Mobilising collections histories for institutional change: Egypt at the Horniman Museum

藏品的社会历史研究如何对博物馆的基础设施、实践和利益相关者产生长期的、变革性的影响？如何记录和评估这种转换？有大量关于博物馆藏品历史的学术研究，追踪殖民地机构和赞助网络，这些机构和赞助网络形成了博物馆藏品。这项工作在非殖民化议程的背景下发现了新的重要性，这些议程试图改变这些历史的代表性，以及接触和补救的条件。然而，关于如何实现制度变革的模式很少；我们建议开发一种这样的模式。我们的项目将对博物馆藏品（霍尼曼时代的埃及）进行重要的社会历史、特征和评估，同时对该藏品的内部和外部利益相关者进行纵向研究，以及重要的实践活动，以检查藏品工作如何影响从教育团队到社交媒体经理再到商店的博物馆活动。为了改变人们谈论和理解文化的方式。这项研究将涉及物质空间和数字空间，探索这些社会、教育和资源密集型空间，这些空间相互交叉，相互紧张。没有什么地方比埃及藏品更需要这项工作了。研究已经证明了这些藏品在英国是多么普遍，它们是如何从现代埃及社区中被遗弃的，以及它们是如何使殖民思想永久化的。这些是最受学生欢迎的藏品，可以用来学习，可以用来展示，也可以在博物馆商店、网上和活动节目中供公众消费。然而，这些活动通常依赖于一个想象中的埃及，重复着过时的比喻，只从机构拥有的大量藏品中提取一小部分。本研究以霍尼曼博物馆的埃及藏品为重点，将理论与实践结合在博物馆实践的六个核心领域：(i)策展，（ii）学校教育，（iii）文献/知识和信息管理，（iv）营销和传播，(v)商业活动（商店，咖啡馆，付费活动/节目）和（vi）游客服务。

How might studies of social histories of collections have a long-term, transformative effect on museum infrastructures, practices, and stakeholders? How can this transformation be documented and evaluated? There exists a substantial body of scholarship on histories of museum collections tracing colonial agencies and networks of patronage through which assemblages have formed. This work has found new importance in the context of decolonisation agendas that have sought to transform the representation of these histories, as well as the terms of engagement and redress. However, there are few models on how to achieve institutional change; we propose to develop one such model. Our project will undertake a critical social history, characterisation, and appraisal of a museum collection (Egypt in the Horniman) in tandem with a longitudinal study of internal and external stakeholders of that collection, together with critical practice engagements, to examine how collections work can have an impact across museum activity from education teams, to social media managers through to the shop, in order to change the way that cultures are spoken about and understood institutionally. This research will involve both material and digital spaces, exploring these as social, educational, and resource-intensive spaces that both intersect and lie in tension with each other. Nowhere is this work more necessary than in the case of Egyptian collections. Research has demonstrated how widespread throughout the UK these collections are, how they have been orphaned from modern Egyptian communities, and how they perpetuate colonial thinking. These are the most popular collections for schoolchildren to learn about, for the development of displays, and for public consumption in museum shops, online, and event programming. Yet these activities usually rely on an imagined Egypt, repeating out-dated tropes and drawing from only a small proportion of the substantial collections held by institutions. Focusing on the Egyptian collection at the Horniman, this research aligns theory and practice across six core areas of museum practice: (i) curation, (ii) school education, (iii) documentation/knowledge and Information Management, (iv) marketing and communications, (v) commercial activity (shop, café, paid-for events/programming), and (vi) visitor services.