LETTER FROM THE CO-EDITORS-IN-CHIEF

  Letter from the Editors | Molly Gosewich and Jefimija Vujcic

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Hello Musings readers! Editor-in-Chiefs (Molly and Mia) sat down to chat about our respective summers and what we’re looking forward to this school year.

MOLLY: How was your summer, Mia?

MIA: Very busy, but very good! From May to June, I completed the summer course MSL2303H: ‘Difficult’ Heritages and Precarious Times with Prof. Shiralee Hudson Hill. Despite the heavy nature of the topics we were covering (especially the ones which were simultaneously hitting front-page news), I feel much better equipped to tackle these issues with care and accuracy in my research and work. 

Since June, I have been working at the Ontario Heritage Trust as an archaeology collections technician. I began my internship working from home, reviewing and editing records for collections which will be going online very soon! Later on, I also got a chance to visit some of the Trust’s sites, to work in the lab, and even at a fieldwork site – processing artefacts and cataloguing associated documentation. 

Finally, I wrapped up co-curating an exhibit at the Oshawa Museum (Leaving Home, Finding Home in Oshawa: Displaced Persons and Stories of Immigration), which I started working on over three years ago! 

And what did you get up to?

Ashbridge Estate (a property of the Ontario Heritage Trust).
Photo courtesy of Jefimija Vujcic.

MOLLY: That sounds great. I was also quite busy... it was quite the summer – I worked as a Research Assistant with Dr. Anna Shternshis on projects relating to Jewry in Soviet Russia and Central Asia. I learned a lot about the Jewish presence in specific places like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Romania, and Ukraine. I’ll definitely have to write an article about it...

I also completed my German Level A1, took an elective course called Managing AudioVisual Material, volunteered at the Ontario Jewish Archives, and finally submitted my thesis proposal. I hear you also submitted yours. What was like that?

MIA: Looking forward to reading that article! Yes I did, back at the end of May; so much has happened since then that I almost forgot! It was definitely exciting to finally pass that milestone.

MOLLY: And work aside, how was your summer? Anything fun?

MIA: Nothing terribly exciting! I finally went to the theatre again – I watched R + J, a production of Romeo and Juliet, at the Stratford Festival. Getting to see the Andy Warhol exhibit at the AGO was another highlight! I also chipped away at my current novel writing project and started learning a bit of Italian for fun. 

What about you? 

MOLLY: I hung out a lot in parks and tried to soak up the sunshine, I did a little day-trip to Thornbury which was LOVELY and the house where we stayed was absolutely bursting with Canadian art... and of course, I started writing for Musings! It has been great so far, I get to explore my favourite topics. My most recent article is on Marc Chagall and the School of Paris exhibition that is wrapping up at the Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme in Paris. He is one of my favourite artists and the mahJ is one of my favourite museums ever so it just felt right.

MIA: I’m also excited to get writing for my column Museum Mysteries again! What else are you looking forward to this year?

MOLLY: OMG... getting into writing our theses will be fun. I’ll (fingers crossed) be going to Germany in March to do some archival research so I seriously can’t wait for that. And of course, being able to actually be on campus is quite nice – I’m loving the Inforum. Who can forget seeing my cohort IRL. Happy to be back!

MIA: Yes, totally agree, can’t wait to get started on writing itself! So far this year, I’ve also been loving popping into the library to get some work done, just like old times. I’m also looking forward to finally meeting everyone in person and to exploring museums together (with people who just 'get' it!).

“IN THE HOLIDAY WORLDS OF OLD": EERIE FESTIVE TRADITIONS

 Museum Mysteries | Jefimija Vujcic

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Even with the holidays upon us, we’re in the middle of the most horrifying time of year for students – finals season! Putting (extremely) corny jokes aside, there are probably a few things that come to mind when putting ‘horror’ and ‘holiday’ in one sentence. Perhaps one is the seasonally ambiguous classic animated film A Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), a childhood staple set in the “worlds of old.” Another may be A Christmas Carol (1843) by Charles Dickens, in which a grouchy old man is convinced by three ghosts to change his ways. While we will return to both these influential pop culture moments, I must first set the supernatural scene.

This time of year has long been associated with the paranormal, long before the “magic of the season” came to mean all things wholesome, baking cookies, and watching cheesy movies. Unlike in the western Christian tradition, in Slavic countries and others in Eastern Europe, the 12 Days of Christmas – or from the 10th until the 19th of January (since Christmas is traditionally celebrated for three days) – are known as the “unbaptized days.'' It is thought that in this period, the “barrier between the two worlds has fallen and the boogeymen and other dangerous creatures – vampires, goblins, fairies roam through the human realm.” Even though many traditional beliefs associated with this time are no longer practiced, Christmas celebrations in these areas are still steeped with ritual, some of which are certainly creepy at first glance. 

