Zahi Hawass, the head of Egypt's Council of Antiquities is stirring it up again. This time, he has compiled a list of the great treasures of Egypt currently held by other museums, that he would like returned to Egypt. On his list: the sculptures of the builders of some of the pyramids, the Rosetta Stone, and the bust of Nefertiti. While I do think that the first two items on the list would ;egitimately make for a more cohesive narrative of Ancient Egyptian history, as I assume he wishes to do with the new museum set to open in Cairo in 2013, I call shenanigans on the bust.
First of all, Nefertiti was not an important Egyptian figure; she became so, because her bust was so compellingly modern looking, when it was discovered in the early 20th century, and she is now as iconic a symbol of Ancient Egypt as the Mona Lisa is for the Italian Renaissance. Except, while we at least know that La Gioconda is actually by Leonardo Da Vinci, we aren't sure if Nefertiti is even real. That particular bust, the famous one-eyed polychrome plaster-covered head in Berlin, is likely to be a fake. It bears little resemblance to other representations of the ancient Queen, and its sudden appearance in Europe, without a trace of it in the excavation records in Egypt, is suspicious. (It may have been smuggled out as a "worthless piece of plaster," but that's dubious. There was a booming trade in fake antiquities since the eighteenth century, and possibly earlier. Plus, late-Victorian/Edwardian archeologists often made stuff up to boost their own reputations, like in the case of Heinrich Schliemann and Troy.) So unless Hawass is planning a sophisticated exhibit of ideas which seeks to reveal, confront, and debunk accepted myths about Ancient Egypt (which is almost impossible, given his consistent public exclamations in the vein of the heroic culture of the Pharaohs, and his use therof for publicity purposes on the Discovery Channel, National Georgraphic, etc. to boost his own cult of personality), the bust should stay where it is.
The issue is clearly a political one, with Egypt seeking to use its cultural heritage to build up its national identity, just as Greece wishes to with the Elgin Marbles, etc. It's about proving one's intellectual and moral superiority over the Colonial Western Other. Except that, unfortunately for Zahi Hawass, his personality is so grating, and his pronouncements so outrageous, that no one feels subsumed by White Post-Colonial Politically Correct guilt, and not only do they not wish to send the tainted objects back, they want to hold onto them even more!
Having said all that, it's fascinating to reflect on how these antiquities got to where they are. How did the Rosetta Stone, which was discovered by the French, get to London? Why does Boston have so many granite statues? What are the identitites of the hundreds of mummies locked away in pretty much every museum in the UK? And, if the provenance is there - should they be returned to create a single museum with a single narrative in the country of their origin?
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Get back to where you once belonged
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Wonders and Cabinets, Alchemy and Imagination
I just wanted to share this with you.
It is nice that in a world so cynical, someone can make something pretty just for its own merit. And sometimes Einstein was right - imagination is more important than reason.
Enjoy,
The Museum of Lost Wonder
A Pre-History of Museopunk - Cross Posted to The Museopunk Ning
I've just finished reading Calum Storrie's The Delirious Museum. In it, the author details some really interesting, individual and subversive responses to museums and their perceived conservatism. Right from the Surrealist Movement of the early 20th century, who demanded death for the museum, through the Situationists, Construtivists and Deconstructivists, up until the radical reconstructions and museum buildings of more recent times, by figures such as Libeskind (a figure less controversial now than he was), Storrie's architecturally based history gives a glimmer of things which we might term prefigurations or earlier incarnations of the spirit of change which Museopunk embodies, or should embody.
So I want to ask you all if you have any examples of previous 'museopunk' movements, great individuals or institutions at the forefront of change. What impact did and do these movements have? And importantly, do they always, eventually, become the next 'establishment', waiting for the new generation to overturn them yet again?
Monday, November 09, 2009
Humpty-Dumpty
As those of you who watched the news today know, it is the anniversary of fall of the Berlin Wall. We had a post here on the Attic some time back about the Wall being a destination for dark tourism and some of our cohort "celebrated" today by going to a lecture on German Expressionism at New Walk museum. I had my commemorative moment by re-watching Goodbye Lenin the other night. It reminded me of my childhood.
