Joël Candau, Alain Corbin, David Howes, François Laplantine, David Le Breton et Georges Vigarello, Paris, Pétra, Collection « Univers sensoriels et sciences sociales », Paris : Pétra.
—, 2016 « Contemporary French Sensory Ethnography », The Senses & Society (11/3) : 247-250.
Hennion Antoine, 2003, « Une pragmatique de la musique : expériences d'écoute. Petit retour en arrière sur le séminaire "Aimer la musique" », MEI, p.31-43.
Howes David, 1987, « Olfaction and transition: An essay on the ritual uses of smell », Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology, 24(3), 398-416.
— (ed.) 1991, The Varieties of Sensory Experience : A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses, Toronto : University of Toronto Press.
Ingold Tim, 2000, The perception of the environment : essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill, London: Routledge.
Jaquet Chantal (dir.), 2015, L'art olfactif contemporain, Paris : Garnier.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett Barbara, 1999, "Playing to the Senses: Food as a Performance Medium", Performance Research, 4, 1, pp. 1-30.
Krueger Lester, 1982, « Tactual perception in historical perspective: David Katz's world of touch », W. Schiff and E. Foulke (dir.), Tactual Perception, a Sourcebook, Cambridge University Press, New York, pp. 1-54.
Laplantine François, 2005, Le social et le sensible, introduction à une anthropologie modale, Paris, Téraèdre.
Miguet Danièle, 1998, « Autour de la sensorialité dans les musées », Publics et Musées, n°13, « Public, nouvelles technologies, musées », (sous la direction de Roxane Bernier et Bernadette Goldstein), pp. 177-182.
Pink Sarah, 2009, Doing sensory ethnography, Sage Publications, Inc., United States
Sansot Pierre, 1985, La France sensible, Paris : Champ Vallon.

Submission criteria and timeline
Abstracts in French or English of approximately 2,500 characters, accompanied by an indicative bibliography and a brief CV should be sent as a ".doc" file by the 6 November 2018 to the following addresses:
mlgelard@yahoo.fr and marie-luce.gelard@parisdescartes.fr
This should outline the questions raised in the chapter, the materials used and the collection methods for these materials.
Any artistic or museum experience related to the theme of sensorial collection could also be highlighted.
Authors will be informed in December 2018 whether their proposal has been accepted.
Authors whose projects have been chosen should then send the completed article (in French or English), or the work of art or sound or image file before the1 April 2019.
The articles and files will undergo a process of peer review and, following any demands for corrections, final versions of the selected chapters should be submitted by the 1 July 2019.

Editorial committee:
Véronique Dassié (IDEMEC-CNRS-AMU)
Aude Fanlo (Mucem)
Marie-Luce Gélard (Université Paris-Descartes/IUF-Canthel)
Cyril Isnart (IDEMEC-CNRS-AMU)
Florent Molle (Mucem)

Words Matter: Book Launch, Tropen Museum.

BOOK LAUNCH: WORDS MATTER Thursday 28 June 2018 | Tropenmuseum, Amsterdam The Research Center for Material Culture cordially invites you to an evening on repairing, refusing and re-imagining language to mark the launch of our publication WORDS MATTER. Recent controversy in the Netherlands surrounding whether museums should change the titles of some of their paintings and refrain from using discriminatory words in wall texts or catalogues is in part the lead up to this publication and symposium series. The emotionally and politically charged nature of discussions in the media surrounding the proposed changes should persuade anyone in doubt that words matter, that language matters. This is not an issue for just a small group of experts, but an ongoing dialogue between colleagues, neighbors, strangers and friends. It is a discussion that is embedded in a larger societal dialogue that debates issues of citizenship, belonging and representation in The Netherlands and beyond. Indeed, it is not just words that matter: the perspectives or the position from which one writes or displays also matters. In this context, it is important to interrogate our personal and institutional relationships to categories, terminologies and meanings. To whom does language belong? In what ways can language become more inclusive to those who have been marginalized or excluded within our societies and institutions? Who is included in or excluded from ‘modern’, non-‘Western’, ‘traditional’, ‘us’ and ‘them’? And what is the correct pronoun to describe someone who self-identifies as transgender? The publication WORDS MATTER is the physical manifestation of the museum’s long-term commitment to becoming a more inclusive institution and is the result of multiple, long-term projects that aim to dissect and dismantle some of the complex contested words, stereotypes and concepts that are present not only in cultural institutions, but also in the media and society at large. The symposium is a critical celebration and a stage for artists, academics and the audience to question, refuse, provoke and engage (with) contested languages and their presence within our institutions, societies and relationships. The program consists of two events: a day program for heritage professionals and cultural producers, and an evening program for general audience. Program • Ogutu Muraya (Writer and Storyteller) • Astrid Roemer (Writer) • Eliza Steinbock (Leiden University) • Kira Wuck (Poet) • Simone Zeefuik (Writer and cultural programmer) Practical Information Where: Tropenmuseum, Linnaeusstraat 2, Amsterdam When: Thursday 28 June 2018, 19:30 – 21:30 Admission: € 8 (incl. publication) - Get your tickets here Language: Dutch and English

