An in-depth exploration of the ethical issues involved in collecting, preserving, researching, and exhibiting collections and archives.
Featuring insights from a range of scholars and collection practitioners, Unearthing Collections reconsiders the ethics of collections and archives through the lens of temporality. The volume explores the concept of “unearthing,” meaning the extractive process of uncovering the unknown, and advocates for processes of “re-earthing” to foster new ethical approaches among archivists and museum professionals in preserving and engaging with remnants of the past. It examines a diverse selection of case studies—from film and photography to medical history, geology, and contemporary art—to demonstrate how ethical challenges intersect across different types of collections and archives.
Featuring insights from a range of scholars and collection practitioners, Unearthing Collections reconsiders the ethics of collections and archives through the lens of temporality. The volume explores the concept of “unearthing,” meaning the extractive process of uncovering the unknown, and advocates for processes of “re-earthing” to foster new ethical approaches among archivists and museum professionals in preserving and engaging with remnants of the past. It examines a diverse selection of case studies—from film and photography to medical history, geology, and contemporary art—to demonstrate how ethical challenges intersect across different types of collections and archives.
Table of Contents
List of figures
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Re-earthing traces: rethinking ethics in collections and archives through the lens of temporality Magdalena Buchczyk, Martin Fonck, Tomás J. Usón and Tina Palaic
Part I: Durabilities
1 Of networks and molecules: reflections on ephemerality, museum practice and webs of relation after disappearance
Lee Douglas
2 Inside the climatic cube: the ideology of preservation
Pablo Martínez
3 Buddhism, death and thermodynamics: decentring the language of conservation expertise
Ayesha Fuentes
4 Film archives and energy: tracing heritage policies between land colonisation and collective agency
Alberto Berzosa
5 Ice as trace: correspondences and conflicts around earthly archives in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru Tomás J. Usón and Sandra Jasper
Part II: Occlusions
6 Medical wax moulages and regimes of looking and overlooking
Órla O’Donovan and Róisín O’Gorman
7 A ’rare and invaluable’ gift: indigenous bodies, academic prestige and anthropological practices
Diego Ballestero
8 Reimagining the habitat diorama for the Anthropocene
Susanne Kass
Part III: Crystallisations
9 Miners’ film workshop: opening the archive of Ateliers Varan
Miguel Errazu, Miguel Hilari and Isabel Seguí
10 Decolonising museums in East-Central Europe: case studies of Poland, Czechia, Slovenia and Croatia
Tina Palaic, Anna Remešová, Magdalena Zych and Marija Živkovic
11 Collecting your own past: bottom-up museums and the moral economy of collections
Miguel Mesa del Castillo and Juan Manuel Zaragoza Bernal
Afterword: Re-earthing the past
Pratik Chakrabarti
Index
List of contributors
Acknowledgements
Re-earthing traces: rethinking ethics in collections and archives through the lens of temporality Magdalena Buchczyk, Martin Fonck, Tomás J. Usón and Tina Palaic
Part I: Durabilities
1 Of networks and molecules: reflections on ephemerality, museum practice and webs of relation after disappearance
Lee Douglas
2 Inside the climatic cube: the ideology of preservation
Pablo Martínez
3 Buddhism, death and thermodynamics: decentring the language of conservation expertise
Ayesha Fuentes
4 Film archives and energy: tracing heritage policies between land colonisation and collective agency
Alberto Berzosa
5 Ice as trace: correspondences and conflicts around earthly archives in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru Tomás J. Usón and Sandra Jasper
Part II: Occlusions
6 Medical wax moulages and regimes of looking and overlooking
Órla O’Donovan and Róisín O’Gorman
7 A ’rare and invaluable’ gift: indigenous bodies, academic prestige and anthropological practices
Diego Ballestero
8 Reimagining the habitat diorama for the Anthropocene
Susanne Kass
Part III: Crystallisations
9 Miners’ film workshop: opening the archive of Ateliers Varan
Miguel Errazu, Miguel Hilari and Isabel Seguí
10 Decolonising museums in East-Central Europe: case studies of Poland, Czechia, Slovenia and Croatia
Tina Palaic, Anna Remešová, Magdalena Zych and Marija Živkovic
11 Collecting your own past: bottom-up museums and the moral economy of collections
Miguel Mesa del Castillo and Juan Manuel Zaragoza Bernal
Afterword: Re-earthing the past
Pratik Chakrabarti
Index