FROM THE ASHES: THE AFTERMATH OF THE FIRE THAT DESTROYED BRAZIL’S NATIONAL MUSEUM

Muse News | Amy Intrator 

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Yesterday marked four weeks since the devastating fire that consumed Brazil’s 200-year old National Museum. The past month has been filled with accounts of the museum’s losses and speculation about the systematic problems that led to the fire. The fire has been described as a “global tragedy” but now it’s time to consider how a “global recovery” can take shape.

Photograph capturing the fire at the National Museum of Brazil. Source.

What happened?

On September 2, 2018 an enormous fire broke out at Brazil’s National Museum in Rio de Janeiro. Officials estimated that the fire destroyed 90% of the museum’s collection of 20 million artifacts. There has been an outpouring of anger and disappointment across the world in the wake of the fire. Although the exact cause of the fire is unknown, many blame the government of Brazil for neglecting the country’s cultural institutions and letting the museum fall into disrepair. Brazil’s National Development Bank was in the process of disbursing a loan to the museum, but the funds to provide an “adequate fire safety system” came too late to save the museum.

Photograph of the exterior of the National Museum of Brazil before the fire. Source.

What was lost?

The museum’s staff are still trying to account for the losses in the collection, but the outlook is bleak for the majority of the artifacts. The museum had diverse collections including artifacts from Brazil’s Indigenous cultures, an Ancient Egypt collection, and artifacts related to anthropology and archaeology – including 11,500 year-old “Luzia,” the oldest human fossil discovered in the Americas. Many members of Brazil’s Indigenous communities have expressed the tragic loss of the museum’s Indigenous collection. The Indigenous collection included audio recordings of Indigenous leaders who have since died, and writings of languages that are now extinct. The collection represented a tangible connection to history, which has now been irrevocably severed.

Photograph of the National Museum of Brazil's display of "Luzia," an 11,500 year-old skull that was used to create a digital reconstruction of her face. Luzia was lost in the fire. Source. 

Where does recovery begin?
It is difficult to imagine a way to “rebuild” a museum that has lost such a significant piece of their collection, but there are several efforts to assist the museum. The physical rebuilding of the museum will be extremely costly, and Brazil’s government is in the process of seeking local and international assistance to fund the project. Funding the physical rebuild is one problem, but questions remain: How do you begin “recovering” a collection with few remaining traces? How can the global community support the National Museum?

“The [University of Toronto Museum Studies program] has sent a letter of support and an offer of assistance to the National Museum in Brazil,” states Dr. Cara Krmpotich, the Director of the University of Toronto Museum Studies Program. “We are approaching the situation from both top down, and bottom up, offering assistance based on needs identified by museum and scholarly colleagues in Brazil.” According to Krmpotich, assistance may come in the form of digital transcription here in Toronto, or skilled labour on the ground in Rio. The faculty will take their lead from the staff of the museum, who are likely in the process of mobilizing a strategy in the wake of the fire.

In addition to financial and scholarly efforts to help the museum, there have been several initiatives to digitally “reconstruct” the collection. Wikipedia recently launched a crowd-sourcing initiative to encourage the global community to upload photos to Wikimedia of any artifacts from the National Museum collection.

There were over 20 million objects inside the #MuseuNacional. Did you take a photo of any of them? Help us preserve the memories of as many as we can and add them to @wikicommons. Here's how to do it from your desktop: pic.twitter.com/jMwbj15Kg3

— Wikipedia (@Wikipedia) September 4, 2018

Similar digital recovery projects have sprung up across the internet, but is this the answer to large-scale restoration? Krmpotich, and many other museum professionals, would prefer to hear what the museum wants “on their terms” rather than follow the lead of a 3rd party platform. Another notable project is underway at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. The students of the University’s Museum Studies program are gathering images, videos, documents, and drawings of exhibits and artifacts in order to create a digital archive. The Federal University was in charge of the museum’s operations and collections, so the students are extremely close to situation.

