This article examines the question of how can museum professionals and the interested public resolve the competing claims of traditional ownership and continuing scientific research in relation to museum collections.

Regarding museums as potential sites of formal learning, this article describes an innovative workshop for postgraduate researchers in philosophy and religious studies that was designed to serve as a template for other initiatives. It showcases pathways between research in the arts and humanities and museums’ collections. It is of use to scholars interested in exploring ways to use museum collections for research in arts and humanities disciplines.

The actual and potential uses of holograms in museum displays, and the philosophy of knowledge and progress that they represent. Magazine journalists, museum curators, and historians sometimes face similar challenges in making topics or technologies relevant to wider audiences. To varying degrees, they must justify the significance of their subjects of study by identifying a newsworthy slant, a pedagogical role, or an analytical purpose. This chasse au trésor may skew historical story telling itself. In science and technology studies, (...) the problem potentially is worst for those subjects that do not retain an enduring capacity for spectacle or do not readily conform to templates of progress or economic importance. The case of holography is an excellent illustration of these points. An unusually wide-ranging subject, holography has attracted competing interpretations of intellectual novelty, technological application, and cultural significance. This paper examines the history of museum collections and exhibits of holography from the explosion of interest in the technique in 1964 to the end of the twentieth century. I argue that holography presents a particular challenge to museum collections and to popular representations of the history of science and technology. (shrink)

This paper argues that any museum's collecting policy must face up to the problem of vulnerability. Taking as a starting point an item in the collections of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, I argue that the basic responsibility of museums to collect ‘things’, and to communicate information about them in a truthful way brings their collecting practice into the epistemological domain of testimony and into the normative domain of ethics. Museums are public spaces of memory, testimony, (...) representation and interpretation that at once enable humanity to hold to account those who transgress while at the same time holding to account those who witness these transgressions. By virtue of this, museums can be considered spaces of ethics wherein testimonial and hermeneutic injustice can be confronted and challenged. (shrink)

Journal of Chinese Philosophy, EarlyView.

The astrolabe is an instrument designed to measure the altitude of celestial bodies in order to tell time by day or by night. An astrolabe in the Royal Ontario Museum’s collections was acquired at auction in 1988. According to the auction catalogue, it was made in Morocco, dated 1845. Years later, in preparation for a university course on the history of science, this writer’s scrutiny of the astrolabe’s inscribed features and physical condition suggested that it was a forgery. (...) The paper explains the reasoning behind the judgement of falsehood. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Semiotica Jahrgang: 2018 Heft: 221 Seiten: 53-69.

This work is an attempt to explore both the increase in and the breadth of popular collecting in Britain. It does this by examining the contexts of social change over the past 20 years. This change, it is argued, has led to a culture of social and material insecurity, in which collecting is used for the creating and defence of identity. The social theory of Guy Debord is employed as an underlying philosophy in which contemporary popular collecting is interpreted as (...) an expression of a moral value system in a society driven by market forces. The social world and values of collectors are explored through their clubs. These, it is asserted, comprise an alternative society, one in which a legitimization of the collector's activities and preferences can be made and in which they develop a complementary reality. (shrink)

Many millions of geological specimens are contained in geological museums throughout the world. These collections, some of which date back to the sixteenth century, constitute a rich resource for historians of the geological sciences. The utilization of this resource has been uneven, due to a number of factors, including the background of the researcher, and the state of the collections. In the past two decades major strides have been made in the documentation of collections held in British (...) museums, and compendia, including those for collections in other countries, are now available. Geological collections provide quality primary source material, and can shed light on a range of interesting topics including the nature and scope of geological travels, the often complex relationships between geologists and collectors, and the rationale behind the formulation of geological theories by earlier geologists. (shrink)

Many millions of geological specimens are contained in geological museums throughout the world. These collections, some of which date back to the sixteenth century, constitute a rich resource for historians of the geological sciences. The utilization of this resource has been uneven, due to a number of factors, including the background of the researcher, and the state of the collections. In the past two decades major strides have been made in the documentation of collections held in British (...) museums, and compendia, including those for collections in other countries, are now available. Geological collections provide quality primary source material, and can shed light on a range of interesting topics including the nature and scope of geological travels, the often complex relationships between geologists and collectors, and the rationale behind the formulation of geological theories by earlier geologists. (shrink)

Museums have a long history and practice of trafficking in looted antiquities. An account of the moral mission of museums and the moral obligations of museum trustees is given. Based on that account, a moral critique of the actions of museums and their trustees is provided, addressing some of the rationales that museums and their trustees have offered for justifying this activity of trafficking. Some of the rationale examined involves arguments regarding collective responsibility. It is argued that the loss (...) of provenance and provenience resulting from this practice is a particularly significant moral harm done to humanity as a whole. I argue that it is a mistake to categorize human remains and cultural artifacts as property and doing so is one source of the morally problematic activity. (shrink)

This article concerns the conflict between copyright and museums’ digitisation and online sharing of collections. This issue has recently become particularly important in connection with the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors outline the concept of a virtual museum and present the most important copyright provisions in EU law that may create obstacles for cultural institutions in realising virtual counterparts. To perceive copyright as the main obstacle in the process of digitisation and online sharing of collections is not unusual. (...) Hence, the article briefly presents legal framework of the European copyright applicable to such situations. The authors argue that although copyright offers a range of possibilities for museums interested in digitising their collections, at the same time it is responsible for a _chilling effect_, resulting in fear of potential infringement and liability. The authors conclude that the EU’s development of new legislation, coinciding with the need for digitisation and online sharing of cultural heritage caused by the pandemic, has favoured public interest at the expense of creators’ rights, but still lacks satisfactory legal tools for effectively allowing cultural institutions to digitise and share their collections. (shrink)

