Theme:
3. Heritage Narratives and Representations
Session format:
Regular session
Title:
In and Out of Context: Weaving the Itineraries of Objects in Museums, Collections, and Storerooms
Content:
Objects, in the course of their production and their cycles of use, develop layered histories and form intricate entanglements with both people and things. Object biography has long been a well-established analytical tool for addressing these webs of human-object interactions. In recent decades, updated conceptualisations on materiality, shaped by new materialist and post-humanist thinking, have re-formulated the biographical discourse, placing emphasis on matters of agency, movement, and relationality. Object itineraries have thus emerged as a fresh take on the biographical approach, embracing these theoretical advances and adopting a revised ontological point of view.
This session looks at untangling the itineraries of objects as they transform into subjects of archaeological or art-historical research. We seek to explore how objects, in their literal and figurative movement across time and space, become re-defined, re-interpreted, and re-evaluated, as they enter and leave contexts of circulation, use, and study. The aim is to weave together the narratives of objects, which – whether displayed in museum exhibitions and institutional collections or put away in depots and storerooms – continue to acquire complex relational connections, that are neither linear nor unidirectional.
We welcome discussions on case studies from antiquity to today that employ relevant methodological perspectives, inter-disciplinary approaches, and novel ways of incorporating object itineraries in public, heritage, and educational environments. We are particularly interested in papers that examine how the study of collections and assemblages can be enriched by and benefit from nuanced analysis of object itineraries.
Keywords:
object biography, object itinerary, collections history, materiality
Session associated with MERC:
no
Session associated with CIfA:
no
Session associated with SAfA:
no
Session associated with CAA:
no
Session associated with DGUF:
no
Session associated with other:
Main organiser:
KLEOPATRA KATHARIOU (Greece) 1
Co-organisers:
CHRISTINA MARINI (Greece) 2
CÉCILE COLONNA (France) 3
SUSANNA SARTI (Italy) 4
Affiliations:
1. University of Ioannina - Department of History and Archaeology
2. Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens
3. L'Institut national d'histoire de l'art (INHA), Paris
4. Direzione Regionale Musei della Toscana - Ministero della Cultura
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