I was born on the wrong side of the Iron Curtain. The summer I was conceived, my parents were on a road trip through Hungary, and stopped at a bookstore, so my mother (who had gone to a special language school and learned English) could buy forbidden foreign literature to keep up her English skills. There, she bumped into a woman from Germany, and for many years, they kept up a connection that crossed political boundaries. My mother recalls how she and my father were treated like exotic animals when they went to visit in the late 1980s; how much anxiety and hostility there was on the part of West Germans to reunification for cultural and political reasons. I remember with what shock I viewed the tall, lean, German woman in a floor-length fur coat who entered our two-room apartment in 1989 - she was like a glamorous alien from another world, dwarfing our lives with the unaccustomed gestures of freedom.
I don't remember the fall of the Wall. Reports of it were heavily censored in Soviet Russia, though my grandfather's seditious loyalty to the BBC World Service probably ensured that we knew before the official channels announced it. What I do remember is watching my parents' faces as the footage streamed into our living room on the tiny screen of our black-market colour television. Aged 7, I didn't understand why people scrambling over graffitied concrete was so important (I was probably more shocked by the presence of graffiti, being then, and continuing now to be, a very uptight sort of person) - I did understand, by the looks on my parents' faces, that what was happening was important, possibly life-changing. I wasn't aware, really, of the significance of the fact that my uncles had fled as refugees to the US months earlier; I didn't know that in less than a year, we would ourselves emigrate and settle in Canada. I wasn't included in adult discussions of political and religious repression, their frustration at the lack of an acceptable living standard (food shortages that lead to rationing and the spectre of Chernobyl, I do recall), or their painful knowledge that there was a better life beyond the boundary marked by the Wall which was denied to them in Moscow. But I do know, now, that the short years 1988-1991 were ones in which people-power and the will to change ended in results. It wasn't ideal (too much, too soon), but it did change my life and the lives of millions of people. November 9, 1989 was an important day, and I would venture to say, a good day.
But, lest we forget... There are still many walls.
Friday, November 06, 2009
Automatic Academic
A hilarious (in a laughter-through-tears kind of way) gizmo here will write your theory-babble for you!
Thursday, November 05, 2009
Celebrate 10 Years of RCMG!
Join us to celebrate 10 years of RCMG on Tuesday 17th November in the Lecture Hall, Museum Studies Building, University of Leicester. 5.30pm for 6pm start.
Since the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries was set up in 1999 the landscape of learning in museums has been transformed and the way museums think about their social roles and responsibilities has radically shifted. This session invites three key figures who have been part of these exciting changes to discuss and debate trends in museum thinking and practice.
It will also be a chance for you to see our new home, the new Museum Studies Building, which we moved to in September. We now have much more space and some terrific facilities.
For more information, contact: Ceri Jones
Click here for directions to the School of Museum Studies.
RCMG
The Dis/Order of Things
An interesting looking set of podcasts from Birkbeck College...Backdoor Broadcasting have a lot of interesting podcasts on their site, take a look!
"This interdisciplinary research workshop brings together postgraduates, academics from different fields, and curators to think about Enlightenment Objects and discuss questions of disciplinarity in the wake of Michel Foucault’s seminal work The Order of Things (Les Mots et Les Choses 1966)...."
http://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2009/10/the-disorder-of-things-predisciplinarity-after-foucault/
A Reminder: Materiality and Intangibility (Leicester, 14th-15th Dec 2009)
Roll up, roll up! Buy your tickets for the symposium here. ;)
Quick reminder: Leicester Museum Studies PhDs GET IN FREE. Everyone else pays the BARGAIN fee of ONLY £20 for TWO days, including LUNCHES and REFRESHMENTS.
Join us. Come on, you know you want to.
***************
Materiality and Intangibility: Contested Zones (2nd call for participation)
A two-day international symposium and live art event for PhD students and early career researchers.
Monday 14th and Tuesday 15th December 2009.
University of Leicester, UK.
Join us at the internationally–renowned School of Museum Studies this December for an exciting event organised and run by PhD students, Materiality and Intangibility: Contested Zones.