Two different kinds of collections have been used to anticipate influenza pandemics: viral strains and bird specimens. These collections have been organized in museums and data banks to fill the gaps when specimens were decaying or when viral strains were missing. This article asks how collecting practices changed when such collections integrated specimens from China, considered a reservoir of influenza viruses and bird species, following a recurrent critical trope that Chinese specimens were missing. The article shows that (...) techniques for hunting viruses and birds were used to accumulate information so as to mitigate the global threat of species extinction. It suggests that in sentinel territories, museums transform samples and specimens into signs and images of future catastrophic events. (shrink)

This paper aims to demonstrate how museum collection sustainability is grounded in a range of concrete care practices that are social and material. It explores the unstable nature of heritage materials, drawing on the ecological approach of infrastructure and maintenance studies in the field of art and museums. To do this, I analyse the role of mundane operations in the daily functioning of an exhibition area, presenting data from fieldwork I conducted from 2015–2016 at the Musée du quai Branly (...) in Paris, which preserves collections of art and ethnology from outside Europe. I observed the museum's preventive conservation practices, which work to minimise the risks of material deterioration of heritage objects, focusing attention on stabilising the relationship between objects and their environments. These practices contribute to the construction of the temporalities of museum objects. In exploring the means and devices of preserving these heritage objects, the very assumption of perpetuation is destabilised. Environments continually unfold with the silent material metamorphosis of objects. The exhibition becomes a place of flows, where a multitude of entities circulate and cohabit at different scales, such as insects, dust, and powdery fragments. The daily human work of vacuuming, cleaning, trapping, and measuring provide a set of actions united with other entities engaged in the material life of the exhibited object. As we zoom in on the exhibition space, different timelines emerge that are inextricably linked to the different lives of the museum. (shrink)

Journal Name: Semiotica Issue: Ahead of print.

In the Spring of 1944, an informal discussion took place in Cambridge between Mr. R. S. Whipple, Professor Allan Ferguson and Mr. F. H. C. Butler, concerning the formation of a national Society for the History of Science. This is the opening sentence of the inaugural issue of the Bulletin of the British Society for the History of Science, the Society's first official publication. Butler himself was the author of this outline account of the subsequent approach to the Royal Society, (...) the parallel moves to establish a National Committee of the International Academy of the History of Science, the formation of a provisional committee to prepare a draft constitution for a national society, and the proceedings of the first Annual General Meeting in May 1947. Whipple had been in Cambridge to discuss his offer to present his collection of old scientific instruments to the University and the possible foundation of a new museum, and Butler, as Secretary of the History of Science Committee in Cambridge, was the chief mover in both this development and an initiative coupled with it to establish a department of the history of science. (shrink)

Jade products that imitate ancient Chinese art samples are a special kind of objects that, in their form and decor, are close to or likened to more ancient works of arts and crafts. The article explores the artistic form and characteristic features of imitations of ancient jade products of the Qing era, presented in the collections of Russian museums and the Palace Museum of China. The object of the study are objects of Chinese art of jade carving, which (...) are in the collection of the Palace Museum (Beijing), the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography. Peter the Great (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences (St. Petersburg) and the State Museum of Oriental Art (Moscow), where the use of imitations of ancient objects was discovered. Artistic analysis of jade imitations allows us to conclude that the works of the Qing era were more complex and diverse in form, decor and carving techniques compared to Han products, while the craftsmen, although they managed to preserve the classical sophistication of objects, lost the severity and solemnity of Han jade. As well as the art history analysis of the works, one can see that the forms and decors of jade objects are the product of aesthetic consciousness. The novelty of this study lies in the fact that the varieties and features of imitations of ancient jade during the Qing Dynasty are summarized, and the huohuan technique in jade processing is confirmed. This may be of interest to researchers in related scientific fields. (shrink)

This groundbreaking book is the first to provide a critical overview of the relationship between contemporary ceramics and curatorial practice in museum culture. Ceramic objects form a major part of museum collections, with connections to anthropology, archaeology and other disciplines that engage with the cultural and social history of humankind. In recent years museums have provided the impetus for cutting-edge artistic practice, either as a response to particular collections, or as part of exhibitions. But the question (...) of how museums have staged contemporary ceramics and how ceramic artists respond to museum collections has not been the subject of published research to date. This book examines how ceramic artists have, over the last decade, begun to animate museum collections in new ways, and reflects on the impact that these new initiatives have had in the broad context of visual culture. Ceramics in the Expanded Field is the culmination of a three-year AHRC funded project, and reflects its major findings. It brings together leading international voices in the field of ceramics, research undertaken throughout the project and papers delivered at the concluding conference. By examining the benefits and constraints of interventions and the dialogue between ceramics and museological practice, this book will bring focus to an area of museology that has not yet been theorized, and will contribute to policy debates and art practice. (shrink)

This paper explores the process from museumization to decolonization through an examination of a Haida eagle mask currently on display in the Exploring Medicine gallery at the Science Museum in London. While elements of this discussion are well developed in some disciplines, such as Indigenous studies, anthropology and museum and heritage studies, this paper approaches the topic through the history of science, where decolonization and global perspectives are still gaining momentum. The aim therefore is to offer some opening (...) perspectives and methods on how historians of science can use the ideas and approaches relating to decolonization in other fields, and apply them constructively to the history of science, particularly in museum settings. Decolonization is a complicated process and the focus of this paper is squarely on the preliminary steps of its implementation. To understand this process fully, the paper will recontextualize the Indigenous history of the Haida eagle mask at the Science Museum through a careful reconstruction of its provenance record. Through this process it will expose the politics of erasure and hidden voices in museum collections. (shrink)