{"id":1215,"date":"2011-06-08T16:34:58","date_gmt":"2011-06-08T15:34:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/2011\/06\/open-culture-2011-a-new-paradigm-for-collecting\/"},"modified":"2011-06-08T16:34:58","modified_gmt":"2011-06-08T15:34:58","slug":"open-culture-2011-a-new-paradigm-for-collecting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/2011\/06\/open-culture-2011-a-new-paradigm-for-collecting\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Culture 2011 &#8211; A new paradigm for collecting?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nick Merriman &#8211; Manchester Museum&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Nick starting to do research on how we might take more proactive approach to collecting in the future.<\/p>\n<p>[Somone? asserted] peak of the empire the heyday of collecting? Nick wants to look at post-colonial world&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Context for museums have changed and fundamentally challenge by post-colonial critique. But perhaps we have not yet got a new paradigm in post-colonial era. Disposal need to be part of approach, but what Nick thinks is particularly lacking is a sense of what future holds except rationalisation.<\/p>\n<p>Museum&#8217;s will have collecting policies &#8211; but often so broadly defined, any collecting is permitted. In Nick&#8217;s experience many museums have stopped actively collecting. Most actual collecting is patchy, based around specific disciplines &#8211; and in silos? And in some areas, collecting has ceased due to changes in legislation.<\/p>\n<p>There is some excellent practice in forming relationships with communities of origin for items. However, often investment focussed on &#8216;local&#8217; and the global aspects of collections are neglected, although the historically collected global items are still part of collection.<\/p>\n<p>Is this OK? Perhaps it is appropriate? E.g. Petrie Museum at UCL has become a closed collection &#8211; but it is being innovative in the way it engages with communities and audience &#8211; so museums don&#8217;t have to be collecting to be &#8216;alive&#8217; &#8211; although for the Petrie this was enforced rather than chosen (because of nature of collection &#8211; Egyptology)<\/p>\n<p>Nick is not axiomatic that museums *must* collect, but he believes it is part of the picture.<\/p>\n<p>What might collecting look like?<\/p>\n<ul style=\"list-style-type: disc\">\n<li>Local and global dimension<\/li>\n<li>Process would be as important as outcome &#8211; it&#8217;s about relationships &#8211; reciprocity<\/li>\n<li>Relationships can be virtual as well as face-to-face<\/li>\n<li>Collecting would be as much about digital as about objects &#8211; images and thoughts as well as specimens<\/li>\n<li>Collecting become qualitative rather than quantitative &#8211; the &#8216;relational museum&#8217; (coined by someone at Pitt-Rivers)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Vision for the future &#8211; two objectives at the Manchester Museum:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"list-style-type: disc\">\n<li>Promoting understanding between cultures<\/li>\n<li>Working towards a sustainable world<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Pursued these through programs and changes to way collection displayed &#8211; e.g the &#8216;Living World&#8217; gallery at Manchester &#8211; move to &#8216;issues based&#8217; (complimented by an App which uses data from the object database)<\/p>\n<p>Nick thinks we should think about inter-disciplinary programmme of collection development &#8211; following themes like:<\/p>\n<ul style=\"list-style-type: disc\">\n<li>Trees &#8211; forestation\/deforestation; climate change; cultural meanings<\/li>\n<li>Water: Peak districte &#038; Egypt; water management; cultural associations; biodiversity<\/li>\n<li>Cotton: Manchester and Turkey; cultivation; manufacture; meanings; distribution; consumption<\/li>\n<li>Migration: Plants and animals; movement of people and species<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Explicitly link collecting to public face &#8211; see as integrated not separate.<\/p>\n<p>Nick believes (these types) of museums to develop partnerships to university researchers (and note funding opportunities mentioned in previous session &#8211; AHRC)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nick Merriman &#8211; Manchester Museum&#8230; Nick starting to do research on how we might take more proactive approach to collecting in the future. [Somone? asserted] peak of the empire the heyday of collecting? Nick wants to look at post-colonial world&#8230; Context for museums have changed and fundamentally challenge by post-colonial critique. But perhaps we have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.meanboyfriend.com\/overdue_ideas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}