During the koleda (or kolianda) festival,  the koledari or carollers – one of which is the “grandfather,” another the “bride,” and various animal-human demons or those in disguise – bring luck to a village’s households by ‘chasing out demons’. It is typically celebrated in the lead-up to Christmas or during the unbaptized days in countries such as Serbia, Bulgaria, Northern Macedonia, and Russia. | Source

Other traditions of ‘Scary Christmas,’ include the following: spider decorations based on a Ukrainian folk tale, the hiding of brooms so that witches can’t use them in Norway, Krampus in Germany and Austria, and many more.

Now, the question you may be asking is where do museums factor into all of this? Should museums try to talk about this particular aspect of the holidays? Well, given that I have written this blog post, I’m sure my opinion is clear. This is a great opportunity for us to discuss some really cool concepts – including the practice of ethnography (how were these seemingly static ancient folk beliefs systematically collected) and religious syncretism. The great news is that some museums do already touch on Scary Christmas.

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This topic has been taken up by Canadian museums such as Eldon House, which hosted an exhibition on the topic, the Dalnavert Museum, and the Oshawa Museum, which annually hosts a holiday event featuring the sharing of ghost stories. In pre-pandemic days, Lamplight was a truly magical event and it was always exciting to see the historical houses lit up at night; these days it takes the form of a whimsical short film. These museums all follow the Victorian tradition of the “witching time for Story-telling,” as Dickens put it in one of his many ghostly tales. 

Knowing all of this, Tim Burton’s 1993 film seems all the more clever as a way for us to look closer at this apparent mixing of traditions, or, rather, the reimagining of old customs. It also makes me wish I could have seen this 

2019-20 exhibit at Las Vegas’ Neon Museum or this one running through the new year at the Hilbert Museum in California – both featuring some of Burton’s artwork, including from The Nightmare Before Christmas!

In any case, I think museums, where the past also meets the present, are the perfect places from which to consider these “unbaptized days” and other similar holiday traditions which see the blurring of our realm and that of the ‘otherworldly’ one. As the Dalnavert Museum summed up so beautifully, this season tends to capture “memories, customs, and traces of the past – our personal pasts, our cultural pasts, and our historical pasts, all of which fuse to form the traditions that mean Christmas to each of us.” No matter what you’re celebrating, even just the break from classes, I hope it’s holly, jolly, and… spooky. 

Source.

SAD, SICK, AND SENSATIONAL STORIES: A REFLECTION ON THE ROLE OF HORROR MUSEUMS

Museum Mysteries | Jefimija Vujcic

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What do haunted places, clowns, microbes, breakups, cursed objects, and supernatural creatures all have in common? Besides the obvious creepy factor, they have also all had exhibits or entire museums dedicated to them at one time or another. Horror museums are a phenomenon widely discussed in movies, television, YouTube videos, news articles, and tourist websites. While they are perhaps little understood, beyond the sensational aspect, they do help us grasp the reflective role of museums in our societies.

A model of the bloodsucking creature Yara-ma-yha-who (originating among indigenous Australians). / Bloodsuckers: Legends to Leeches (ROM feature exhibit, November 2019–March 2020). / Photo courtesy of the editor.  

The idea for this blog post actually came about a few months ago, when I was watching an episode of The Good Place. In order to stay spoiler free, let’s just say some characters end up on the run in hell (yes, literally!). In disguise, they find themselves stuck in a hall of the “Museum of Human Misery” where animated human dioramas depicting low-level torture form the vast majority of exhibits. Their charade is up when one brand new diorama is unveiled — featuring our heroes torturing one another. Although certainly strange without context, this scene highlights a trait of many museums — the ability to confront the best and worst of ourselves (usually referring to the loftily imagined ‘humankind,’ rather than the very literal direction the show takes!). 

The museum in “Black Museum” (the finale of the fourth season of Black Mirror) similarly serves as a mirror for the worst parts of a society set in the horrifyingly not-so-far-off future. Without giving too much away, many objects in this museum don’t just represent human stories — but actual elements of human consciousness. As the enthusiastic curator/docent says, there is a “sad, sick story behind almost everything” in the museum. A show like this, much like horror museums or other controversial sites of dark tourism, can “tell us a lot about what it is to be human.” Further, also according to a professor researching the phenomenon, tourists of these places have the opportunity to “reflect on and try to better understand the evil that we’re capable of.”

A framed explanation of the linguistic origin of the word "vampire." / Bloodsuckers: Legends to Leeches (ROM feature exhibit, November 2019–March 2020). / Photo courtesy of the editor.  

