Museum Archives Research Articles

Introduction to the Dialogues on Latin American Art(ists) from/in Canada

This Dialogues section seeks to contribute to the scholarship on Latin American art in Canada and “Latinx Canadian art.” We aim to broaden the historical and current narratives of art and artists from Latin America north of the United States, taking into account Canada’s history of migration and its official bilingual status (French-English), multilingual and multicultural reality, and relationship with Indigenous peoples. Adding to the urgency of studying the presence of Latin American art in Canada, there is also a need to focus on the work of artists and curators with a Latin American background. They are developing languages of expression, practices, and aesthetics that no longer conform to the “Latin American art” category. It is thus essential to highlight the multiple artistic initiatives that are allowing them to gain visibility and recognition within both the local and global artistic milieus. We posit that today it is almost impossible to overlook both the historical and the ongoing presence of Latin American art and artists in Canada and the recent emergence of a vibrant, ever-expanding contemporary Latinx Canadian art scene. This section proposes six groundbreaking contributions that, from coast to coast, offer further data and analysis, case studies, and investigations into museum archives: from Vancouver to Montréal, from pre-Columbian art and material culture to contemporary art, from the Chilean diaspora of the 1970s to more recent migration waves, from curatorial strategies to the classroom.

Encounters with “Latin American Art” in Canada

This Dialogues section seeks to contribute to the scholarship on Latin American art in Canada and “Latinx Canadian art.” We aim to broaden the historical and current narratives of art and artists from Latin America north of the United States, taking into account Canada’s history of migration and its official bilingual status (French-English), multilingual and multicultural reality, and relationship with Indigenous peoples. Adding to the urgency of studying the presence of Latin American art in Canada, there is also a need to focus on the work of artists and curators with a Latin American background. They are developing languages of expression, practices, and aesthetics that no longer conform to the “Latin American art” category. It is thus essential to highlight the multiple artistic initiatives that are allowing them to gain visibility and recognition within both the local and global artistic milieus. We posit that today it is almost impossible to overlook both the historical and the ongoing presence of Latin American art and artists in Canada and the recent emergence of a vibrant, ever-expanding contemporary Latinx Canadian art scene. This section proposes six groundbreaking contributions that, from coast to coast, offer further data and analysis, case studies, and investigations into museum archives: from Vancouver to Montréal, from pre-Columbian art and material culture to contemporary art, from the Chilean diaspora of the 1970s to more recent migration waves, from curatorial strategies to the classroom.

„Hajme mužně pravdy, práva...“: Fotografické album osobností ze Sbírek Bohuslava Duška v Archivu Národního muzea

„Let us manfully hold truths, rights...“ Photographic album of personalities from the Bohuslav Dušek Collection in the Archives of the National Museum One of the traces of Bohuslav Dušek’s extensive collecting and patronage activities is the archival collection stored in the National Museum Archives. It includes (under the inventory number 1744) a photographic album containing portrait photographs (business card format) of important personalities of Czech political, cultural and public life in the second half of the 19th century. The collection of photographs is both an important iconographic source for the history of Czech society in the 19th century and a very interesting insight into the production of important photographic studios of the time. Apart from the content analysis of the photographic album (represented photographic studios, personalities, the role of the photographic album in society), attention is also paid to the question of the physical condition of the album as an artefact forming part of the national cultural heritage.

Увековечение памяти погибших пожарных в Венгрии

The authors analyze the experience of searching data and keeping alive the memory of firemen and personnel of Civil Defense of Hungary, who gave their lives while performing professional duties. Studying the surviving sources and documents from Budapest Disaster Central Museum archives and receiving information from regional directorates made it possible to set the names of 124 firemen who perished in the period from 1861 to 2013. The list does not include the names of those who died at the fronts of the two world wars.

