2022 Folio 1: Collecting the Now
Topic Group 1: Culture - Material World
What assessment are we working towards?You will make an actual proposal to the History Trust of South Australia, recommending two artefacts they should collect to represent the remarkable years 2020, 2021 or 2022. One artefact will be personally significant to you, while the second will be of state or nation-wide significance.
You'll bookend your proposal by showing an understanding of the role social history museums play and discussing the COVID Letters project as an example of a different approach to "collecting the now". |
(1) Background about GLAM
There are a number of cultural institutions that collect and take care of evidence of our material world. They are known as the "GLAM" sector: galleries, libraries, archives, and museums. Key parts of their role include:
- Creating and caring for collections
- Presenting exhibitions
- Conducting and supporting research
- Educating visitors including young people
Narrowing our focus down to museums, there are many different types, sometimes housed together:
Many museums were founded in the 19th century (1800s), beginning with the wealthy sharing their collections with the public. One aim was “civilising” the middle classes by educating people about “big history”. In contrast, Social History is the history of everyday people. The difficulty is that everyday artefacts are often lost and certainly weren't considered important enough for traditional museums to collect.
In line with egalitarian social attitudes of that time, Social History and Social History Museums became popular around the world in the 1970s. The History Trust is our main social history organisation in South Australia, founded just over 40 years ago in 1981. It originally included the Migration Museum, Maritime Museum, and Motor Museum, and now includes the Centre for Democracy. We will be having Lindl Lawson, Senior Curator from the History Trust, as a guest speaker. She will discuss how the museums have been collecting South Australian artefacts relating to COVID-19, give us a glimpse behind the scenes at their collections, and share the amazing stories behind some of their artefacts. |
(3) Artefacts
Social history museums around the world are collecting evidence of how the world has changed since the pandemic started in late 2019. Here are some examples:
We will explore a range of artefacts to further understand how a Social History museum curator decides whether it is worth adding an artefact to a collection.
Below are FOUR KEY CONCEPTS that we will cover and that you should try to consider in your proposals to the History Trust.
Below are FOUR KEY CONCEPTS that we will cover and that you should try to consider in your proposals to the History Trust.
Diving into SIGNIFICANCE
Selecting 100 objects to represent World, Australian, and South Australian history |
|
Download "Object 101" podcast from here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nrtd2/episodes/downloads
Further information about 'Dark Water, Burning World' can be found here: www.ruthpadel.com/about/migration/dark-water-burning-world/ |
An object is "perhaps the best way to make an experience graspable
to those of us who have not had to live through it."
Neil MacGregor, Object 101 podcast
(4) A different approach
|
Social history museums tend to be passive collectors of the present - observers of society collecting material artefacts as evidence of what was happening at that time. But sometimes they go out of their way to actually create artefacts as a snapshot of the present.
One example is the Migration Museum's community banner collection. We will look at the Foundling Museum in London and their partnership with Jonny Banger for the COVID Letters project. A very different way of collecting for you to evaluate! |