The restoration of the National Museum is the priority in the wake of this tragedy, but the fire begs the question of how we can implement policies to protect the structural integrity of museums across the world. We may assume that the fire in Brazil couldn't happen here in Canada, but as Krmpotich states, “we shouldn’t be so hasty to assume this is a problem in other places.”

FOLKSONOMIES AND VISITOR CURATION APPS: REVEALING A NEW DIRECTION FOR CURATION?

WEEKEND EDITION

BY: LEAH MONCADA

In this post I’d like to open a conversation on the subject of curatorial jurisdiction. Who holds greater influence over new curatorial trends - is it the (paying) visitors whose interests and needs are our mandate to fulfill? Or the ambitions and interests of knowledgeable curators whose insight and vision are lauded and respected? Two recent additions to the museum experience inspire this question: digital visitor curation apps, and social tagging projects for museum collections.

Publicly curated online collections such as the Rijksstudio, uCurate, and ArtLens have become increasingly popular in recent years. They offer a range of features, such as guided tours based upon physical proximity and individual interests, as well as the ability to curate personalized collections by ‘liking’ or tagging content. Some bloggers have shown great disdain for such programs and have voiced doubt that visitor curation can be as insightful or educated as that of professionals.

uCurate by the Clark Institute. Image source.

However, does this perceived social desire to curate personal collections stem from the wish to increase accessibility and stamp ownership upon the collection, or also from a lack of interest in the curatorial themes chosen by professionals? As with all social phenomena, there are a whole slew of possible explanations. But is this explanation one that has heretofore gone unappreciated? If visitors feel the need to curate exhibitions based upon their own themes and categories, are blockbuster exhibitions accurately curated to the thematics visitors are told they should want to see rather than what they genuinely resonate with?

Social tagging projects such as the steve.museum project at the Met or the aforementioned Rijksstudio reveal that publics identify and value very different connective qualities and categories amongst collections pieces than curators do. For example, users would tag content matter, story, use of colour, etc. instead of artist, date, region, or other meta-data valued by curators and collections managers. Firstly, incorporation of folksonomic tagging brilliantly adds to the intellectual accessibility of collections. But to go a step further,  do these folksonomies reveal a call for exhibitions that showcase something less restrictive than the traditional categories of artist or movement or culture? Are visitors tired of the traditional format and content of blockbuster exhibitions, where the showcased Masters and themes are already explored in the permanent galleries? These new topics bridge categories and carry much potential for education, as well as open opportunities for interesting curatorial collaborations for departments to conduct research outside of their respective fields. 

French art historian Michel Pastoureau's series of books explores the deep symbolism of colour in different time periods. Image source.

For example, take colour. How is it used, and what does it mean in different eras and to different socioeconomic groups? Such an exhibit on the colour blue displayed at the Beinecke Rare Book Library asked - and tried to answer - these very questions. “‘Blue’ demonstrates ways alternative approaches to thinking about archival research can expose dense systems of meaningful connection and material association overlooked by more traditional modes of inquiry.” It included objects, manuscripts, costumes, art, and even created a playlist of songs that featured the colour blue as a significant lyric.

Broad topics like animals and colours have popularly been explored in books, like green (for which there is a gushing and thorough summary here) or red have been, or as online exhibits such as this one at the Met. But are they ‘big name’ enough for blockbuster exhibitions? Rarely do we see huge exhibitions on these loose topics, with perhaps the notable exception of exhibits on myth, such as the popular show on Medieval Beasts at the Getty in 2007. Exhibitions tend to serve as forums for famous artists to travel around the world and meet new audiences (in droves), but it seems that visitors might be just as interested in learning about overarching themes and patterns as they are in singular artists or movements. These new thematic landscapes span cultures, and open new conversations about how we categorize history. 

