HIDDEN IN THE BACK: OPENING AND RE-INTERPRETING COLLECTION SPACES FOR THE PUBLIC

Collections Corner | Jaime Meier 

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One of the reasons I decided to write for the "Collections Corner" column was because I knew very little about collections and wanted the opportunity to expand my knowledge by exploring current practices. A popular career choice by students in my program is collections work and a sentiment I have heard illustrating why is, "I like working alone and being surrounded by interesting objects." As an extrovert, the thought of going a full day without human interaction is harrowing. Collections rooms and warehouses act as private places for museum staff, but I am left wondering what role does the public play in collections, if any.

I was fortunate enough to tour the Western Development Museum collection over Christmas. (Source)

I believe that in order to stay relevant and serve their audiences, museums must be willing to share not only their exhibition spaces, but also their collection storage rooms. Museums belong to everyone, regardless of education, race, and gender, and therefore people have the right to see more than the exterior, a small part of the story. I was shocked the first time I saw a collections room, with a huge variety of items stacked high and low. By seeing the collection, I was reminded that these things were made by humans, for humans, and are still being cared for by humans to serve other humans. A variety of museums have begun to allow the public to access their spaces or bring the collection to the people via digitization projects.


The McCord Museum in Montreal has reconsidered how to incorporate the public into their collection through collaborating with Inuit Elders. In the early 2010s, eleven workshops were planned and included over 85 participants. While the elders were asked to be careful with the fragile objects, they were encourage to handle the objects freely and based on personal discretion. The unique aspect of touch allowed for unparalleled understandings of remembrance, narratives, demonstration, and communication between Inuit peoples, cultural objects, and the museum. The idea of having people go into a collection and touch objects without gloves may terrify some, but the very objects we collect, especially cultural significant ones, only unveil their true meaning once grounded in the hands of a person.

Quitsaq Tarriasuk and the late Simon Makimmak discussing a fishing rod at the McCord Museum. (Source)

Physical, social, and economic barriers can prevent people from attending the collection location and many museums have turned to digitizing their collections for a wider audience. The Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) in Toronto has over 13 million artworks, cultural objects, and natural history specimens and approximately 43,004 have been published online. While not a complete reflection of the collection, it offers a unique glimpse into the collecting habits and considerations of a major institution. It has become a necessity to understand what objects are being held within museums, especially cultural significant or sacred ones. This aids in rectifying possible prior unethical collecting practices by re-opening spaces and conversation for communities to (re)connect and claim sovereignty over their items.

Opening collection spaces allows for the demystification of museum spaces and will only strengthen the public's connection to their past, present, and future. Since a vast majority of museums are colonial institutions, they have a special duty to share their collections with the communities involved and increase physical or technological access. Objects are not and should not be preserved just for people to look at, but experience on their own terms.

LET'S ERASE HISTORY: THE PRIVILEGE OF SAVING AND FORGETTING

Collections Corner | Jaime Meier 

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It is a safe assumption that a majority of us have heard the classic quote attributed to Winston Churchill, "History is written by victors." While the ideas revolving around objectivity and the reinforcement of single narrative histories have rightfully come under fire, who and where can we learn about history? One of my amazing Art History professors, Felicia Gay, once told our class in relation with working with Indigenous peoples that we must "Speak with the community instead of for the community." This allows for a historical record to emerge that has been repressed by the colonization politics of Canada, a repression that Library and Archives Canada (LAC) continue to implement to this day.

LAC has been involved in several digitization projects with Nunavummiut (the peoples residing in Nunavut), including "Project Naming" and "Listen, Hear Our Voices." "Project Naming" was created by Nunavut Sivuniksavut with the eventual formation of a partnership between the Government of Nunavut and LAC. Since its inception in 2002, over 10,000 images have been digitized and thousands of Indigenous peoples, activities, and places have been identified by numerous generations. LAC acknowledges that this improves not only their own records but also "helps members of communities connect with their past and create inter-generational bridges."

"Young Denis and his mother" were identified through "Project Naming." (Source)

The foundation for what would become "Listen, Hear Our Voices" started with the work of Leah Otak, an Inuit woman who digitized hundreds of interviews with elders and made plentiful contribution to Arctic science. Instead of photos, this initiative focuses on saving the stories, songs, and other spoken word recordings captured on deteriorating tape records. These recordings are invaluable to the revitalization of traditional Indigenous languages and cultural growth. LAC is "proud to assist Indigenous communities in their efforts to secure a sustainable future for their heritage recordings."

Leah Otak digitizing recordings. (Source)

The financial support provided by LAC was monumental for the continued success of the projects, but it is a convenient way for LAC to focus on the documents they willingly share with the public instead of the many they have been accused of hiding. A majority of these "hidden" documents are related to residential schools, especially the abuses inflicted on the children attending. This has left survivors to fight for their right to have their histories accepted and understood. Even in a disappointingly bleak post-Truth and Reconciliation Commission Canada, the government and its collection continue to shrink away from the burden of the horrors of residential schools that they aided in perpetrating. 

Where the Canadian government has continuously failed, many museums are ready to step up. Myseum Toronto has completely abandoned the notion of a permanent collection. Nathan Heuvingh, Curatorial and Program Lead at Myseum, said that the non-traditional set up of Myseum does not allow for a space to hold objects, instantly overcoming the inherent problems that come with collecting certain objects over others. This allows the voice of Myseum to evolve with the needs of the communities they work with instead of imposing a strict model.

Some of the works from the AGO being deaccessioned for sale. (Source)

While the lack of collection succeeds at Myseum, in order for artists to thrive and produce new works, we need to financially support them. Art institutions, such as the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO), have begun to deaccession works by artists who are over represented in their collections. By removing and selling these artworks, it allows for the collection to diversify and invest in underrepresented gender identities and people of colour. Art created by marginalized groups deserves to take up space and arguably demonstrates a more comprehensive representation of Canada's past and future.