The history of the keyboard instrument MNP I 49 from the Museum of Musical Instruments in Poznań. the state of research

The keyboard instrument MNP I 49 from the Museum of Musical Instruments in Poznań has not been a subject of detailed academic studies yet, but there have been mentions of it in various types of publications throughout the years. The item is currently placed in the exhibition hall devoted to the art of the Baroque era in the Museum of Applied Arts in Poznań. It is a unique historical item in the Polish collection due to a very scarce number of harpsichords preserved in Poland. This situation is mainly a result of two world wars in the 20th century. Due to not enough available sources, the exact time of the creation of the instrument and the name of its builder were impossible to determine. The aim of the present article was to compile and arrange previous knowledge about the historical item MNP I 49. The work lists source materials and publications in which the instrument was mentioned, such as documents from the National Archive in Poznań, Raczyński Library in Poznań and National Museum Archive in Poznań. Based on the available source materials, the author was able to determine that the harpsichord appeared at the Skórzewski family’s palace in Czerniejewo before 1855.

FIELD RESEARCH AND VISUAL RECORDING OF RELIGIOUS PRACTICES IN THE SOVIET PERIOD (CASE STUDY OF THE FILM AND VIDEO ARCHIVES OF THE ESTONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM)

The article describes and analyzes film and video materials containing information on the topic of religious practices of the Finno-Ugric peoples in the Soviet period. The main sources of the research are archival audiovisual records created by the staff of the Estonian National Museum in the period from the 1960s to the early 1990 s, as well as field diaries of participants in the Finno-Ugric expeditions. This was the time when official atheism prevailed in the Soviet Union, the main blow of which was directed primarily at the churches. At the same time, this was a period when open persecution of traditional rituals was not observed, and the study of the worldview aspects of the traditional culture of different ethnic groups was strongly encouraged by ethnology. On the basis ofaudiovisual materials, the article analyzes which fragments of the religious practices of the Finno-Ugric peoples are reflected in the museum archives, and which methods were used by researchers to record different rituals. Much attention is paid to building the relationship between the ethnologist and the bearer of the tradition in the field, as well as the special role of the local mediator in the study of religious rituals through a film or video camera. The considered examples of collecting audiovisual material confirm that in the Soviet period, in contrast to today's digital technologies and the usual practice of photographing and filming various (including sacred) events, researchers with a camera were not always welcomed at prayers. In the audiovisual study of religious rites, the process of adaptation to the environment of the culture under study and the effect of building a first impression acquired particular importance for ethnologists, largely related to the authority of the local mediator who brought them to prayers.

The Politics of Nostalgia: Colorization, Spectatorship and the Archive

Colorization describes the digitization and retrospective addition of color to photographic and film materials (celluloid nitrate, glass negatives) initially made and circulated in a black-and-white format. Revisiting the controversial 1980s colorization of 24 classic Hollywood studio titles, which incited debate over questions of copyright, authorship and artistic expression, this essay examines the use of colorization to interpret museum collections for new audiences. The aesthetics of colorization have been criticized for prioritizing image content over the history of film technologies, practices and exhibition. An examination of They Shall Not Grow Old (Jackson, 2018) finds a use of digital editing and coloring techniques in the colorization of First World War film footage held in the Imperial War Museum archives that is familiar to the director’s fiction films. Jackson’s film is a commemorative project, yet the “holistic unity” of authorial technique operates across fragments of archive film and photographs to imbricate of fiction and nonfiction, signaling vital questions around the ethics and ideologies of “natural color”, historiography, and the authenticity of materials and spectator experience.

THE DIMENSION OF «EXPERIMENTAL CULTURE»: ANATOMY, SOCIAL PEDOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGICAL REFLEXOLOGY AS COMPONENTS OF ART EDUCATION AT THE KYIV ART INSTITUTE

