Working on Things. On the Social, Political, Economic History of Collected Objects
Various kinds of work have to be invested in objects before they become worthy of collection, before they can be researched on, preserved, and exhibited. Work on the dinosaur skeleton of Brachiosaurus brancai in Berlin’s Museum für Naturkunde, for example, extended far beyond the decades of the fossil’s preparation in the Museum. This object’s history also includes the colonial forced labour on cotton plantations in German East Africa at the beginning of the twentieth century that produced the packing material necessary for transporting the findings to Europe. Such figurations of work across time and space form the focus of the conference “Working on Things”: which kinds of materials and of immaterial labour had to be invested in order to acquire or produce a given object, in order to transport it, examine it, exhibit it, or valuate it? What existing knowledge, and which social, political, and legal conditions characterized this work? What types of materials, tools or techniques were used?
The conference is part of the research project „Dinosaurs in Berlin. Brachiosaurus brancai as political, scientific and popular icon”. It is conceptualised and organised in cooperation with the base project Mobile Objects, Cluster of Excellence Image Knowledge of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.
Venue: Jacob-und-Wilhelm-Grimm-Zentrum, Geschwister-Scholl-Str. 1/3, 10117 Berlin
Registration at (closing date November 13, 2016): https://hu.berlin/workingonthings
Conference Programme
Monday, November 21, 2016
From 9:00 REGISTRATION
9:30–11:00 INTRODUCTION
9:30 Welcome Address
Ina Heumann, Holger Stoecker, Marco Tamborini, Mareike Vennen, Joint Research Project “Dinosaurs in Berlin”
10:00 Keynote Lecture I
Objects in Transit: Commodities and Communication
Jim Secord, University of Cambridge
11:00 Break
11:30–12:50 HIERARCHIES
Chair: Gerd Spittler, Universität Bayreuth
11:30 Hunting, Investigating, and Exhibiting Great Apes. On Working Conditions in Colonial Cameroon and the German Reich, 1890–1926
Britta Lange, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
12:10 Collecting Fossils in Colonial German East Africa. Work and Workers at the Tendaguru Excavation, 1909–1913
Holger Stoecker, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
12:50 Lunch Break
14:00–16:00 GLOBALIZATION
Chair: Anke te Heesen, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
14:00 The Journey of a Man with a Fish: The Life of a Han Dynasty Object in a South Africa Museum
Nicola Kritzinger, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
14:40 ‘A noble instrument for instruction’: Assembling International Collections in the Cambridge Zoological Museum, 1866–1910
Boris Jardine, University of Cambridge
15:20 Excavating at Kuumbi Limestone Cave: Regional and Global Links in East African Prehistory
Felix Chami, University of Dar es Salaam
16:00 Break
16:30–18:00 COMPETITION
Chair: Bärbel Küster, Technische Universität zu Berlin
16:30 Building Dioramas as Socialist Work: Cuban Corals at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, 1965–1975
Manuela Bauche, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
17:10 The Epistemology of Authenticity: Plaster Cast Reproductions in 19th Century Museums
Lukas Rieppel, Brown University, Providence
17:50 Catering at the Grimm-Zentrum
19:30–22:00 FILMWELTEN DER WISSENSCHAFT
Knochenarbeit. Oder: Dinosauria museologica;
Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, Sauriersaal,
Invalidenstr. 43, 10115 Berlin
Tuesday, November 22, 2016
9:00 INTRODUCTION
Irina Podgorny und Tahani Nadim, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
9:30 Keynote Lecture II
My Sloane Museum
James Delbourgo, Rutgers University
10:30 Break
11:00–13:00 MANAGEMENT
Chair: Jochen Hennig, Scientific Collections of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
11:00 Working on Photo-Objects: Photographs as Mobile Actors in Archeology, Ethnology, and Art History
Stefanie Klamm, Kunstbibliothek, Petra Wodke, Antikensammlung, both Staatliche Museen zu Berlin - Preußischer Kulturbesitz
11:40 Reconstructing the Puzzle: Argentine Theater and Literary Periodicals of the Early 20th Century – Piece by Piece
Peter Altekrüger, Christoph Müller, Ibero-Amerikanisches Institut
12:20 Belabouring the Catalogue: Classifi cation Work in the British Museum
Sebastian Felten, Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte Berlin, Rebecca Kahn, King’s College London
13:00 Break
14:00–16:30 VALUATION
Chair: Anja Schwarz, Universität Potsdam
14:00 Transporting the Tropics: Collecting and Preserving the Victorian Botanical Empire
Elaine Ayers, Princeton University
14:40 The Rhino Horn in the 21st Century: Collecting, Storing, and (not) Displaying
Nicky Reeves, University of Glasgow
15:20 Break
15:40 Economies of Collecting, Transporting, Conserving and Exhibiting Natural History Objects in the Ottoman Natural
History Museum 1835–1850
Semih Çelik, European University Institute, Florence
16:20–17:00 FINAL DISCUSSION
Comments: Irina Podgorny und Tahani Nadim, Museum für Naturkunde Berlin
REGISTRATION (closing date November 13, 2016):
https://hu.berlin/workingonthings