A few thoughts about objects as documents
Ken Corbett
My name is Ken Corbett, I am a PhD student in the history department at the University of British Columbia. I thought I would introduce myself with a short comment about one essay.
Like Kristen and Sarah I found Marta Lourenco’s paper “Working with words or with objects? The contribution of university museums” very insightful.
Perhaps what appealed to me most was the issue of training, or rather the lack of training among historians to deal with objects as documents. I faced this realization firsthand while assembling a collection of retired instruments from the chemistry department at UBC. This was done as part of a course on collecting and collections instructed by Neil Safier in our department. Our reading included a mixture of essays about collections, or the process of collecting. In many instances the collection was treated as the object. Rarely were objects studied firsthand as documents.
When I decided to transform a closet of old instruments into a collection, I found myself unprepared for the task of, well, reading an artifact. Lourenco’s comment struck a cord with me: “when curators leave the academia and are confronted with real museum work the university training they received is likely to be of insufficient use: they have to learn the “grammar of things” by themselves” (5).
In concluding, Lourenco asks how it was possible for the history of science, art, and technology to have survived “without objects.” Having previously read Sibum’s “Reworking the Mechanical Value of Heat” I could not help but agree. Sibum’s recreation of Joule’s apparatus and experiment pointed to the tacit knowledge omitted from Joule’s account. In a sense then, Sibum’s study of artifacts revealed elements of the construction of texts.
The intersection of object and word raised a few questions to me:
What kind of sources are objects in relation to texts? As Kristen pointed out, Lourenco states that “objects are only the physical content of memories.” Indeed we do need words to research objects, but as, I think, Sibum’s paper illustrates, we also need objects to research words.
Also this comment by Lourenco opens up a wider discussion about memory in history. What role can objects play when words might be omitted or distorted? Do objects hold a more fundamental place as documents?
I am looking forward to meeting you all. Enjoy your weekend.
Ken Corbett
K.F. Latham
article (accepted and coming out in January) titled, "Museum Object as
Document," so I am looking very forward to this discussion with
everyone (although the direction of mine may be quite different). I
have not yet read Lourenco's paper so I better get myself on top of
that now! As for training, I totally agree that many historian's (and
others) are unprepared to "read" artifacts when these resources could
provide so much information for their research. We have a workshop
coming in Spring here at Kent State called, "How to Read an Object"
with just that issue in mind.
Kiersten F. Latham
dpant...@technomuses.ca
Thanks Kiersten and to all for your contributions. The artifacts will get their say this week!
I have uploaded a few more articles on Google Docs. Again, I hope they can serve as a growing reference in the future.
Rich Kremer "A Time to Keep, and a Time to Cast Away: Thoughts on Acquisitions for University Collections," Rittenhouse, Vol. 22, no. 2, pp. 211-224.
This PDF is from a special issue of Rittenhouse devoted to Scientific Instrument Collections In Universities. "A time to Keep" is about the random, purposeful, idiosyncratic processes, decisions and hoarding that go into the building of university collections and the implications for the unique kinds of history they preserve/represent. Rich (Faculty RASI 2009) is professor of history and curator at Dartmouth College. He is immersed in what he calls the "thick history" of a rather old university collection (1769) with its layers of local, immediate, interconnected context and resources (collection history, departmental histories, trade literature, archival materials, original buildings). We borrow from the title of his yearly collection-based seminar "Reading Artifacts," which I had the pleasure of co-teaching with him back in 2002.
Another two articles are from Dan Bartlett (RASI 2010), Curator of Exhibits and Education at Beloit College in the States. The model of material culture he has adapted in his classes at the Logan museum of Anthropology (and I quote from a message to me last year)
"comes from Pat Villeneuve (Florida State U) and Ann Rowson Love (Western Illinois I believe) and is found in From Periphery to Center: Art Museum Education in the 21st Century, which Villeneauve edited (National Art Education Association, 2007). "
In the summer of 2009 Dan
"studied with Rika Burnham (Frick Collection) and Elliot Kai-Kee (Getty) at the Teaching Institute in Museum Education (TIME) at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Their approach involves extended (I prefer to call it "active") looking and minimally facilitated group discussion. Rika Burnham is the one who invites the group to "receive" the artwork. As people share their observations she reflects back what they have said, only very rarely asking a question. The conversation develops a pace of it's own. At key times she throws out some appropriate art historical fact about the object which helps the discussion along. Only as the group asks questions or seeks clarification does she "lecture," and then minimally.
Finally, buildings as artifacts, and artifacts within these larger artifacts, has been a continuing RASI theme. Annmarie Adams's (RASI 2009) group from McGill have contributed much to this focus at previous exchanges. In addition, Bob Bean (RASI 2009) turned his artistic lens on our own building and storage structure when he was here last fall. In that tradition, Simon Whitehouse my summer student found the article Museum as Artifact yesterday. It is now in the uploads as well.
David
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