Museum projects look north, east and down at their roots
25.05.2023 I More news
Three projects are receiving DKK 14 million from VELUX FONDEN to strengthen research and rethink knowledge dissemination at Danish museums. This is the last time that grants will be awarded under the foundation’s Museum Programme, which was established in 2014.
VELUX FONDEN received a total of 15 expressions of interest from Danish museums and universities via the Museums Programme’s open call in 2022. Of these, seven project proposals were invited to prepare a full application and were granted project maturation funds of up to DKK 100,000.
What roles do oral traditions and family archives play in people’s understanding of history in Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Denmark, and how can everyday stories be conveyed in new ways? Can historical dramas from China, Japan and South Korea combined with animations bring an old museum collection from East Asia to life and attract a younger audience? How can the entry of houseplants into Danish homes and interior paintings in the 19th century create new models for museum pedagogy and visitor engagement?
These are the focal points of the three projects being funded this year by VELUX FONDEN under its Museum Programme.
“Research and knowledge dissemination are both key to the development of our museums,” says Henrik Tronier, head of programme for VELUX FONDEN’s Humanities grant area. “Without research, museums would be repositories of outdated knowledge disseminated in outdated ways; without innovative and engaging knowledge dissemination, new research would never benefit the general public or strengthen the democratic dialogue. These three projects take original approaches to combining research and knowledge dissemination in one and the same process which is centred around the inclusion of citizens’ own experiences. In doing so, they pave the way for new perspectives and broader dialogues on issues and societal challenges of topical importance.”
The programme’s last grantsThe Museum Programme was developed in collaboration with Danish museums to support original and integrated research and knowledge dissemination projects that strengthen collaboration between museum researchers and communicators and university humanities researchers. Since the programme was established in 2014, VELUX FONDEN has granted more than DKK 143 million to 31 wide-ranging museum projects across Denmark. The projects have produced good results while managing to build solid bridges between museums and universities. However, this year’s grants are the last in the programme, as there are now more funding opportunities in the area, and because the foundation has in connection with its strategy work decided to focus instead on new ways of building bridges bridge-building between the humanities and arts and culture.
Common narrativeThis year’s three museum projects all look at the collaboration between the research and knowledge dissemination activities of museums. And as the project titles show, they all focus on storytelling – from ‘North Atlantic Everyday Stories’ and ‘New East Asian Museum Tales’ to ‘Hidden Plant Stories’.
At Moesgaard Museum and the four national museums, they will weave together locally anchored personal everyday stories from settlements in Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Iceland to create a polyphonic historical map. The project manager, Associate Professor Christian Vium from Aarhus University, explains:
“The present is defined by how we remember and communicate our shared history. In recent years, there has been growing interest in colonial history, living cultural heritage and memory work in the North Atlantic area. Qualitative research into oral traditions and local archives can provide new insights into how locally rooted everyday stories become interwoven with major historical events. In the project, we look forward to collaborating on the preservation and dissemination of stories and voices that are often overlooked. And in so doing, contribute to a democratic and fine-meshed take on our shared history, which will be made available to the public through open access publications, exhibitions, podcasts and an online platform.”
The project is a collaboration between the School of Culture and Society at Aarhus University and Moesgaard Museum, the Royal Danish Library, the National Museum of Denmark as well as local archives and national museums in Greenland, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
Project manager: Christian Vium, Associate Professor, School of Culture and Society, Aarhus University
Grant: DKK 4.689.051
What roles do oral transmissions and family archives play in understandings of history and how can these be collected, registered and communicated in new ways? Based in interdisciplinary collaborations with local, regional and national partners and institutions in Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands and Denmark, the project ‘North Atlantic Everyday Stories’ preserves and communicates oral stories and family archives, providing new knowledge of their importance to our collective history.
The project integrates three significant approaches within contemporary anthropology and cultural heritage research: affect, narrative and material theory. The project contributes to scientific knowledge sharing, digitisation of site-specific stories and archival material, and to the communication of shared north Atlantic cultural heritage based on experimental approaches to co-creation, workshops and exhibition-making.
The project is a collaboration between the Department of Media, Design, Education and Cognition at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU) and the National Museum of Denmark as well as The Animation Workshop at VIA University College.
Project manager: Martin Petersen, Senior Researcher, National Museum of Denmark
Grant: DKK 4.699.650
New East Asian Museum Tales develops contemporary proposals for ethnographic narratives based on research into historical dramas from East Asia. The project draws upon transmedia theory and objects from the National Museum’s East Asia collection. In East Asia, historical events, persons and material universes are sources of inspiration for a number of the most successful transmedia narratives of the past decade. This is true across genres – from comics and animation to TV series, films and games. These historical dramas appeal to viewers, readers and players across age, gender, education, religion and region despite their otherwise having little historical interest.
In the project, the National Museum of Denmark, Animation Workshop, VIA and SDU investigate and experiment with new ways of communicating ethnographic collections based on the research question ‘How can we communicate East Asian objects in actualising, affective and engaging ways, inspired by historical dramas from East Asia and transmedia theory?’
The project is a collaboration between the School of Communication and Culture, the School of Culture and Society and the Department of Biology at Aarhus University and The Hirschsprung Collection.
Project manager: Anette Vandsø, Associate Professor, School of Communication and Culture, Aarhus University
Grant: DKK 4.680.885
With the ‘Hidden Plant Stories’ project, Aarhus University and The Hirschsprung Collection shed light on house plants as Danish cultural heritage, to uncover and create public awareness of the ‘hidden stories’ of these mundane everyday objects. Within the framework of this project, an interdisciplinary team of biologists, art historians and cultural historians will study Danish interior paintings from the 1800s that provide a unique testimony to the plants’ entry into the bourgeois Danish homes.
In the final exhibition, The Hirschsprung Collection is transformed into a polyphonic space for ‘plant stories’, where the audience’s personal plant stories will be in dialogue with house plant stories seen in historical paintings as well as the researchers knowledge of the plants’ cultural and breeding histories.
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