Susan M. Pearce

Interpreting objects and collections

This volume brings together for the first time the most significant papers on the interpretation of objects and collections and examines how people relate to material culture and why they collect things. The first section of the book discusses the interpretation of objects, setting the philosophical and historical context of object interpretation. Papers are included which discuss objects variously as historical documents, functioning material, and as semiotic texts, as well as those which examine the politics of objects and the methodology of object study. The second section, on the interpretation of collections, looks at the study of collections in their historical and conceptual context. Many topics are covered such as the study of collecting to structure individual identity, its affect on time and space and the construction of gender. There are also papers discussing collection and ideology, collection and social action and the methodology of collection study. This unique anthology of articles and extracts will be of inestimable value to all students and professionals involved in the interpretation of objects and collections.

Objects in the Contemporary Construction of Personal Culture: Perspectives Relating to Gender and Socio-Economic Class

Abstract Museums are now much concerned with issues of access, inclusion, and the development of new ways of appreciating the processes which their object collections embody. This paper develops the implications of a Britain-wide qualitative and quantitative survey of how people view their relationships to their own objects, particularly their most favoured possessions. It emerges that in terms of gender, individuals, for whatever reason, tend to follow inherited norms so that men attach major significance to their vehicles and women to their personal objects like jewellery. Socio-economic background, however, appears to have little bearing on how objects are viewed. The great divide in our relationship to the material world is not by class, but by gender. There are lessons for museums here, both in the relative insignificance of social class in the construction of material meanings, and in an improved understanding of the ways in which such meanings are made.

The construction and analysis of the cultural heritage: Some thoughts

Abstract Notions of the cultural heritage are a key intellectual and political issue for the twenty‐first century, but practical problems relating to the cultural heritage seldom find their way into front‐line political debate, in either the developing world or electoral issues in the developed world. In part this is because at an academic level the cultural heritage lacks a strong disciplined presence and correspondingly an agreed framework of reference and research. This paper is a preliminary exercise towards the establishment of such a frame of reference. It expands the argument into suggestions of the directions research might take, and is intended to encourage debate.

The construction of heritage: The domestic context and its implications

Abstract A fundamental question in heritage studies is how heritage is constructed, how selection processes operate to transform some places, objects and practices into heritage and not some others. A significant site for heritage construction is the family and its relation to its material culture. The present Survey analyses how individuals within families relate to favoured objects and shows that the creation of material identity is crucial to a familys sense of wellbeing. However a gender difference emerges; for men the passage of time produces significant objects which are valued accordingly, but for women, objects are the passage of time. This has a significant impact on what eventually emerges as family heritage, and consequently upon how public heritage is created.

The Hinton St Mary Mosaic Pavement: Christ or Emperor?

The significance of the well-known central roundel of the mosaic from Hinton St Mary, Dorset, UK, which carries a young male head with a chi-rho monogram behind it and pomegranates on each side, has been much discussed. This paper marshals evidence which suggests that the head is not a representation of Christ, but of one of the emperors of the House of Constantine, perhaps Constantine himself. Some of the implications for the nature of fourth-century imperial culture are discussed.

A New Way of Looking at Old Things

According to Susan Pearce, the museum as a social construct, a purveyor of ideologically charged notions of knowledge and historical truth, must evolve into a ‘reflexive, exploratory’ cultural space where ‘existing collections speak in new voices’. And to her this implies a major shift in management practices and attitudes. After working on the curatorial staff in the Antiquities Department at National Museums on Merseyside and Exeter City Museum, she joined the Department of Museum Studies at the University of Leicester in 1984, becoming Professor of Museum Studies in 1990 and Dean of Arts in 1996. She served as President of the Museums Association 1992–94, and has written and edited numerous books including Museums, Objects and Collections (1992), On Collecting: An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition (1995) and Collecting in Contemporary Practice (1998).

Authority and Anarchy in a Museum Exhibition Or, The Sacred Wood Revisited

Who does not know Turners picture of the Golden Bough? The scene, suffused with the golden glow of the imagination in which the divine mmd of Turner steeped and transfigured even the fairest natural landscape, is a dreamlike vision of the little woodland lake of Nemi—Dianas Mirror, as it was called by the ancients. (Frazer, 1957: 1)

Particular thanks and obligations’: The communications made by women to the society of antiquaries between 1776 and 1837, and their significance

This paper brings together the evidence bearing on the relationship between the Society of Antiquaries and the women who contributed to it during a significant period when archaeology, through the work of such men as Samuel Lysons and Richard Colt Hoare, was beginning to emerge as a distinct field with its own conceptual and technical systems. It takes its departure from the first substantial appearance by a woman in the Societys publications in 1776, and continues until the accession of a female monarch, Victoria, in 1837, a period of just over sixty years. It explores what women did and what reception they received and assesses the significance of this within the wider processes of the development of an understanding of the past and the shaping of gender relationships through the medium of material culture, in a period that saw fundamental changes in many areas of intellectual and social life, including levels of material consumption and the sentiments surrounding consumerism.

Studying museum material and collections

Abstract In modern post‐Renaissance western society, museums are the political and cultural institutions entrusted with holding the material evidence, real things, which constitute much modern knowledge. The paper considers some aspects of museums as institutions holding this material evidence – the institutional relationship to accepted knowledge and value, the implication in the social and economic system and the visible architectural display, – which make up the messages which museums communicate to their visitors through exhibitions and interpretive projects. Three related aspects of interpretation which belong with each museum object and specimen are examined, professional care, interpretive approaches and the nature of collections. Finally, these threads are drawn together to suggest a framework of research and investigation which underpins the approach to our understanding of this aspect of the heritage, and points the way to future work.