Seeing Ourselves (Asynchronous - Online Only)
The Social Archive Project: The Archive as a Multi-scalar Platform for Social Engagement and Participation. View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Thomas Kong
The paper presents a multi-disciplinary project in an ageing neighbourhood in Singapore involving elderly residents, artists, designers, students, and community-based workers in the archiving of grassroots stories, objects, and local wisdom. Over two years, participants co-created artworks, shared stories and developed spatial strategies to present the collections as part of the archival experience. In this paper, archiving is positioned as a socially engaged art practice of safekeeping, caring, sharing, and the forging of social relationships. On the other hand, the archive becomes a collective, participatory, and aspirational space situated at the intersection of the public and the cultural institution. It provides a multi-scalar platform for capacity building, intergenerational learning, and the renewal of the life of a collection.
Art as Co-creation: Materiality and Emplacement View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Rina Little
This paper presents a study about a museum and its formation of a black sense of place. Artist Fo Wilson was invited to create an installation of a slave cabin at the Lynden Sculpture Garden located in Milwaukee, the most segregated city in the US. The work imagines what an 19th-century woman of African descent who is a slave might collect. The fictional Eliza’s cabin vibrates with sensorial experiences that counter our knowledge of enslaved, Black women. We witness a “becoming,” where the materiality of the environment gives Eliza form and it in turn intra-acts with all who encounter it. People, plants, and objects act, react, and become with one another moving to co-creative relationships as Wilson calls on others to respond. All co-creations call us into connection with a web of movements, actions, and materials that construct modes of emplacement that materially and imaginatively situate historical and contemporary struggles.
When Museums Become Religious: Heritage and Conflict at Hagia Sophia Mosque
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Stephanie Machabee
In July 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Hagia Sophia Museum in Istanbul, Turkey was re-converted into a working mosque. Many celebrated while numerous others decried the change of status. This paper examines the range of reactions to this “re-sacralization” of a museum, from anxieties about site preservation; to accusations of disrespect for modern concepts of secularism and universal heritage; to celebrations by those who had long called to see Hagia Sophia function as a mosque again. What exactly was at stake in this change of status? This paper uses Hagia Sophia’s conversion as an opportunity to reflect more broadly on the categories of religious and heritage places. I ask: what is the relationship between “religious,” “heritage,” and “political” uses of historical monuments? What does a museum space offer that a religious one cannot (and vice versa)? Using on-site observations and engaging with relevant scholarship on religion and museums, I identify and contrast the different possibilities presented by Hagia Sophia as a museum and Hagia Sophia as a mosque, as well as the limitations presented by each function (regarding visitor use and access, for instance). In particular, I focus on how the notion of inclusiveness operates differently through these two types of spaces. The conflict over Hagia Sophia, I contend, points to some of the unique management and preservation challenges presented by religious cultural heritage. I conclude with some preliminary thoughts on how to address such challenges.
The Integration of Site Museums in Urban Areas of Northern China: The Luoyang Zhouwangcheng Emperor Six Horses Carriage Museum View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Chengyi Han
In 2009, the Chinese government held the Great Sites Protection Summit Forum in Luoyang city to promote site museums' integration into citizens' lives. This paper selects the Luoyang Zhouwangcheng Emperor Six Horses Carriage Museum in Luoyang as an example to explore the relationship between its exhibitioner methods and the local environment. The museum has preserved the relics of the large-scale carriage and horse pit of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty at the original discovery site since 2002. It has a branch maintaining a similar discovery in 2009 in the Tanggong Road primary school, which integrates into local architectures. Because the museum and its branch locations in the city centre of Luoyang, their design and functions reflect many challenges that site museums need to face in the process of urban integration, including the limitation of space and preservation of archaeological discoveries. By resolving these challenges, this paper suggests that the museum develops a unique way to engage citizens, which provides a useful reference for understanding site museums in China.
Fostering Diversity and Inclusion in Europeana: Lessons and Opportunities After a Year of D&I Work in a European Cultural Heritage Context View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jolan Wuyts, Marijke Everts
This paper provides insight into the work done by the Diversity and Inclusion cross-team at Europeana, following up our presentation at the Inclusive Museums Conference in 2020 where we reviewed the start of this work. In 2020 the Diversity and Inclusion cross-team was formed with the goal of exploring and designing changes to our structures to make everyone feel welcome, represented and safe at the Europeana Foundation as well as to identify areas of concern and to understand the unconscious biases within the Europeana Foundation. We share the lessons learned after a year of focusing on that goal, to spark awareness, insight and discussion across the wider Cultural Heritage space. We touch on how Europeana is hiring guest editors with unique lived experiences to write more diverse pieces of editorial content that gives a platform and a voice to underrepresented communities; our work to make our events and other digital spaces more accessible for everyone; how we're exploring ways to make the language we use in our metadata less problematic; and how we aim to support cultural heritage institutions in their decolonisation efforts. On top of that, we also touch upon our internal training that forms the beginning of creating a welcoming and safe environment at our Foundation which will eventually also run through all areas of our work.