As we move into the holiday season, be mindful of how one sided histories have affected your friends and families and create, at times, haughty discussions. This does not mean we avoid challenging their often ignorant, racist, and/or prejudice options but instead, meeting them where they are. Even if you do not succeed with these discussions, you can find solace in the fact that your history reflects so much more than the "victor."

MELTING DOWN THE MYSTERY: THE FRANKLIN EXPEDITION IN 2018

MUSEUM MYSTERIES

BY: SERENA YPELAAR

For my final Museum Mysteries post, I couldn't resist taking an age-old Victorian mystery out of the freezer for a thaw: the famous Franklin Expedition to the Arctic.

The last time Musings tackled this frigid phantom of a story was with Sadie MacDonald's review of the pop-up exhibit at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM). Now, the Canadian Museum of History (CMH) has opened their exhibition, Death in the Ice: The Mystery of the Franklin Expedition, after its run at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, UK.

Death in the Ice is a joint effort between the Canadian Museum of History, Inuit Heritage Trust and the UK National Maritime Museum, as well as Parks Canada and the Government of Nunavut.

Promotional image for Death in the Ice: The Mystery of the Franklin Expedition. Photo: Canadian Museum of History.

Having worked at the Museum of Inuit Art and Inuit Art Foundation respectively, northern Canadian history is one of my key focuses. When I interned at the Northern Life Museum and Cultural Centre in Fort Smith, Northwest Territories, I delivered educational programming to high school students alongside the Canada Science and Technology Museum's travelling exhibition Echoes in the Ice: Finding Franklin's Ship. I doubt I'll ever stop being interested in the lost expedition and its mysterious legacy.

Note found in a cairn in 1859 on King
William Island, written by Franklin's
crew and even updated to report
Franklin's death and the desertion of
the ships. Source.

Sir John Franklin was selected in 1845 (though far from the top choice) at age 59 to lead a British Royal Navy expedition in search of the fabled Northwest Passage. In what is now the Canadian Arctic, Franklin and his crew met Inuit who later provided oral testimony of their encounters with the British men. 

With 129 men on board, the ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror got locked in the ice and were rendered immobile. Franklin was dead by 1847, and the surviving men were forced to desert the ships and travel south on foot. In the harsh Arctic conditions, none would survive. Rumours swirled that some men, in sheer desperation, had resorted to cannibalism, a sensational element of this story that both repulses and fascinates. (Charles Dickens published articles weighing in on the cannibalism debate, despite Victorians' indignation at the thought.) 

On the MMSt Ottawa trip last year, CMH staff spoke to us about their efforts to represent previously overlooked Inuit perspectives in Death in the Ice. The exhibition is said to focus heavily on Inuit voices and experiences - though that's not to say that it hasn't had its fair share of controversy regarding objects taken from the shipwrecks of the Erebus and Terror after their respective discoveries by Parks Canada in 2014 and 2016.

The reason for this is simple: Inuit were the last to see the ships and their crews. And those encounters, preserved in oral histories and shared with Parks Canada and its partners, contributed directly to the discovery of HMS Erebus and Terror. - Canadian Museum of History, "Inuit Knowledge and the Franklin Expedition Exhibition"

Peter Taptuna (Nunavut's Premier at the time) claimed in a letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in fall 2016 that Parks Canada wrongfully removed artifacts belonging to Nunavut and Inuit Heritage Trust since the wrecks are in their territory. Parks Canada alleges that the wrecks are still British property, citing a 1997 agreement in which the British consented to transfer the contents of the wrecks to Canada once found. 

Memorial to Sir John Franklin and the lost expedition outside the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, UK. Source.

I haven't managed to pop back to Ottawa to visit the Death in the Ice exhibition (as well as my alma mater) yet, but I suppose that just adds to this column's air of mystery. I've instead outlined a few questions I would like to see answered or at least discussed in the exhibition: 

• How can we give oral traditions more weight as a way of knowing in exhibitions like these, where Indigenous narratives are integral? 
• What does our obsession with the men's purported cannibalism tell us about sensationalism as it relates to museum audiences? 
• Some of the men's bodies were preserved in the ice and found intact over a century later - but will we ever find Sir John Franklin's body? Would it teach us anything new?
• When will the ownership dispute be resolved between Inuit and Parks Canada? Is there a way to interpret history in museums without displaying artifacts with questionable provenance?

Most of my questions are more museological than factual. I accept that some mysteries will forever remain unsolved, but that doesn't mean we can't explore and learn from them in the absence of concrete answers. Instead, these unknowns can be an excellent prompt toward critical thinking and dialogue.

Plus, we have great historical interpretation on television to satiate our curiosity. I can't wait to see how the Franklin Expedition is adapted in AMC's newest drama, The Terror, which premieres this Monday. Time will tell whether Inuit are satisfactorily represented in the series, but I'm eager to start taking it in. (And before you ask, I haven't been paid off by AMC - it's not my fault they make so many historical dramas!)

The Terror actors Ciarán Hinds (as Sir John Franklin), Jared Harris, and Tobias Menzies discuss their characters - both historically and as interpreted in the series.

So how can we keep dwelling on the same mysteries time and again without stifling them? By offering different vantage points. It's an issue I've been focusing a lot on in my Musings articles this year: tell the story that hasn't been told, and people will listen. Promise visitors more, and they will want to keep learning. Answer questions, but focus just as much on what we don't know. 

With that, my readers, I'll close the door on Museum Mysteries for now. I hope you've enjoyed embracing the unknown and that you'll continue to do so!