I would personally be extremely interested to see an exhibition based upon concepts such as ‘the doorway or threshold’, ‘mountain sanctuaries’, or perhaps ‘marriage ceremonies’. These of course are all very broad categorizations, but with careful curation they have the potential to highlight either the shared values or unique nuances of the world’s cultures. I would love to explore what these concepts meant in different times and places, as well as all of their many beautiful artistic manifestations found throughout history. 

What would an exhibit on ‘rabbits’ look like? All of these pieces would be tagged by content as ‘rabbit’, yet they all have unique (hidden) meanings, contexts, and interpretations, and speak to very different phenomena within their societies. Sources, clockwise from top left: 1. 2. 3. 4.

I for one will be keeping my eyes peeled and my date book at the ready for such exhibitions in the future. What about you? What unconventional exhibition themes would you be interested in seeing? Do you agree that folksonomies reveal interest in themes beyond beyond those to which we are accustomed? If folksonomies and social tagging become more widely used in collections management, do you see exhibition planning or the role of the curator changing to meet the changing interests of the public?

CROWDSOURCING -- OUTREACH, OR SCHEME FOR FREE LABOUR?

MUSEUM MONDAY

BY ALEXANDRA JEFFERY

Many archives—and museums too, like the Brooklyn Museum*—are crowdsourcing their activities. Could this indicate that archives and museums are now sharing their authority with those that patronize their institutions? Or, is this simply a ploy to make you think they are-- a ruse to get you to work for them for free?

I’m going to choose to give museums and archives the benefit of the doubt and consider this an interesting way to a) increase awareness of institutions and collections and b) make more material available online. 

For instance, I recently came across the University of Iowa’s DIY History transcription project. The intent is to have willing victims decipher olde tyme handwriting so that they can make full-text digital copies available. I gave it a go to see what it was like—willing indeed. I chose to transcribe letters that fell under the “Pioneer Lives” category because I’m just into that. My task of choice was the Bartholomew Family Letters, 1852-1893.

1867-07-02 Page 1

The particular letter I transcribed (seen above) was written in 1867 by the J.P. Foster Real Estate Office to Mr. B. A. Bartholomew. I'm usually quite into this kind of thing--I even listened to some fiddle/folk/banjo music while I did this, to get in the mood--but whoooeee that handwriting is  difficult to read, and this letter wasn't all that interesting--just money and contract matters. Well, I suppose that's probably what you can expect with pioneer life. I bet the WWI or WWII diaries were more interesting, or THE COOKBOOKS.

So all in all, not the most exciting experience. However I liked the program, pretty easy to use and the whole website is pretty good looking, which is something that I can't say for all the projects I've listed. 

Here are some other projects (check out zooniverse for more):

1. The Old Weather Project – “Help scientists recover Arctic and worldwide weather observations made by United States ships since the mid-19th century by transcribing ships' logs.”
 
2.What’s the Score at the Bodleian? – “By describing these images, you will not only be helping to provide access to this valuable but hitherto 'hidden' collection, you will also be facilitating future research into popular music of the period and the wider social function which it performed during the Victorian age.”

3. NYPL Labs at New York Public Library – “NYPL Labs is an experimental design and technology team working to expand the range of interaction, interpretation, and reuse of library collections and data.” One such project is Building Inspector : “Building Inspector is a mobile-friendly web app for improving information extracted from 19th century New York City insurance atlases.”


 
4. The Smithsonian Transcription Center – “Become a Smithsonian Digital Volunteer and unlock our stories as you transcribe our collections.” There is the Bumblebee Project, where you get to describe bee species!

5. Notes from Nature a collaborative effort of multiple institutions - "We have thousands of specimen images, labels and ledgers from museum collections and the biologists who maintain those collections...help us transcribe that data and make it available for further use in biodiversity and conservation research."

6. Ancient Lives at the University of Oxford - YOU GET TO TRANSCRIBE GRECO-ROMAN PAPYRI FROM EGYPT

*The Brooklyn Museum's projects Tag! You're It and Freeze Tag have now ended but users can still tag objects in the online collection.