The issue is moot: Decolonizing art/artifact

This article seeks to step back from the long-standing debate between art and artifact—aesthetics and science-- understood as terms that reference central concerns of the quintessentially modern Western disciplines of art history and anthropology. In their landmark edited volume The Traffic in Culture: Refiguring Art and Anthropology, George Marcus and Fred Myers explored the growing convergences exhibited by the concerns and methods of practitioners of the two disciplines, both in the academy and the museum. By training our attention on contemporary artworlds—understood as systems-- they illuminated the exchanges of aesthetic and conceptual ideas and forms that have brought Western and non-Western arts into shared discursive and real spaces. Yet in the quarter century since the book’s publication there has been a noticeable retreat from attempts by the proponents of visual studies and an expanded visual anthropology to actualize disciplinary convergences. The boundaries that separate art and anthropology have not been dissolved. Art historians and anthropologists continue to ask different questions and to support different regimes of value. From the author’s vantage point in a settler society currently directing considerable energies to institutional projects of decolonization the old debates have rapidly been receding as a new ‘third term’ – Indigenous Studies-- intrudes itself on the well trodden terrain. Not (yet) definable as a discipline but, rather, maintaining itself as an orientation, Indigenous Studies nevertheless renders the earlier disciplinary debates moot. Place, rather than time-based, collective rather than individual, holistic rather than either disciplinary or interdisciplinary, Indigenous Studies formulations exert decolonizing pressures on institutions that are rapidly mounting. Using Anishinaabeg: Art and Power, a show in 2017 at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), as a case study, this article shows how an exhibition moved representation away from the art/artifact dichotomy as well as from contested strategies of ‘inclusion’ and pro forma recognitions of ‘Indigenous ontology’ toward a genuine paradigm shift.

Digitizing Family Albums in The Family Camera Network (FamCam), Archive at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM): A Case Study of the Evans Family Collection

My thesis explores the family album as an indivisible object within a museum’s collection. Family albums hold both private and public importance for their ability to share collective memories and are valuable resources for scholars and the general public. To realize the inherent value of albums, I argue that we need to treat them as singular objects. Most institutions – such as museums, libraries or archives – treat family albums merely as a group of individual images. In this thesis, I propose an alternative approach: viewing and digitizing the albums as whole objects that are inseparable, lest we distort the narrative shaped in the album. The digitization process advances three services: first, digitization increases access to the album; second, digitization often enables the public to see and understand the album as a whole, maintaining the vision that the album’s maker sought to construct; third, digitization helps preserve the albums. My thesis investigates best practices for family album digitization so that the public can see albums as whole objects. A case study will focus on the Evans family collection from the FamCam at the ROM (accession numbers: 2018.24.1-21), a family collection which comes from a Canadian family that lived in China from 1888, for nearly a 100 years. Twenty-one family albums comprise the collection. The collection portrays the lives of a Western family in China, and provides insight into a century of photography and history. My thesis discusses the methodology, tools, and specific techniques for digitization, while highlighting the complexity of family albums. Though this digitization process may differ from the typical protocols for artifacts, the uniqueness of family albums necessitates genre-specific procedures. My thesis contributes to the emerging literature on family photography in public institutions, and develops an original method for preserving and archiving them digitally.

The Museum as a collector of vernacular born-digital photographs: a case study of the family camera network collection at the Royal Ontario Museum.

Active from April 2016 to March 2019, The Family Camera Network was a collaborative project that explored the relationship between family and photography. The project established a public archive at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and The ArQuives. The collection is composed of photographs, albums, home videos and miscellaneous objects. Among the objects collected by the ROM are 126 born-digital photographs. This thesis focuses on the development of cataloguing methods for born-digital vernacular photographs using existing fields in the museum’s collection catalogue, TMS. Through the use of digital metadata, this thesis describes and analysis how information embedded in the born-digital archives can assist in the production of valuable collection records.

Unfolding Margaret Maclean's Orihon-Format scrapbook in the Royal Ontario Museum Collection: a focus on context, preservation and access

My thesis comprises the analysis, cataloguing and preservation of Canadian author and educator Margaret MacLean’s Japan Scrapbook at The Royal Ontario Museum. This project uses collections management strategies to describe the scrapbook at the item-level, catalog 597 printed photographs and images for upload to The Museum System database (TMS); attempts to decode the author’s compilation and editorial process and finally, make recommendations for suitable handling procedures for access and physical preservation. The objects are affixed onto a large-format, traditional, Japanese, accordion-bound, album-style book called orihon. Together they capture a moment in Japanese history and visual culture in the first decade of the 20th century, and foreshadow MacLean’s 1920s education work at The ROM. The scrapbook was compiled sometime between 1904 and 1928, using materials ranging from about 1880 to 1915, illustrating the 1904 to 1908 period when Margaret Maclean and her father resided in Yokohama, Japan.

