
The Inertia of Collections
Author(s) -
Francisco Martínez
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
museum worlds
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.102
H-Index - 1
eISSN - 2049-6737
pISSN - 2049-6729
DOI - 10.3167/armw.2019.070103
Subject(s) - concreteness , exhibition , shadow (psychology) , collection development , assemblage (archaeology) , power (physics) , search engine indexing , computer science , art , sociology , visual arts , history , world wide web , archaeology , psychology , anthropology , psychotherapist , physics , quantum mechanics
The first aim of this article is to study the persistence of the collection’s positive presentation of Rosenlew’s industrial heritage, and the second is to anthropologically reconsider what kind of knowledge is generated therein through the preservation and display of factory-made artifacts, which give a sense of concreteness and gravitas to the industrial past. By studying the permanent exhibition and the collections of the Rosenlew Museum and by organizing a workshop with schoolchildren, I reveal the presence of various inertia effects. Long-term corporate values continue to influence the development of the museum’s permanent collection not only through the arrangement of industrial artifacts into a collection but also—at a heuristic level—through epistemological frames and the indexing power of the museum assemblage.