Col·loquis de la SCHCT (2021-2022)

Cicle: “Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica, 30 Anys d’Educació, Investigació i Professió”

“More needed than ever: The role of the history of science in the ‘decolonising the museum’ debate”

Marta Lourenço (MUHNAC-CIUHCT-PRISC, Universidade de Lisboa / UMAC-ICOM)

Dijous 17 de febrer de 2022, 18.30h. (CET)

Sessió online (link)

The growing interest of historians of science, technology and medicine for material culture, collections and museums is well known. The shift from mere interest to actual use of material culture as primary sources for history is not immediate however, requiring training and commitment by historians. It also requires that museums are prepared, and collections are accessible and documented. We are better than we were 20 years ago, but the ‘two worlds’ still have a long way to go.

In this lecture I will discuss an area of intersection between the world of museums and the world of historians that is less challenging for historians and museums and significantly facilitates collaborations with mutual benefit: the so-called ‘decolonizing the museum’ initiatives. Largely anchored on provenance research, contextual analyses, relevance of objects and meanings in the past and in the present, ‘decolonizing’ scientific collections and heritage aims at making visible voices and perspectives that were silenced during decades, if not centuries, of curatorship in European museums.

Using MUHNAC’s colonial scientific collections as a point of departure, I will argue something quite trivial: that this important work of restitution collections and heritage to the broad public sphere and, more specifically, to communities of origin, should not rest on museum professionals alone and cannot be properly done without historians.

Marta C. Lourenço is the present director of the National Museum of Natural History and Science of the University of Lisbon (MUHNAC). She has background training in Physics (University of Lisbon), a MA in Museology (Nova, Lisbon) and a PhD in Museology and History of Technology (CNAM, Paris). She is the national coordinator of PRISC (Portuguese Research Infrastructure of Scientific Collections). She teaches Material Culture of Science in the Masters of History and Philosophy of Science (Faculty of Sciences, University of Lisbon) and is a research member of CIUHCT, the Interuniversity Research Centre for the History of Science and Technology (University of Lisbon). Since 2016, she is the President of the International Committee for University Museums and Collections (UMAC) of the International Council of Museums.

Presentació a càrrec d’Alfons Zarzoso (Museu d’Història de la Medicina de Catalunya).

Xerrada inscrita dins del cicle especial: Societat d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica, “30 anys d’Educació, Investigació i Professió”. La Societat Catalana d’Història de la Ciència i de la Tècnica (SCHCT) fou creada el 1991 com a representació col·lectiva professional i disciplinar de la història de la ciència, la tècnica i la medicina. Des de la seva fundació, a través de les seves accions ha permès impulsar el paper cívic del passat i present de la ciència, la tècnica i la medicina, el relleu generacional i la professionalització en l’àmbit geogràfic de llengua catalana i a nivell internacional.

Coordinat per Josep Simon & Alfons Zarzoso.