view webversion

Research   |   Events   |   Open space

Book Review: The Conservation of featherwork by Ellen Pearlstein

Figure:  Huichol hat, Fowler Museum at UCLA, X66.2858, 34 cm x 18 cm

Featherwork from Central and South America rank among the most beautiful objects with meaning and symbolic value, used and worn as signs of rank and respect. Collection history, consultations and anthropological studies contribute greatly to our understanding of such featherwork collections in museums. However, museum or online databases often provide insufficient information for researchers e.g. on feather identification, feather type, attachment and modification methods and whether those objects show traces of use or change in cultural practice. Recording featherwork in a concise manner will not only provide information for interpretation but also for representation of the object on display. It will advise on conservation treatment and will assist on collection decisions designed to further preventive care.

'The Conservation of Featherwork' is designed to guide museum specialists like conservators, curators and researchers through implementation of such recordings. It is a valuable resource for teaching conservation students and those interested in material culture. The content of the book reflects on the interdisciplinary research approach by the author, bringing together knowledge of ornithologists, tribal featherworkers, curators, conservators and conservation scientists.

The introduction of the book by Judith Levinson (Director of Conservation, Division of Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History) highlights the advantages of documenting featherwork as proposed in this publication and in particular its potential to link technical, material based and intangible qualities.

Ellen Pearlstein (Professor for Information Studies and in the Conservation of Ethnographic and Archaeological Materials atUCLA) offers concise and condensed information on feather recordings, preventive care, conservation treatment methods and legal aspects related to CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora). For further studies, the main literature on the subject is listed for the interested reader. The author developed a protocol for examining featherwork, a feather identification and condition template, which can be copied from the book and utilized as part of a survey.

Six case studies that follow the template, provide a comprehensive technical study, feather analysis, and examples of a conservation treatment and housing. The case studies carried out by conservation students, focus on headdresses, which entered the collection of the Fowler museum (Los Angeles) as gifts from private collectors:A lori-lori headdress made by the Karajá people from Brazil (Betsy Burr) and a Karajá skirt worn during initiation ceremonies (Heather White), a Huichol basketry hat from Mexico (Tom McClintock), a Shapra headdress attributed to the Shuar people of Peru (Lesley Day), an archeological feather plume (William Shelley) and a headdress made by the Asháninka (Colette Badmagharian), both from Peru.

Each case study, well structured and lavishly illustrated, demonstrates instantaniously the benefit of such recordings. The book can be highly recommended for museum specialists but also for those passionate about featherwork.

Renée Riedler

Mag. phil. Mag. art

Objects Conservator, Preventive Conservation Specialist

Lecturer in Conservation at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

MEG Occasional paper on Cook Voyage Collections now available

Mock up of new Cook Voyage display at the Pitt Rivers Museum

MEG’s latest Occasional Paper (number 5) has just been published. Cook-Voyage Collections of ‘Artificial Curiosities’ in Britain and Ireland, 1771–2015 comprises detailed accounts of some of the most important ethnographic collections from Cook voyages, including those of the British Museum, the University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthrpology, the University of Oxford’s Pitt Rivers Museum, the National Museum of Ireland (ex Trinity College Dublin), and National Museums Scotland. As well as providing a wealth of new information about what was collected on the voyages and how it was distributed - including illustrated accounts of recently identified objects at the British Museum, the Bowes Museum, and elsewhere - the volume also contains detailed accounts of what has been done with the collections from the time of their arrival in Britain and Ireland in the 1770s through to today. 

