Paddle ? Congo, Chalmers expedition

I've just been looking through a big folder of stuff in the Rotherham Ethnographic collection. It was all a bit disapointing really I've no idea what I expected to find but it all looked a bit car boot sale on the photoes. I like this Paddle entry - their is a picture of a woman holding it in a pair of white gloves - I'm going to google Chalmers expedition and see if I go anywhere it's funny to think that 15 years ago I'd have had to say I'm going to the libary for a month to try and find out about it.

The thing about heart of Darkness which struck me is that it's clearly a metaphorical journey but it feels really important that it's based on fact. Is this because the journey parrallels a personal journey into the inner self and both experiences are based on personal experience? Can you help me out Kate I like this parallel because it's really silly in a daft post modern ironic way but it links closely to this idea of the importance of truth in objects narratives and interpretations.

bugs

in spirit: spider|bugs|insects

Steve, I know what you mean about 'being an artist'. Doing this makes me realise how much time I often spend just glancing sideways at my own practice instead of being fully engaged with it.

The problem of conservation obviously pervades: at Doncaster, and escaping the basement in black bin liners, are thousand of bugs labelled and pinned (I imagine) accurately onto trays on their way to deep freeze de-bugging. An obviously necessary museum priority: to get rid of the bugs eating the collection of bugs.
Understandably, keeping a collection can be a headache: the must saves [those species|objects already [unfortunately or not] accessioned into the collection] v. the must get rid offs [those that are not, those that may or can be stopped -- to save precious space -- on their way in: the not quite right, the not quite filling a gap or the ones squeezing into a spot already taken (makes me think of sibling rivalry!)
Peter, keeper and curator of archaeology, spoke of the object 'doppelganger': the object that mimics and looks almost exactly like, but is upon closer -- or expert -- inspection, is not quite.

I do like the honesty and openness of the 'could', 'perhaps', 'may' ... 'to be confirmed' ... 'perhaps' ... especially, I like the uncertain (and scary) potential of the just emerging 'what do you think?'. As methods of fumigation, these open ended presentations admitting doubt may just go a long way towards alleviating the perceived stuffiness?

Stuffy Museums

I wonder if the phrase stuffy museums comes from all the stuffed animals. I'm still haunted by the idea of thousands of bird skins. Steve at Rotherham told me a story about their bird skins and their freezer going down for a week - he said they got a bit high and I don't think this means they learnt to fly again. I remember walking down a road with my heavily pregnant wife and her finding a flat dried out frog - she was in the middle of putting on an exhibition about whichcraft and needed it to make a spell - she had to order the eye of newt from a newt farm.

Rotherham is going well it feels great to feel like an artist again some how all twisted and tangled in a spiral of thoughts going around and around and around. Steve the director was talking to me about conjecture and how curators would like to be able to imagine what may have happened to an object but don't - the facts just the facts. Thinking about museums and archeology it all seems to be based on conjecture. "A tool which Could, would, may have, probably at around the turn of the century been use to skin birds which now may or may not be extinct in some parts of the world for future genertions to dispose of."

I've just read heart of Darkness as I'm roughly modeling my quest to rediscover Rotherhams ethnographic collection on Conrads tail. All journies have a starting point and I'm hoping I've found mine.

messing about in the basement

we've been exploring...
inventorise as you see fit!

Happy New Year

Just dragging myself back into the world of work. I'd be intereseted in catching up with everybody. I've had an initial meeting at Rotherham and lots of ideas got chucked about. It seemed important that one outcome from the project could be to generate links between services through the project - or at least share experiences - I thought it might be useful to set a date for a midpoint meeting where we all get together and give museum staff involved an opportunity to see whats happening across the project - Kate perhaps you could use this as a midpoint research milestone? Perhaps a date in March if this fits everybodies timescale.Anyway I'm still not quite over new year but if people could respond to this posting it might shake me into some positive creative action. Happy new year STEVE