If you search for horror museums, you’d find tourist-oriented top-10 or top-20 lists with museums right around the world. One in particular, the Warren Occult Museum formerly located in Monroe, Connecticut (but recently closed due to zoning violations) is closely linked to well-known horror films. Reportedly filled with cursed objects that formed the basis of movies such as Annabelle (a doll that is perhaps the most famous of the collection) or the Conjuring series, it was a popular destination for various YouTubers as well (with about 3 million views on a segment of Buzzfeed Unsolved).

Further, according to such lists, museums focusing on one particular scary or gross object are quite popular. Themes include ventriloquism (Fort Mitchell, Kentucky), disgusting food (Malmo, Sweden) and clowns (Leipzig, Germany). One noteworthy variant of these object-themed horror museums focuses on the medical sciences. These gore-filled exhibits include those located on the sites of hospitals (a former operating theatre, in London, England) and those dedicated to dentists (also located in London, England), pharmacies (New Orleans, Louisiana), microbes (Amsterdam, Netherlands), locks of hair (Cappadocia, Turkey), parasites (Tokyo, Japan), brains (Bengaluru, India), devastating breakups (Zagreb, Croatia and LA, California), and death (as one medical museum is known colloquially, located in Bangkok, Thailand). This idea of body-based horror also conjures images of wax museums, which reportedly “would not be complete” without a chamber of horrors. Perhaps the most horrific type of all are the ones linked to historically grim places or practices. These include museums dedicated to medieval crime (Rothenburg, Germany), magic and witchcraft (Cornwall, England), and torture (Amsterdam, Netherlands), among others. 

A movie poster of Dracula from the early 1930s. The ROM exhibit It's Alive! Classic Horror and Sci-Fi Art from the Kirk Hammett Collection (July 2019–January 2020) did a good job discussing the xenophobia and racism inherent in many classic early horror films. / Photo courtesy of the editor. 

Finally, museums or exhibits dedicated to the dead can also be quite commonly found – from Sicilian catacombs to shrunken heads in Oxford, England. Notably, the Pitt Rivers Museum actually very recently (in September 2020) permanently closed their gallery of shrunken heads, as part of their efforts to decolonize their institution. Due to this connection to colonization and to othering, this deserves an entirely separate conversation – one which I will explore in an upcoming blog. What is worth noting at the present is how, by looking at the sordid histories of some of these earliest collecting practices, it is clear that horror has always had a place in the museum. 

MUSEUMS AS PORTALS BETWEEN WORLDS?: THEMES IN FANTASY AND FICTION

Museum Mysteries | Jefimija Vujcic

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Over this past Reading Week, I finally picked up one of my highly anticipated books, an historical fantasy titled The Invisible Life of Addie La Rue (2020) by V.E. Schwab. Looking for a break from coursework, I was amused to find a museum catalogue entry on the second page of the book! The notion of the museum – connected to themes of material memory, the act of collecting, and what it means to be (un)able to leave a mark – was recurring and so intriguing that it led to me writing this article.

A lot of us in the MMSt program are probably aware of some fiction prominently featuring museums, or can recall Night at the Museum (2006) as at least one example. The film’s premise is that the museum comes to life at night, prompting security guard Larry to quip, “Isn’t everything in this museum supposed to be, you know, dead?” Watched with a critical eye, the movie brings up questions around the purpose museums are meant to fulfill and how that purpose is viewed by the public. Also sticking out to me from childhood are The Lightning Thief (2005) and The Red Pyramid (2010). Both by Rick Riordan, the opening scene and the inciting incident respectively take part in museums. Museums set the necessary stage for these books, wherein tales from mythology are in fact true, bridging the past and the present.

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For me, a few more recent reads drive home the metaphor of museums as doors or portals in fiction. In the urban fantasy Neverwhere (1996), there exists London Above (the world we know) and London Below (one just beneath it). These two worlds intersect and blur throughout the story, with one such memorable scene taking place in the British Museum. Moreover, one of the least likeable characters of the novel has big ambitions in the museum field. To this end, she constantly drags the main character Richard along museum-hopping. This leads Richard to regretfully conclude that, “the great art treasures of the world all blur into each other after a while.” With the foregrounding of a fantastical element, the mundane is brought into even greater focus. This is also the case for Metropolitan Stories by Christine Coulson. Read by the Museum Studies book club back in the summer, this magical realism collection sheds light on the eccentric staff who keep the Metropolitan Museum of Art running, often in very unexpected ways… Again, here is the idea that museums house objects that can bridge divergent times, worlds, and realities.