Photographic Exhibition In The Anti-Cube Gallery : A Case Study Of Daniel Libeskind’s Roloff Beny Gallery

This paper examines the installation of photography exhibitions within the unconventional gallery spaces that have been produced as a part of the relatively recent wave of “iconic” museum architecture. As a medium that has primarily been displayed within the modernist “white cube,” photography presents issues adapting to this new type of gallery interior. This thesis takes, as its case study, the Roloff Beny Gallery, managed by the Institute for Contemporary Culture (ICC) as located in Daniel Libeskind’s Michael Lee-Chin Crystal – a controversial addition to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Toronto, Ontario. It examines how photographic exhibitions have addressed design and installation issues in this iconic space through three photographic exhibitions

The Museum as a collector of vernacular born-digital photographs: a case study of the family camera network collection at the Royal Ontario Museum.

Active from April 2016 to March 2019, The Family Camera Network was a collaborative project that explored the relationship between family and photography. The project established a public archive at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and The ArQuives. The collection is composed of photographs, albums, home videos and miscellaneous objects. Among the objects collected by the ROM are 126 born-digital photographs. This thesis focuses on the development of cataloguing methods for born-digital vernacular photographs using existing fields in the museum’s collection catalogue, TMS. Through the use of digital metadata, this thesis describes and analysis how information embedded in the born-digital archives can assist in the production of valuable collection records.

Photographic Exhibition In The Anti-Cube Gallery : A Case Study Of Daniel Libeskind’s Roloff Beny Gallery

This paper examines the installation of photography exhibitions within the unconventional gallery spaces that have been produced as a part of the relatively recent wave of “iconic” museum architecture. As a medium that has primarily been displayed within the modernist “white cube,” photography presents issues adapting to this new type of gallery interior. This thesis takes, as its case study, the Roloff Beny Gallery, managed by the Institute for Contemporary Culture (ICC) as located in Daniel Libeskind’s Michael Lee-Chin Crystal – a controversial addition to the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), Toronto, Ontario. It examines how photographic exhibitions have addressed design and installation issues in this iconic space through three photographic exhibitions

Unfolding Margaret Maclean's Orihon-Format scrapbook in the Royal Ontario Museum Collection: a focus on context, preservation and access

My thesis comprises the analysis, cataloguing and preservation of Canadian author and educator Margaret MacLean’s Japan Scrapbook at The Royal Ontario Museum. This project uses collections management strategies to describe the scrapbook at the item-level, catalog 597 printed photographs and images for upload to The Museum System database (TMS); attempts to decode the author’s compilation and editorial process and finally, make recommendations for suitable handling procedures for access and physical preservation. The objects are affixed onto a large-format, traditional, Japanese, accordion-bound, album-style book called orihon. Together they capture a moment in Japanese history and visual culture in the first decade of the 20th century, and foreshadow MacLean’s 1920s education work at The ROM. The scrapbook was compiled sometime between 1904 and 1928, using materials ranging from about 1880 to 1915, illustrating the 1904 to 1908 period when Margaret Maclean and her father resided in Yokohama, Japan.

Digitizing Family Albums in The Family Camera Network (FamCam), Archive at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM): A Case Study of the Evans Family Collection

My thesis explores the family album as an indivisible object within a museum’s collection. Family albums hold both private and public importance for their ability to share collective memories and are valuable resources for scholars and the general public. To realize the inherent value of albums, I argue that we need to treat them as singular objects. Most institutions – such as museums, libraries or archives – treat family albums merely as a group of individual images. In this thesis, I propose an alternative approach: viewing and digitizing the albums as whole objects that are inseparable, lest we distort the narrative shaped in the album. The digitization process advances three services: first, digitization increases access to the album; second, digitization often enables the public to see and understand the album as a whole, maintaining the vision that the album’s maker sought to construct; third, digitization helps preserve the albums. My thesis investigates best practices for family album digitization so that the public can see albums as whole objects. A case study will focus on the Evans family collection from the FamCam at the ROM (accession numbers: 2018.24.1-21), a family collection which comes from a Canadian family that lived in China from 1888, for nearly a 100 years. Twenty-one family albums comprise the collection. The collection portrays the lives of a Western family in China, and provides insight into a century of photography and history. My thesis discusses the methodology, tools, and specific techniques for digitization, while highlighting the complexity of family albums. Though this digitization process may differ from the typical protocols for artifacts, the uniqueness of family albums necessitates genre-specific procedures. My thesis contributes to the emerging literature on family photography in public institutions, and develops an original method for preserving and archiving them digitally.

A Proposed Management Plan for the New World Archaeology Department's Photographic Archive at the Royal Ontario Museum

This practical thesis project addresses the dilemma faced by many museums of deteriorating archival photographs that are related to objects in their permanent collections. Collection managers often have little time, expertise or financial means to preserve these important resources. The first part of the thesis provides a guide to assessing and devising a management plan using a collection of 25,000 images in the New World Archaeology department of the Royal Ontario Museum as a case study. The guide addresses the physical issues of object identification, condition assessment, materials and methods of rehousing a diverse collection, and creating a proper storage environment. It also examines issues of improving intellectual access through cataloguing and digitizing as well as budgeting. A report summarizing the condition of the New World Archaeology collection accompanied by recommendations for implementation of a management plan is the focus of the second part of the thesis. This project highlights the need for institutions to recognize the value of these deteriorating materials and devote the necessary resources to their preservation.