How do museums and people in their homes decide what to keep in the face of mass production and consumption?
The Profusion theme addressed the challenge presented by the abundance of material and digital stuff for assembling the future archive. Expanding mass-production and consumption have resulted in more things to potentially save for the future. We have looked at what is and what is not kept for posterity. We do so by investigating two domains in the United Kingdom that face the prolific past and present in particularly acute ways: homes and museums. Taking an anthropological approach using ethnographic methods, we investigated what is selected for long-term keeping and why. What are the complex yet often unacknowledged motivations, emotions, and judgements that shape what makes it into the future? Our research addressed these questions, while facilitating crossover of insights between homes and museums to hopefully produce new understandings of and responses to profusion.
Heritage Futures at the 2018 Association of Critical Heritage Studies Conference
06/09/2018
Members of the Heritage Futures research team will be convening and presenting at seven sessions at the Association for Critical Heritage Studies 2018 conference at Zheijang University in Hangzhou, China from 1st-6th September.
If you’re heading there, come check out (at least) one of our sessions. Or follow our twitter @Future_Heritage and website for updates resulting from these sessions.
Curating museum profusion: looking to ethnography of domestic excess for new collecting futures
04/07/2016
The 100,000 Year Question
Uncertainty
Transformation
Profusion
Diversity
Nuclear Waste Management
Deep Space Messaging
Built Heritage Management
Museums
Biodiversity
Curating domestic profusion
17/03/2016
The New School House Gallery, York
Curating Profusion: From connoisseurship to mediation?
— 16/01/2017
Sharon Macdonald and Jennie Morgan will be speaking at the Museumslabor Seminar Series at the Humbolt-Universität zu Berlin.
Heritage Futures
04/09/2016
IUCN World Conservation Congress, Hawaii
Rodney Harrison
Cornelius Holtorf
Sharon Macdonald
Caitlin DeSilvey
Sefryn Penrose
Sarah May
Jennie Morgan
Nadia Bartolini
Antony Lyons
Heritage Futures at Historic Scotland 'Conservation Ethics and Approaches' event.
12/12/2018 — 12/12/2018
Caitlin DeSilvey delivered a keynote, with Jennie Morgan providing an invited response at Historic Scotland ‘Conservation Ethics and Approaches’ event on 12 December.
