CONNECTING OBJECTS AND PEOPLE: THE CLASSICAL COLLECTIONS NETWORK
Convenor: Dr Anna Reeve, University of Leeds (Co-chair, Classical Collections Network)
The Classical Collections Network (CCN) is a new Subject Specialist Network which seeks to support and make connections between those working with Classical collections in UK museums, for the benefit of museum audiences. Operating since 2018, it is a membership organization run by volunteers, and holds events and provides resources to facilitate the sharing of ideas and networking. On behalf of the CCN’s Committee, I would like to propose a panel of four co-ordinated papers to introduce the CCN, and to highlight how its work, and the work of its members, demonstrate the benefits of bringing together people working with classical collections in different ways. We hope that the panel will engender lively debate, both on the future work and direction of the network, and on the topics addressed by each paper.
The Classical Collections Network – building a network, engaging the public
Dr Vicky Donnellan, British Museum (Co-chair, Classical Collections Network)
This paper will give an overview of the Classical Collections Network, its work so far and plans for the future. As demonstrated by the Classics impact case studies for REF2021, museums and universities are already working creatively and innovatively together for public benefit, and there is considerable further potential in the numerous classical collections in museums across the UK. At the same time, museums are operating within an increasingly challenging funding environment, and specialist knowledge is unevenly distributed and thinly spread. There is a need for infrastructure to enable expertise, new ideas, and responses to challenges to be shared more readily and effectively. This paper will discuss these drivers for establishing the network, and its work so far, which has included running five annual events, providing opportunities for members to share new research and projects, and to develop their expertise. We have also instigated a mapping project to establish and publicise the location and extent of classical collections in the UK. The successes and limitations of this work so far will be evaluated, and the future directions of the network will be mapped out, in the context of challenges currently faced by museums with classical collections, and the scope to improve access to them – both physical and intellectual – for public benefit.
CA2023 themes: Classics after the pandemic; Inequalities; Decolonising Classics; Global and local.
Every Body is a Classical Body: Using a cast collection to tackle body image with teenagers
Dr Susanne Turner (University of Cambridge) and Dr Arlene Holmes-Henderson (King’s College London)
Funded by an AHRC Follow-on Funding grant, as part of the nationwide Advocating Classics Education project, Every Body is a Classical Body is an innovative academic-practitioner-museum collaboration which explicitly addresses mental health and sexual well-being among teenagers, using classical sculpture to challenge teenagers’ received ideas about body image. Designed not only to align neatly with the Classics curriculum (e.g. the Love and Relationships module in the Classical Civilisation A-level) but also to go beyond it, the project had dual aims; to improve access to classical studies in museums and schools. Our arts and culture-based intervention based at the Museum of Classical Archaeology in Cambridge has produced materials to tackle issues relating to mental illness, sexual harassment, body dysmorphia and eating disorders in teen communities. We will show how, by working with freelance sex-education professional Alice Hoyle and the methodology developed by the Sex & History team at Exeter University, we developed educational sessions to be delivered in the Cast Gallery as well as supporting digital materials for teachers and students which use ancient sculpture to think through contemporary ideas about body image in sensitive ways. The aim was to open up discussions around body normativity, gender identity, weight, and unrealistic expectations of physical perfection. We will reveal how ancient artefacts can function to create a safe distance from potentially risky topics, allowing the exploration of contemporary personal, social and health-related issues within a protected space. In sharing our findings, we will summarise feedback from teachers and students as well as next steps for the project.
CA 2023 themes: Classics after the pandemic (this project launched during the pandemic so we will discuss the hybrid nature of the educational offer); Inequalities (this project has a levelling up component); Genders beyond binaries (the workshops discuss gender, sex and trans issues).
Swastikas and skull-measuring at Schliemann’s first exhibition and what it means for us today.
Dr Abi Baker, Fitzwilliam Museum (Committee member, Classical Collections Network)
The first exhibition of the material from Troy (held at South Kensington Museum in London in 1877-81) is primarily remembered for the question of how it related to the epic poetry of Homer. However, at the time it caused almost as much of a sensation for its importance to racial theory. Schliemann hoped that tying his finds to Aryan theory could prove the importance of Troy as a crossing point from Asia to Europe. Meanwhile, many of the visitor responses to the exhibition were highly racialised, from aesthetes finding the appeal in so-called primitive art to speculations about the moral character of Troy’s inhabitants from the shape of their skulls. This paper explores the ways that Heinrich Schliemann courted these readings and how the British public picked up on but were not constrained by the exhibition’s ideas.
The Trojan exhibition is an example of how audiences make sense of museum exhibitions through a complex negotiation between the exhibition itself, their interests and the wider cultural expectations. While the specific 19th century preoccupations with skulls and symbols have passed, archaeology is still called on to offer meaningful accounts of east and west, identities and origins. Troy offers a reminder of the power of grand narratives in archaeology and the importance of questioning potential and intended meanings of museum exhibitions. Many of Schliemann’s contemporaries who doubted his Homeric claims saw racial approaches as a rational, scientific alternative. But Troy owed its potency as an origin myth for European culture to its Homeric associations, and those associations were a useful way to smuggle ancient and modern prejudices into a discipline that claimed to be objective.
CA 2023 themes: (Ab)uses of Classics in political discourse; Decolonising Classics; Global and local.
Everyone’s Past: Empowering communities to reshape the Ancient Worlds gallery in Leeds City Museum
Dr Kat Baxter (Leeds Museums and Galleries)
When the ‘Ancient Worlds’ gallery was being developed for Leeds City Museum in the mid 2000s, the aim was to showcase the archaeological collections from Egypt, Greece and Rome which had been collected since the 1820s, and to talk about what objects can tell us about ancient societies. At the time the gallery was unusual because it was themed according to the type of evidence – architecture, writing, ceramics, death – rather than the culture the objects were from. But narratives around why the collections were in Leeds, colonialism, issues of repatriation, or the representation of people in archaeology, were not part of the discussions at the time.
Fast forward to 2022 and we are looking at our Classical collections in different ways; the focus of much of our collections work is around decolonisation, representation, overlooked voices, ethics and human remains. We want the Ancient Worlds gallery, which has hardly changed in 14 years, to be updated to reflect this. More importantly, we want the process of developing the new gallery display to change, and to enable our diverse communities to steer the direction of the gallery, the stories it will tell, the voices it will represent, and the challenges this might bring forth.
The gallery project will be in its early stages in 2023, but this paper will set out the aims and the driving forces behind it. It will look at plans for public consultation and a community steering group, and how this might shape a new gallery more relevant to our audiences. Conference attendees will also be invited to give their feedback as part of this consultation.
CA 2023 themes: Decolonising Classics – the school curriculum and beyond; Global and local.
Classical Collections Network 