Museums and galleries are all about the material world; the preservation and display, presentation and interpretation of things to their audiences, which can include everything from everyday objects to works of art and human remains. Yet, often it is the 'intangible' elements of things – those elements that may be hidden or left unsaid - from which we draw our meanings and understandings about things. A division is often made between the obvious (the 'material') and the less obvious (the 'intangible'), a division which we believe is controversial and which often prevents the full value of material culture from being understood.
Through a series of thought-provoking presentations, specially selected for their unique and creative approach to the theme, Materiality and Intangibility: Contested Zones will challenge this fixed division between the surface and the hidden. Throughout the event, invited artists will be producing artworks in response to the theme of the Symposium and participants will be encouraged to interact and engage with presenters and artists. The event will provide an informal and supportive environment for creative thinking and opportunities for debate and the shaping of new ideas as well as dialogue between academia and the art environment.
Confirmed key note speakers: Emeritus Professor Susan Pearce, Dr Sandra Dudley and Dr Kostas Arvanitis.
The symposium and live art event costs just £20 for both days, including lunch and refreshments.
BOOKING FORM
PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME
Please refer any queries to Amy Jane Barnes.
Wednesday, November 04, 2009
Staying Healthy on a Writing Blitz
Some good advice from Barbara Samuel here. Essential reading for anyone writing-up.
CFP/Workshop: Transcending the Boundaries (Leicester, 30th Jan 2010)
Workshop run by doctoral students for Doctoral Students
On Saturday 30 January 2010 the School of Historical Studies at the University of Leicester will host a one-day workshop on 'Transcending the Boundaries: doctoral research across disciplines'.
The workshop aims to attract research students from a variety of academic disciplines, with the intention of building lasting connections between approaches, projects, departments and universities. There will be sessions on themes such as 'Art, material culture and the built environment', 'Conceptual approaches to research' and 'Sources: old and new'. We would like to hear from PhD students whose work relates to these themes, and whose research engages with material or ideas from outside the obvious confines of their discipline. While the workshop will have a substantial historical focus, speakers should not be hindered by this requirement.
Papers will be 20 minutes long and should discuss research conducted by the presenter and be of interest to historians -but beyond that, be creative!
Abstracts should be submitted to Matt Neale (mpn1@le.ac.uk) by Friday 4 December 2009.
Funding for travel costs incurred in attending the workshop will be available for speakers.
CFP/Publication: Museum Anthropology Special Issue
CALL FOR PAPERS: A special issue of Museum Anthropology
Looking Back, Looking Forward: NAGPRA after Two Decades
In 1990, the United States Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), thereby forever altering museum collections and exhibits, and the relationship between museums and Native American communities. In this special thematic issue of Museum Anthropology, we are seeking innovative studies of NAGPRA’s impacts, brief reflections and commentaries, and analyses that investigate the trends of the last two decades and anticipate what is still to come. Particularly welcomed are papers that evaluate whether NAGPRA has led to the kind of spiritual healing that it was intended to facilitate, or whether it has opened old wounds (or made new ones). Viewpoints are encouraged from Native Americans, tribal representatives, museum professionals, federal employees, lawyers, archaeologists, physical anthropologists, and other academic scholars.
NEW DEADLINE: FEBRUARY 1, 2010
The top peer-reviewed comments and articles will be published in the fall of 2010 (vol. 33, n. 2). Initial submissions should not exceed 8,000 words including notes, tables, and references. Inquiries and manuscripts should be sent via email to muaeditor@gmail.com.
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
Pondering on Aphorisms...
We live in a human dream; being one in which everything appears purely in the guise of its human utility, and held in place by its human name. Name are small and sinister metaphors which restrict, absolutely, the use of an object. Our eyes open to this madness every morning; at night we dream within the dream; whole lives are spent without as much as a ripple of doubt on its surface. But when the object is allowed to shrug off its name, it begins the long road back to its own intrinsic mystery - and on finally reaching the core of its own estranging fire, radiates until the whole world is unified by it. The paperclip or the rose; either could open the path back to our awakening.
From Don Paterson, The Book of Shadows
I thought this had interesting things to say in regard to museums and material culture generally, and I'd like to hear what you think too.
So, discuss away!
Some Positions At Trinity Library, Dublin
There are several research positions available at Trinity Library in Dublin - if you're interested clickyclicky for details...
http://www.tcd.ie/longroomhub/Fellowships/
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