Wordle's overview of 'Geographies of Collections', from the RGS-IBG Annual Conference
In light of not being able to tweet during 'Geographies of Collections' on Friday I thought I'd sit down and put together some of my thoughts, while also showing you all some of what was presented. Up front I should say that the sessions were fantastic and Caroline Cornish and I are extremely grateful to all of the presenters for bringing along such interesting papers. As a result I'm still digesting it all, so regard the below as a work in progress!
The idea for these sessions was initially put together back in January and generated a lot of interest from Geographers and a wide ranging group of researchers. This resulted in three sessions (which was a surprise, we only expected to do one!) titled, 'Museums, Mobility and Meaning', 'Archival Insights', and 'People, Places and Possessions'. Needless to say, I cannot sum all of this up in one post (without it becoming an essay) but over the course of the next few 'Unfinished Worlds' posts I'll attempt to do justice to the richness of the work presented.
Across all of these posts three elements of the sessions will be frequently illustrated; firstly, the role of collections in the geographical imagination (and vice versa); secondly, the evolving use of collections by researchers from various disciplines; and thirdly the importance of events such as this in seeding ideas between institutions and disciplines. This first post, however, will concentrate on papers which drew out how collections of various sorts can have or reflect a geography.
If the idea that collections housed in museums, galleries, archives and libraries can have a geography seems incongruous to some the day illustrated that this should not be so. Indeed, the papers given illustrated the power of collections to create, invoke and question various physical, cultural and historical geographies encountered in academia or in the wider world while also demonstrating that collections contain what can be considered geographies also; spatial arrangements, usage patterns and organisational infrastructures create what can be perceived as and understood using a geographical imagination.
This was well illustrated by Nicholas Martland of the British Library who argued that the general organisation of UK collections pertaining to Australia and the continent's relationship with Asia is often affected by the geopolitics of the twentieth century. That these collections reflect twentieth century spatial structures can therefore mask older historical relationships and links between the people and places of South East Asia and Australia. Lawrence Dritsas and Joan Haig too conveyed the ability of books and archives to create a sense of place and reflection of colonial politics through their discussion of the relationship between the 'Oppenheimer Series' and the Government Archives of Southern Rhodesia.
Similarly, the work of Geoff Swinney drew out how the collections of the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art were rhetorically and physically constructed in order to depict Scotland not as the nation we know it today but as 'North Britain'. In this work, therefore, we see how the curator, collection and space of the museum can all combine to create a powerful nationalistic or, in this case, imperial statement by creating a sense of place through the collection and its space of display.
Building from this heritage of collections and spaces of display as tools in the creation of particular geographical imaginations, Paul Basu's work creates a narrative through and for the diasporic material heritage of Sierra Leone. In his presentation Paul Basu invoked and created a sense of a multinational geography of Sierra Leonean material culture, using objects, cabinets and maps within his digital presentation in order to achieve this. His wider work for the website Sierra Leone Heritage seeks to achieve a similar and deeper effect and is worth a look.
The above provides a short insight into how collections can be deliberately and incidentally constructed so as to reflect, construct or assert particular senses of place and imaginative geographies. These papers were not the only ones to achieve such an effect, as later posts will show, and indeed the relationship between collections and geography runs deeper even than this.
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