Daly Conservation

It’s true, now that I have begun researching human remains in collections I have been finding them everywhere.  This year Andrei Molodkin at the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Bienniale will be displaying human remains cast in resin.  I have been working thinking of Eqyptian and South American mummies but it appears I will have to broaden my view of where I will be likely to find human remains in museum collections.

Bruno Pouliot gave a lecture this evening about his journey into the field of conservation.  It was illustrated with photos of his first car (a yellow Pinto), Yellowknife, Bamako, Greece, France, and his class at the Queen’s program with their mascot Woolfie.

His journey is an amazing journey, a story of places and people, success and setbacks.  One thing he mentioned  has been weighing on me for a while.  When working in ethnographic conservation,  there is a great sadness when working on objects from a community that may soon be lost.  It comes to a point when the conservator, in understanding the culture from whence the object came, begins to question whether their role should be different.

I have felt this only slightly but I have met conservators who are really conflicted about whether they can morally conserve an object without also addressing the concerns of the community that created the object.  From this point brings the next question, Is there is a  requirement to conserve the people who created the object as part of the intangible properties?  Can we conserve people?

I was really glad that Bruno mentioned his work in Mali, where he saw poverty, disease, and a lack of government infrastructure.  While there were these huge problems the country was funding his work, he was teaching art conservation in Bamako.  Bruno didn’t give up art conservation.  He saw he could conserve the objects made by the people in Mali.  The people recognized his contribution to their culture and appreciated that greatly.

I am not a conservator, yet.  But I hope in my time in school I will learn how to work through this ethical questions.  I realize my ethics will be personal and different from anyone else’s.

As this is a blog, I would really like feedback about this posting.  Thank you.