The Museum as Method: Collections, Research, Universities

Abstracts

• Mungo Campbell (Hunterian Museum, Glasgow)

Objects of Enquiry; patterns of intention in William Hunter's museum

As the Hunterian, at The University of Glasgow, approaches the tercentenary of the birth if its founder, William Hunter, new research shows clearly that the objects which he collected were intended to offer rich and multi-layered approaches to the generation and communication of knowledge. Any twenty-first century approach to an object-focussed pedagogy may do well to reflect how Hunter considered his collections and the practical purposes to which they could be put in teaching andresearch. The purpose of my paper is to discuss the dialog fostered by the collections at the musée du quai Branly in Paris. I will specifically address the French context of this discussion, and the way it plays out particularly at the muse du quai Branly. This space is quite unique in the way it engages research academics and curators in a common discussion about the objects. This discussion generates specific questions which put the research in question at the musée du quai Branly.

• Ivan Gaskell (Bard Graduate Center, New York)

What University Museums Are For: Reflections on North America and Europe

This paper elaborates eight claims about university museums.

1. Museums are communities of scholars before they are agglomerations of things—collections.
2. Insofar as they are collections, museums should prompt scholarship on relations among people and things rather than on things alone.
3. Universities should foster risk-taking scholarship in their museums.
4. Universities should ensure equity of standing and treatment among museum scholars and faculty, expecting museum scholars to meet requisite standards.
5.  Museum scholars within a university should engage in far greater exchange and collaboration among themselves and with faculty colleagues than current institutional and disciplinary categorization encourages.
6. Museum scholars and faculty should reconceive the relationship between collection items—prototypes—and their representations, both analogue and digital.
7.  Museums are first and foremost research institutions to which public access may be desirable but that is not invariably necessary.
8. Universities that invest resources in enhancing the scholarly capacity of their museums will gain an advantage in the international competition among them.

• Viola König (Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin)

Time matters

Collection-based research is time consuming. Identification of proveniences and the digitalization process, exploration of potential exhibition themes and finding of appropriate objects, publication of the results e.g. in museums catalogues, all these steps take years.

But themes and new trends nowadays change quickly.

In my talk I will discuss how the long process of planning and building Humboldt Forum is conflicting with the varying expectations of an ever more critical public.  Among others will refer to the experiences with some projects of Humboldt Lab Dahlem.

• Kenneth McNamara (Sedgwick Museum, Cambridge)

Collections and Research in the Age of Enlightenment: John Woodward's (1667-1728) Cabinet of Geological Possibilities

In an age when virtually all natural history collections were just parts of 'Cabinets of Curiosity', John Woodward's geological collection shines like a beacon as the foremost natural collection of its time, gathered for the sole purpose of scientific enquiry. Comprising more than 9,000 specimens, the collection still exists in the Sedgwick Museum. Woodward amassed specimens from around the world over a 25 year period. He was adamant that collections like his should be used for “…the Benefit and Advantage of the World.” Moreover, in an intellectual climate where natural observation was increasingly becoming systematized, Woodward held that “…Censure would be his Due who should be perpetually heaping up of Natural Collections, without Design of Building a Structure of Philosophy out of them.” Woodward used his collection extensively to support his 1696 An Essay toward a Natural History of the Earth… as well as to make pioneering palaeoecological and geological observations. Most significantly, he used it to devise the first coherent classification of rocks, minerals and fossils. By examining the way Woodward used his collection, we see that he emerges as a man of vision whose systematic organization of specimens dragged geology out of the dark ages into enlightenment.

• Sophie Rowe (Polar Museum, Cambridge):

Breaking down the silos: Conservation research and collaboration at the University of Cambridge Museums

Museum artefacts contain a wealth of information which can be uncovered by modern analytical techniques used in conservation research and technical art history.  However this research potential often remains untapped.  Practical examples from the University of Cambridge Museums show how individual collections can be greatly enriched by technical investigations, to the benefit of both academic research and public programming.  When technical data is shared between institutions new types of research become possible.  This paper will present case studies showing how such collaborations can work both locally and internationally.