Conn’s provocatively titled piece laments the shifting projects of institutions, and the loss of an emphasis on materiality as institutions vie for patronage and funds. Unfortunately, Conn makes a series of conflations regarding the history of museums by beginning with art museums and moving into natural history museums. Here, there seems to be a refusal to productively grapple with the large differences in how each museum came into being and their accompanying intellectual, social, and political contexts. His repeatedly flattens history but does not hesitate to spend significant amounts of time and space voicing his disdain for “therapeutic” museums which address the historical atrocities visited upon the bodies and psyches of people of color. At an especially infuriating moment, he argues that “anthropology’s subjects decided they had enough” (33). In writing this, he simply utilizes colonialist discourse and continues his project of lambasting indigenous communities and museum projects. He seems to confuse and conflate object, objectivity (of the museum or of anthropology), and the processes by which some peoples are objectified.
To answer the prompt more directly, I think the shift in museum projects and presentations has potential. For instance, technology might ameliorate the violence visited upon disinterred bodies. This is evident in exhibitions at the Field and their mummies exhibit which was on loan to the LA Natural History Museum last fall. Here, 3D printing and imaging was used on Peruvian mummies so that the already-desecrated (via disinterment) burial sacks would not face further violation.
Objects in museums aren’t going anywhere. There is nothing quite so effective at achieving an affective impact as an object which one can stand beside and see in great detail or, in some instances, touch. This has certainly been my own experience working in archives. In our brief foray into the Johnson collection, we came upon a set of self-authored indexes to his collection and to what appeared to be a legal document establishing the – company, as well as documents which appeared to be his work contracts. If the legal document establishing the company as a legal business entity is, in fact, just that, I think it is an incredible document and find! Archival work is tremendously rewarding. I had previously only worked with digital archives before coming to UCLA where I would eventually spend a year working with the Stoller archives. It was a wildly different experience to hold such delicate materials and pour through the contents of a box for days at a time. That said, I think perhaps maybe it sets up a false dichotomy to pit the material archive against the digital archive. Digital archives to, after all, have very material infrastructures and simply because an experience is different does not necessarily mean it is better.
I really appreciate and concur with you critiques of Conn’s chapter. His sweeping historical set up juxtaposed with this detailed criticism of contemporary trends was ineffective at best. I like how you connected the shifting trends in museums to your own experience working with special collection archives. The materiality of digital archives of often neglected, and while they do offer different insight, I agree with your point that they both have value.