Abstract. The article examines the problems of art education in the 1920s of Kyiv Art Institute in the context of interdisciplinary links and tasks of ideological education. The educational process in art educational institutions, such as Kyiv Art Institute, received its ideological and philosophical basis in the early Soviet period, according to which traditional approaches to art education were deconstructed, curricula were changed, new disciplines were introduced, etc. Understanding the essence of the educational process in this period is the key to understanding the artistic culture of the early USSR in general. In the course of this study, both general scientific methods, such as formal analysis, historical, biographical, typologically systematic, problem and logical, and empirical, as well as cultural and historical, which belongs to art history methods, were used. For the first time, this study highlights the origins and stages of formation of such disciplines as Anatomy, Social Pedology and Physiological Reflexology, which were taught at Kyiv Art Institute in the 1920s of the 20th century. The article makes up for an insufficiency in the data about the history of development and scientific and methodological approach in teaching these disciplines based on the autor’s processing of archival documentation kept in the funds of the Central State Archive Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine. The aim of the article is to study the curriculum of the Kyiv Art Institute in the 1920s of the 20th century on the basis of primary sources, to analyze new approaches and interdisciplinary connections of the new curriculum, the place and significance of such disciplines as Anatomy, Social Pedology and Physiological Reflexology. The article is based on primary sources and archival data, such as abstracts of lectures on Ukrainian, Pedology, Anatomy, Philosophy, which were listened to by Professor O. K. Bohomazov, were found by the author of the article in the funds of the Central State Archive Museum of Literature and Art of Ukraine.

Review: Can’t Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop’s Blockbuster Year, by Michaelangelo Matos

Review: <i>Can’t Slow Down: How 1984 Became Pop’s Blockbuster Year</i>, by Michaelangelo Matos

Women in the World Rugby Museum archive in three case studies

ABSTRACT An object without a story offers limited interpretation options to a conscientious museum team. The World Rugby Museum (WRM) houses objects classified as national treasures, such as the Calcutta Cup, but it is also home to a miscellaneous collection related to the history of female participation in rugby union. The newly refurbished WRM is dedicated to telling the multidimensional history of rugby, including women’s rugby. However, the gender bias of rugby as a male-dominated sport is reflected in the archives, and some of the female-specific archival sources have yet to be entirely understood. The collaboration between museum and academic partner through a research student allows the rich, but admittedly limited, sources at the WRM to be explored to their full potential, providing opportunities for further interpretation within exhibitions, and to expand the WRM archives regarding the history of women in rugby union. This paper presents three case studies to illustrate the ways in which the WRM is benefitting from a collaborative doctoral research project.

Evidence of human movements and exchange seen from curated obsidian artifacts on the Korean Peninsula

We report the analysis by LA-ICP-MS of 204 obsidian artifacts obtained from museum archives in the Republic of Korea. They were recovered at Bronze Age, Neolithic and Paleolithic sites, with some of the excavations dating back to the 1920s. For the Paleolithic sites, most samples utilise the ‘Paektusan’ source located in the region of Mount Paektu in DPR Korea. However, for the Sinhwari site we find the obsidian originates from sources on Kyushu Island, Japan, which is of considerable interest since this is only the second reported case of Japanese obsidian at a Paleolithic site on the Korean Peninsula. Ours is the first comprehensive provenance study for Neolithic obsidians from archaeological sites on the Korean Peninsula. We find that obsidian from Neolithic settlements on the southern coast of Korea also originates from sources on Kyushu Island; while some rare artifacts from inland sites correspond with the Paektusan source. Additionally, we identify three new geochemical groups and sub-groups of the Paektusan obsidian on top of the existing three classes that have been recognised.

THE INDONESIAN ALCOVE AT THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY: Art, Culture Areas, and the Mead‐Bateson Bali Project

abstract Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson were iconic figures whose contributions to visual anthropology are well documented, but what is less well known is their role as collectors and curators of Indonesian objects. The American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) houses a large Balinese collection with numerous textiles, paintings, carvings, and puppets. Some of these objects were housed in permanent exhibits, such as the AMNH’s Hall of Pacific People (HOPP), curated by Mead, or displayed temporarily in the Museum of Modern Art’s traveling exhibit, curated by Bateson. Against this backdrop, this article adds to the critical discussion of curating, anthropological history, and categorization schemes in Western museums by exploring how Bali and Java came to be so prominent in the AMNH’s Indonesian alcove. Stimulated by visitor responses to exhibits, museum archives, ethnographic notes, and actual physical displays, it traces how Mead and Bateson’s study (1936–1938) of “culture areas” and traits such as “art” in Bali influenced the representation of Indonesia. The alcove’s emphasis on art and aesthetics as forms of cultural equanimity and consistency can be related to prevailing hierarchies of religion and technological development as well as how ahistoricism became an anthropological device of freezing, categorizing, and representing. [Bali, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, art, ahistoricism]

