Networks, Agents and Objects: Frameworks for Unpacking Museum Collections

Abstract

Although on face value, museum collections are largely perceived as static entities hidden away in storerooms or trapped behind glass cases, new research shows that over time and across space interactions between objects and a wide range of people have generated a complex assemblage of material and social networks. Based on a broad collection of source materials, studies examining the people who made, sold, traded, studied, catalogued, exhibited and connected with objects reveal a dynamic set of material and social agencies that have been instrumental in creating, shaping and reworking museum collections. By integrating and reworking theories about agency and materiality and by drawing on insights from Actor-Network Theory, contributors to this volume have uncovered new ways to think about relationships formed between objects and individuals and among diverse groups spread across the globe. The research also demonstrates that ethnographic collections continue to play important roles in supporting and reworking national identities as well as to challenge these through ongoing negotiations and sharing of ideas among both the guardians of these objects and their creator communities. These insights have important implications for designing curatorial practices in the future.

Curation as research. A case study in orphaned and underreported archaeological collections

“…Similar observations about the encounters between archaeological researchers and archaeological objects are emerging in relation to other issues, such as the historical and colonialist history of collecting practices (Byrne et al . 2011) and the archaeological epistemology of the non-visual senses (Weismantel 2011).…”

Approaching Archaeological Museum Collections through the Concept of Assemblage: The Case Study of the Jesuit Mission San Ignacio Miní (1610–1631)

“…We must therefore consider that despite being stored and sometimes forgotten in the archives, these archaeological collections are contemporary, with distinct life histories that are in constant development. Recently, Latour's (2005) actor network theory (ANT) has been applied to the study of museum collections to begin to envision these collections as processes that are alive, have contemporary agency, and “create and transform vast social and material assemblages” (Byrne et al 2011:15). Contemporary to these theoretical developments, several archaeologists in Brazil have begun to grapple with the role of museums in archaeological practice and outreach and the musealization of archaeology (see, for example, the special issue on the musealization of archaeology, Revista de Arqueologia 26[2] and 27[1], 2013–2014).…”

Desiring the past and reimagining the present: contemporary collecting in Qatar

“…Numerous studies have been carried out on collecting practices in the West, both personal and institutional (see for example , Benjamin 1969;Clifford 1994;Pearce 1994Pearce , 1995Akin 1996;MacDonald 2011;Byrne, Clarke, Harrison and Torrence 2011;Harrison, Byrne and Clarke 2013), as well as a studies on contemporary collecting as a performance of Western identity and a practice of twentieth and twenty-first century materialism (for example, Belk et al 1991;Belk 1995;Pearce 1998;Dilworth 2003). These studies contextualized collecting within social, cultural and political conditions, be it colonialism and the development of museum collections (Barringer 1997;Bennett 2004;Bhatti 2012;Harrison, Byrne and Clarke 2013;O'Hanlon and Welsch 2000) or consumer culture and its impact on an individual's relationship to material possessions (Belk 1995;Miller 2008).…”