In addition to a number of other fantastical and adventure stories, many museum-related literary fiction titles have stuck out to me over the years. The Goldfinch (2013) begins at the Met and the main character’s connection to one particular painting from the Dutch Golden Age forms the core of the novel. From Dubravka Ugrešić’s experimental work Museum of Unconditional Surrender (1997) to Heather Rose's performance art-inspired Museum of Modern Love (2016), museum-related fiction takes advantage of the cultural baggage surrounding museums, both real and imagined.

The exterior of the Museum of Innocence, Istanbul, Turkey. Source.

The transformation of a fictional museum to one existing in real life is the journey of Nobel-prize-winning author Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence (2008). Set in Istanbul in the 1970s, the story focuses on the everyday objects collected by one man after a devastating heartbreak. Off the page, Pamuk had begun collecting items in the 1990s. The building which came to house them was given the title of European Museum of the Year in 2014. Far from just a marketing gimmick, this “museum, based on a novel, based on a museum” now exists and serves to start thought-provoking conversations about the city’s history.

Beyond providing a few more books to add to your reading lists (even more can be found here and here), I hope that this look at non-academic literature can spark useful critical consideration of how museums are (mis)interpreted and where all our preconceptions come from. In Emily St. John Mandel’s pandemic-focused novel Station Eleven (2012) and All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2014), museums are projected to have lasting significance even in futures following apocalypse and devastating war. In our present, perhaps this literary reflection would assist us in creatively imagining a better future for museums. As one museum professional writes in a blog focusing on decolonization and Afrofuturism, “By reframing a museum as a portal, there is the potential for us to see ourselves as time travelling inventors capable of creating a different world.”

HOW TO SURVIVE A PANDEMIC: MUSEUM EDITION PART ONE

Museum Innovations | Sara Fontes

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Throughout this pandemic, times have been tough. Things have looked bleak. You have been scared for yourself, friends, and family. You have been going stir-crazy locked up in your houses.

And what do we do in frightening times? When things are dark?

Photo courtesy of Rahul | Source

We look for a light in the dark.
We look for things that we can control.
We look for comfort.

When we look for comfort or something fun to do, we often look to our cultural institutions. Museums are one of those places. Through social media and technology, we can stay mostly connected right now. As almost everyone has a smart phone or a device to access the internet, it is a good and safe way to connect to a lot of people (although we must be aware that it does not connect us to everyone).

Our cultural institutions are closed right now so how do we use them to stay connected? How do we use them to feel human and humanity?

We must be creative, and many museums have done just that. Many museums are providing online content to directly combat these issues and connect with their communities. Hamilton Civic Museums, such as Dundern Castle, have been creating excellent digital content. They have shared recipes through Instagram and made videos about how to make those recipes on their Youtube channel. 

 

Family Christmas at Dundurn | Source

It’s important for museums to stay relevant to their communities during this time away so that visitors will be excited to come visit in-person when it is safe to do so. I have noticed a trend with smaller museums where all of their online and virtual programming is free. Meanwhile, larger institutions, like the Toronto Zoo, offer a mixture of paid and free online programming. While it can be hard for smaller museums to charge for their content, paid online programming would help to bring in some money during this time. Factors such as size, manpower, and popularity of a museum might affect their ability to offer both paid and free online programming. Small and medium sized museums simply have less resources available to them. Regardless of size and manpower, small museums can still take inspiration from larger museums by following trends and using social media to become more popular and perhaps get some money coming through the doors.

Many museums have taken to popular websites and apps like Twitch and TikTok to keep things more upbeat and give people a break from worrying about the pandemic. The Toronto Zoo shows a stream on twitch of different animals on different days from gorillas, to penguins to giraffes. There are a few museums on TikTok such as the MET, but one small UK museum has blown them out of the water with followers: Black Country Living Museum in Dudley, UK. Check them out: @blackcountrymuseum!

Nothing like a bit of chloroform to get you through a bad cold eh? #victorian #history #learnontiktok 

Social media and connectivity are not the only things that we can adopt from large or popular museums. For example, take an idea that has been widely used in zoos: adopt-an-animal programs. Why couldn’t the same be done with museum objects? To adopt a museum object for a year (or two or five) could help pay for its conservation and donors could see first, before anyone else, photos of what it looks like during the conservation process. While I have scoured the internet I have yet to find a museum running a program like this or similarly titled. I do not believe, however, that no one else has ever thought of this idea but perhaps they go about it in different ways or do not advertise it beyond donations. This pandemic has pushed museums to find innovative ways to keep people connected and interested in their programming, and I'm looking forward to uncovering those innovations in future articles.

Thank you to Mallory Mahon and Jefimija Vujcic for sharing the Toronto Zoo twitch stream and the Black Country Museum TikTok respectively.