Japanese Bronze Bells in Switzerland

Western museums hold numerous Japanese objects, typically gathered by collectors during travels in Japan and then donated to local institutions. This simple scenario is by no means always the case, as can be seen with the numerous Japanese bronze bells in Swiss museum collections. The story of how the bells changed from holding significant functions within Japanese monastic and secular communities to being sold for their materiality and sheer weight as they travel across the globe tells a complex story of how objects change in meaning as they travel. As the bells were eventually relegated to museum archives, their stories help to shed light on global transfers, interculturality, and cultural misunderstandings, as they narrowly escape destruction. Their stories show the futility of claiming global understanding of art when, despite globalization, we are in the end products of our own localized traditions and understandings.

A Smart Archive Box for Museum Artifact Monitoring Using Battery-Less Temperature and Humidity Sensing.

For the first time, this paper reports a smart museum archive box that features a fully integrated wireless powered temperature and humidity sensor. The smart archive box has been specifically developed for microclimate environmental monitoring of stored museum artifacts in cultural heritage applications. The developed sensor does not require a battery and is wirelessly powered using Near Field Communications (NFC). The proposed solution enables a convenient means for wireless sensing with the operator by simply placing a standard smartphone in close proximity to the cardboard archive box. Wireless sensing capability has the advantage of enabling long-term environmental monitoring of the contents of the archive box without having to move and open the box for reading or battery replacement. This contributes to a sustainable preventive conservation strategy and avoids the risk of exposing the contents to the external environment, which may result in degradation of the stored artifacts. In this work, a low-cost and fully integrated NFC sensor has been successfully developed and demonstrated. The developed sensor is capable of wirelessly measuring temperature and relative humidity with a mean error of 0.37 °C and ±0.35%, respectively. The design has also been optimized for low power operation with a measured peak DC power consumption of 900 μW while yielding a 4.5 cm wireless communication range. The power consumption of the NFC sensor is one of the lowest found in the literature. To the author’s knowledge, the NFC sensor proposed in this paper is the first reporting of a smart archive box that is wirelessly powered and uniquely integrated within a cardboard archive box.

Interpretation and Reconstruction of Traditional Rituals on Semiotic Approach (Shor Rite ‘Shachig’)

The position is substantiated according to which the preservation of the rite as an object of ethnocultural heritage in modern conditions is possible through bringing it into a museum state. It is argued that this process should be based on the fixation of the rite during the period of its existence in the natural socio-cultural environment, the results of which were reflected in the field diaries of ethnographers stored in museum archives. The authors point to the main difference between the “inheri tor of tradition” and the “bearer of tradition”, which is the fragmentation and discreteness of the information available to the latter, which is insufficient to recreate the complex image of the traditional rite. The potential of the proposed methodology for interpreting and reconstructing traditional rituals is revealed on the example of the Shor rite ‘Shachig’. The authors analyze modern national-social variations in the interpretation of ethnographic information about the rite of the first third of the XX century. It is shown that the superficial processing of the information contained in the sources and the incorrect decoding of the codes leads to the transformation of the descriptions of all elements and the material component of the rite. As a scientifically grounded alternative, reconstruction and interpretation of this rite from the standpoint of a semiotic approach is proposed, based on a comprehensive analysis of all its elements (actional, verbal, objective) and considering temporal and local characteristics.

