Patrimonialisations are dynamic and multi-faceted operations that occur through the interaction of diverse subjects, logics, frameworks, and experiences. This paper aims to share the first results of a PhD research project started in 2022, which focuses on one of the processes of patrimonialisation consisting into the donation by individuals of private goods to public museums. At the crossroads of the disciplinary fields of anthropology, museology, and cultural history, from which it borrows methodologies and theoretical frameworks, the research aims to shed light on the mechanism of patrimonialisation, notably through the analysis of original sources (archives) and field surveys such as interviews with today donors. One of the main question that leads the research project is ‘how do individuals, through the donation of objects with which they often have intimate ties, participate in the constitution of public museum collections, understood as institutionalised collective material memory? The paper proposes to share analysis from the research which is based on a privileged field of investigation of a local fine arts museum (Museum of Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium) which conserves more than 15,000 artworks of modern and contemporary art (one of the biggest public collections in Belgium), 81% of which come from donations and legacies from individuals.
By shifting the focus away from centralizing hegemonies, attention to local singularities makes it possible to observe the 'mechanics' of patrimonialisation. How does the interaction between individuals and museum, understood as the ‘lieux de mémoire’, define the choices of remembering or forgetting? By proposing, or sometimes even 'forcing the doors of museums', individuals 'colour' heritage through their choices and the goods they propose. Through a diachronic analysis of the phenomenon since the end of the 19th century, the research aims to shed light on potential particularities of this phenomenon today. On the one hand, the paper will share the dynamics underlying the choice of individuals to donate their objects to the public domain, and on the other, it will explore the mechanisms that lead museums to accept or refuse specific objects. Faced with today's preservation challenges (lack of space in storerooms and the economic challenges of conserving inalienable collections), museums are no longer making the same choices as they did a century ago. Further, what place do museums give today to the goods donated by past and present donors (which identification, wich hierarchisation)?
The particular case study can be placed in a broader context, providing a special insight into the history and social uses of heritage. The field of investigation allows a particular attention to local singularities in their interactions with global history and provides an original perspective on the process of patrimonialisation which can “invite us to reconsider the material world as an environment composed of medium, substances, and surfaces in permanent transformation”.
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Anne Malmendier
Art historian, museum professional (Museum of Ixelles, Brussels, Belgium) and PhD Student in Social and Political Sciences at Laboratoire d'Anthropologie des Mondes Contemporains (LAMC), Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium.
Abstract of the research project (in French): https://lamc.centresphisoc.ulb.be/fr/user/1776
Contact: anne.malmendier@ulb.be
Les patrimonialisations sont des opérations multiformes et plurielles résultant de différents processus. L'un d'entre eux est le type particulier de transmission par lequel des œuvres d'art privées sont données par des particuliers aux musées publics. L'approche anthropologique, en s'intéressant aux singularités locales et aux raisons intimes qui conduisent les individus à donner et les musées à accepter ou à refuser des objets, permet d'éclairer le processus menant au choix de la mémoire ou de l'oubli, tant au niveau individuel que collectif.