Putting an Eco Lens on Collections with Climate Museum UK
What does it mean to care for museum collections in the context of the Earth crisis? What purpose should these collections serve and how far down the line of generations are we really preserving those items for? Climate Museum UK is doing really thought-provoking research in that field, and I wanted to share what I’ve learnt from them this year.
Back in January 2020, I attended a workshop led by Bridget McKenzie and Alara Adali from Climate Museum UK. (1) The workshop was called “Finding ourselves with objects in the planetary emergency” and consisted of working in groups to curate small collections of objects. The groups moved from table to table, taking it in turns to build upon the work of the previous group and create new layers of interpretation. The objects were a seemingly ad hoc collection of stuff that ranged from plastic toys and other household or decorative items, to a very perishable “no brazil nuts” Eat Natural cereal bar, which Bridget was quick to flag was a collection object and not a snack.
As a design curator, my relationship to objects is one of curiosity and care — even the most non-precious item, once an ‘exhibit’, will be treated like the rarest of porcelain vases by its temporary custodian. The objective? To ensure it will be ‘preserved for future generations’. During this workshop, however, we were invited to be pretty hands-on with the CMUK collection objects. At our disposal were pens and paper, colourful putties and threads that we could use to arrange and rearrange the objects to create connections between them and tell a story for the next group to build on. I was particularly horrified witnessing a participant fashion a cape for a soft stuffed monkey out of coloured putty (“but what about all the residue on the hair!!!” I cried internally). Throughout the workshop, participants rarely “got” the message curated by the previous team, but the richness of the interpretations made, conversations had, the rawness of some of the comments were the real strength of the workshop.
What became evident through the process was that these collection objects had not been assembled for future generations to understand who we are through what we made — but for participants to come to terms with the reality that posterity itself is now in jeopardy. As Bridget McKenzie later told me: “The classic curatorial position is to use and collect objects to enable thinking about past and future, as the objects travel in time through our imagination. Our perspective is to expose the increasing fragility of the systems of economy & cultural production, which threaten the linearity of time, the possibility of keeping or carrying things through time. To rewild a museum is to ask what things matter (e.g. what can we eat, what will help us survive, what can we carry if we have to move, what can we learn from this now in this emergency).”
Whereas museums have historically been creating artificial categories through which to see the world and preserving artefacts against decay, Climate Museum UK invites us to recreate lost connections, challenge our human-centred worldview, and adopt a “possi-topian” perspective. (2)
During lockdown, I watched the BBC’s Secrets of the Museum, a beautiful programme where viewers were given unprecedented insights into the amount of skills, knowledge and time that goes into preserving the Victoria and Albert Museum’s collections. I particularly enjoyed seeing the 21st century Rapid Response Collection objects treated with the same level of care as 17th century textiles and ceramics. The purpose was clear: we must do all we can for future generations to see these objects. But what was jarringly lacking was any sense of what contexts these future generations might live in and what their needs might consequently be. If by the end of this century if not earlier, London is for the most part flooded because we didn’t manage to curb the loss of glacier ice (3), what good will these objects do? Will it all have been in vain?
However disconcerting this thought might be to hold, it is worth contemplating, not so much to fall into a pit of despair or apathy, but on the contrary to kick start our collective imaginations.
In a world dominated by short-term thinking, short attention spans and the rapid cycle of elections, there is a dire need to think about the links between us and future generations more deeply. Encouragingly, we can witness an emerging thirst to do so, from the popular TV programme The Repair Shop (where oft-middle-aged object custodians temporarily adopt a multigenerational perspective through the act of having their grandparents’ treasured possessions repaired to pass onto their own grandchildren) to ambitious political endeavours such as the Welsh Wellbeing Future Generations Act (which formally requires public bodies in Wales to think about the long-term impact of their decisions). These endeavours might operate on a wide scale of day-time entertainment to ambitious systems change, but at least the future is in sight.
Long time thinking is by definition at the heart of curatorial and conservation work, so how can we harness it to encourage positive climate action today? Here, the Climate Museum UK’s approach of putting an ‘#EcoLensOnThings’ can come in handy. This is part of their vision for digital engagement.
Putting an Eco Lens on Things is two-fold. In its first sense, it means looking at any collection items from an Earth Crisis perspective. What can this object teach us about how we got to where we are? Does it hold any clues about other ways of being and seeing? One good example is this CMUK Twitter thread about the work of 18th century botanical illustrator Mary Delany. Putting a climate and ecological lens enriches our understanding of Delany’s work by contextualising it against the background of expansionism, and rationalism, without taking anything away from her trailblazing contribution to science and accomplishments as an illustrator. If anything, it helps us understand how images can impact the way we see the world and our relationship to it.
Questioning our inherited worldviews is essential and urgent work — and collections and their curators have a fundamental role to play in this process. There is brilliant, challenging work happening in decolonising museums and collections, and adopting this “eco lens” is part of it.
In its second sense, putting an eco lens on things is also about having the courage to really question what our jobs should be as curators and collections managers today.
We cannot afford to be complacent and expect other fields of practice to preserve the conditions within which our work can continue (i.e a stable climate).
Our over-industrialised, overspecialised civilisation has created the myth that we should be working in silos. We know by now that this push towards efficiency and cheapness has been detrimental on many levels:
- economic (with the lack of redistribution of financial rewards)
- environmental (when physical separation from the places of extraction numbs us to ecocide and social injustice)
- human (when mental health suffers when, as Ivan Illich says, humans are reduced to being consumers, deprived of their creative energy)
In this context, how can we redefine the role of the curator in the 21st century? Here again, Bridget McKenzie offers a possible direction: “Museums and zoos are a function of a depleted biosphere and more fragile and threatened places. Cultural artefacts and living species need shelter. Maybe the ‘wild curator’ needs to work on restoring peace & thrivability in the world to allow collections/species not to have to be kept or held in shelter.”
Museums are really recent phenomenons in the grand scheme of things — just over 300 years. If their greatest lesson is that with the right amount of skills, care, time and funding, we can preserve anything seemingly indefinitely, and restore damaged objects to their prime, then can we expand those practices of care to the people and the world we are a part of? If that shift requires sticking putty on a collection item, well maybe, maybe!?, so be it!
For more information on CMUK’s work, visit https://climatemuseumuk.org/ or follow them on social media @ClimateMuseumUK, and look out for #EcoLensOnThings.
(1) As part of a day-long symposium coinciding with The Lost Girl exhibition by artist Dr Kate McMillan at King’s College London
(2) A CMUK neologism, being Possitopian means both facing the worst and imagining the best, in ways that are both much more rational and critical, and much more creative and open-minded. More info here: https://possibleculture.wordpress.com/possitopian-about-the-future/
(3) https://earth.org/data_visualization/sea-level-rise-by-the-end-of-the-century-london/ London being part-flooded could even be within the decade given lack of plans to replace the Thames barrier https://www.thedeveloper.live/places/places/london-will-flood-and-when-it-happens-it-will-be-dramatic