Contents: 300 pp., 106 black-and-white figures; Jeremy Coote, ‘Introduction’; Jennifer Newell, ‘Revisiting Cook at the British Museum’; Amiria Salmond, ‘Artefacts of Encounter: The Cook-Voyage Collections in Cambridge’; Jeremy Coote, ‘The Cook-Voyage Collections at Oxford, 1772-2015’; Rachel Hand, ‘“A Number of Highly Interesting Objects”: The Cook-Voyage Collections of Trinity College Dublin’; Dale Idiens and Chantal Knowles, ‘Cook-Voyage Collections in Edinburgh, 1775–2011’; Leslie Jessop, ‘Cook-Voyage Collections in North-East England, with a Preliminary Report on a Group of Māori Pendants Apparently Traceable to the First Voyage’; Adrienne L. Kaeppler, ‘From the South Seas to the World (via London)’.

The volume is available from: Sue Giles (MEG Publications), Senior World Cultures Curator, Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, Queen’s Road, Bristol BS8 1RL; sue.giles@bristol.gov.uk; UK, £17.50; Europe, £22.00; World, £26.00 (including postage and packing).

‘These essays contain a wealth of new information about enormously significant early-voyage collections in the UK and Ireland. This book will be a vital resource for all curators and researchers interested in the Pacific, in Cook's voyages, and the issues the voyages raise.’ (Professor Nicholas Thomas, Director, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge.)

‘These excellent papers are essential reading for everyone interested in forensic ethnography, cultural relations, and the rude good health of museum anthropology in the UK. Cook-voyage studies, which only began in the 1970s, are in all their permutations, at the foundation of best curatorial practice.’ (Jonathan King, Former Keeper of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the British Museum.)

 

Historic sites celebrate defining moments in history, memorialize important events and people, and contribute to the character of the locations where they are situated. Heritage designation, both globally and nationally, is an inherently contested issue. As detailed in this volume, concerns of politics and identity, criteria for designation, impacts on communities and sites, and challenges to management planning are central to any understanding of the process by which heritage sites are created, developed, and maintained.

The idea for this volume originated at a symposium hosted by the Savannah College of Art and Design. Contributors address such topics as the need to revamp criteria for designation, the effect historic site recognition has on local communities, the challenges encountered in maintaining a site, and issues linked to specific political climates or actions and group identity.

The contributors constitute an international cast of leading scholars, employees, and policy-makers, all of whom have had extensive experience with World Heritage and National Register site stewardship. The work will be an invaluable reference for historians, architects, and those committed to the preservation of national monuments.

New book announcement - Museums and Restitution by Louise Tythacott and Kostas Arvanitis

‘This book is essential reading for anyone interested in restitution. Its essays bring together global case studies and thematic overviews, exploring the wide range of activities, outcomes, thought and policy involved in restitution, including disputed cases; ethics and issues of power; and the potentially positive effects of restitution on museums as well as the real challenges it poses to museums.’
Laura Peers, University of Oxford, UK
  

This book examines contemporary approaches to restitution from the perspective of museums. It focuses on the ways in which these institutions have been addressing the subject at a regional, national and international level. In particular, it explores contemporary practices and recent claims, and investigates to what extent the question of restitution as an issue of ownership is still at large, or whether museums have found additional ways to conceptualise and practice restitution, by thinking beyond the issue of ownership. The challenges, benefits and drawbacks of recent and current museum practice are explored.

Ethnographic Conservation at the Pitt Rivers Museum

The conservation department at the Pitt Rivers Museum have recently published a short book on ethnographic conservation. The book is well illustrated with case studies from the collections and available to purchase for the modest sum of £5.00 in the Pitt Rivers Museum shop.

New book announcement - Museum Representations of Maoist China by Amy Jane Barnes

The collection, interpretation and display of art from the People’s Republic of China, and particularly the art of the Cultural Revolution, have been problematic for museums. These objects challenge our perception of ‘Chineseness’ and their style, content and the means of their production question accepted notions of how we perceive art. 

This book links art history, museology and visual culture studies to examine how museums have attempted to reveal, discuss and resolve some of these issues. Amy Jane Barnes addresses a series of related issues associated with collection and display: how museums deal with difficult and controversial subjects; the role they play in mediating between the object and the audience; the role of the Other in the creation of Self and national identities; the nature, role and function of art in society; the museum as image-maker; the impact of communism (and Maoism) on the cultural history of the twentieth-century; and the appropriation of communist visual iconography. This book will be of interest to researchers and students of museology, visual and cultural studies as well as scholars of Chinese and revolutionary art.

Further information and extracts from this book are available to view online.