Tradition, Modernisation, Création: Tensions in French Craft, 1960-1990

Is it possible that in the middle of the twentieth-century, craft in France died? There is evidence that suggests it was at least on the brink of extinction, especially in the wake of its implication in fascist propaganda during World War II. A file of newspaper clippings collected during the 1960s and 1970s by curator Georges Henri Rivière at the Musée National des Arts and Traditions Populaires report on the impending disappearance of craft practices in the French countryside. A close reading of these articles reveals how discourse on regional craft was representative of a larger misperception of rural lifestyles as being overcome by modernization, when in fact the two existed simultaneously and even reciprocally. A shift away from these perceptions and towards the creative potential of craft is represented in a series of exhibitions organized at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris during the 1970s and 1980s; however, the curatorial, critical, and public reception as documented in the museum archives expose the challenges of locating craft within an artistic context. Drawing on comparative, transnational, and postcolonial methodologies, this article explores how these two archival sources frame the tensions between tradition and modernity within the category of craft in France.

О коллекциях из первого русского кругосветного плавания 1803-1806 гг. в этнографическом собрании НИИ и Музея антропологии МГУ

The article analyzes the collections from the ethnographic fund of the Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology of Moscow State University, which characterize the material culture of the indigenous inhabitants of the Marquesas and Hawaiian Islands, as well as the Sitka Island. The archival documents of the Rumyantsev Museum, stored in the Department of Manuscripts of the Russian State Library, and the scientific archives of the Museum of Anthropology (transfer certificates, inventories, and labels) were used for reconstruction of the items’ origin. The collections were also analyzed according to the history of their collecting by Y.F. Lisyansky during his voyage on the Neva ship and compared with the textual and visual information in the published materials of the participants of the first Russian round-the-world expeditions. Results and discussion. The collections entered the Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology in the 30s and 40s of the XX century from the Museum of Peoples of the USSR - the heir of the Department of Foreign Ethnography of the Moscow Public and Rumyantsev Museum. We discovered and introduced into scientific circulation documents from the Rumyantsev Museum archive that allows to conclude that the collections belong to the first national round - the - world voyages and the oldest part of the ethnographic gathering. These documents significantly expand our knowledge on the volume and composition of Count N.P. Rumyantsev ethnographic collection transferred from St. Petersburg to Moscow. They show that this collection includes artefacts of indigenous inhabitants of the islands through which the route of the ship «Neva» under the leadership of Y.F. Lisyansky passed. A comprehensive analysis of the collections and documents confirmed the presence of artifacts received from Y.F. Lisyansky in the ethnographic storage of the Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology of Moscow State University. For the first time, the composition of the collections belonging to the oldest part of our ethnographic collection, originating from the participants of the first Russian circumnavigation, has been published.

Review: Eileen Gray, Designer and Architect

Review: <i>Eileen Gray, Designer and Architect</i>

3D Reconstruction of Cultural Heritage Sites as an Educational Approach. The Sanctuary of Delphi

In the field of cultural heritage, three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of monuments is a usual activity for many professionals. The aim in this paper focuses on the new technology educational application combining science, history, and archaeology. Being involved in almost all stages of implementation steps and assessing the level of participation, university students use tools of computer gaming platform and participate in ways of planning the virtual environment which improves their education through e-Learning. The virtual 3D environment is made with different imaging methods (helium-filled balloon, Structure for motion, 3D repository models) and a developmental plan has been designed for use in many future applications. Digital tools were used with 3D reconstructed buildings from the museum archive to Unity 3D for the design. The pilot study of Information Technology work has been employed to introduce cultural heritage and archaeology to university syllabuses. It included students with a questionnaire which has been evaluated accordingly. As a result, the university students were inspired to immerse themselves into the virtual lab, aiming to increasing the level of interaction. The results show a satisfactory learning outcome by an easy to use and real 3D environment, a step forward to fill in needs of contemporary online sustainable learning demands.

Pacifist utopias: humanitarianism, tragedy and complicity in the Second World War

Pacifist utopias: humanitarianism, tragedy and complicity in the Second World War