Cultural Encounters and Explorations: Conservation's 'Catch-22'

保护和收藏受到压力的深刻影响，既要为现在的人们提供更多的接触文物的机会，又要确保文物能够为未来的用户保存下来。这凸显了一个悖论，可以被称为保护的“第22条规”：接触文物带来社会效益更大的接触带来更大的社会效益更大的破坏带来更大的破坏减少了社会效益人们以多种方式与文物互动：鼓励孩子们处理物品，让过去重现；博物馆的参观者渴望看到“真实的东西”，艺术家们受到启发。越来越多地，与物体的接触被用作口述历史的触发器，并被认为具有恢复功能，可将人们与过去重新联系起来（文化福祉），或接触因年龄、健康、社会排斥或感觉障碍而被孤立的人（治疗福祉）。然而，我们对从这些接触中可能获得的任何好处的性质知之甚少，我们对遗产对象本身的影响也知之甚少。这限制了我们制定有效保护策略的能力。因此，这个研究集群的目的将是探索与人与物体之间的物理接触相关的问题。它将检查我们对物理对象变化的理解，我们定义和测量条件的能力，我们对恶化和损失的概念，以及对当前和未来使用藏品的影响。这将通过探索从这些接触中获得的社会/文化利益来平衡。进一步的目的将是探索与数字化对象的远程接触对馆藏护理和管理的政策、实践和伦理的影响。一个关键的目标是，这项研究应该指导未来的遗产保护战略。

Conservation and collections care are deeply affected by pressures to provide greater access to heritage objects for people now, but at the same time to make sure that objects survive for future users. This highlights a paradox which could be called conservation's 'Catch-22': Access to heritage objects brings social benefit Greater access brings greater social benefit Greater access brings greater damage Greater damage brings reduced social benefitPeople interact with heritage objects in many ways: children are encouraged to handle objects to bring the past to life; museum visitors are eager to see 'the real thing', artists are inspired. Increasingly, encounters with objects are used as triggers for oral history, and are considered to have a restorative function in reconnecting people with their pasts (cultural wellbeing), or in reaching people who are isolated through age, health, social exclusion or sensory impairment (therapeutic wellbeing). However, we know relatively little about the nature of any benefit that may be derived from these encounters, nor do we know enough about the effect on the heritage objects themselves. This has limited our ability to establish effective conservation strategies. The purpose of this research cluster, therefore, will be to explore the issues associated with physical encounters between people and objects. It will examine our understanding of changes to the physical object, our ability to define and measure condition, our conception of deterioration and loss, and the implications for current and future use of collections. This will be balanced by exploration of the social/cultural benefit gained from these encounters. A further purpose will be to explore the impact of remote encounters with digitised objects on the policy, practice and ethics of collections care and management. A key objective is that this research should guide future strategies for heritage conservation.