Inventory as a chance to (re-)discover the overlooked and forgotten
How a museum rethinks its collection
Disclaimer: Wir, die Mitarbeiter*innen des Kunstmuseum Bochum, sind ein internationales Team und gestalten unsere Kommunikation dementsprechend so offen wie möglich. Deshalb haben wir uns für die englische Sprache entschieden für unsere Weeknotes. Wir arbeiten an Übersetzungen in deutscher Sprache die demnächst auf unserem Website-Blog zur Verfügung stehen werden.
We at the Kunstmuseum Bochum are an international team and want to keep our cooperations international as well and as open as possible. Therefore, we decided to write our weeknotes in English. We are working on a German translation, which will soon be available on our website-blog.
Week 10
Welcome back! The museum team wishes you all the best for 2023, we hope you’re all starting well rested into an exciting new year. Ours began beautifully with Özlem joining our team as a research trainee. She is undertaking the huge task of critically analysing the collection of the Kunstmuseum Bochum since 1960, and she wrote this week’s note to give you insight into her work.
A view of the collection in storage - © Heinrich Holtgreve, 2022
1. A museum’s collection raises questions about the past as well as the future
Besides restoration, documentation and discussion, our exhibition “INVENTUR” gives us the opportunity of a more in-depth analysis of our collection’s authorship. A communal collection such as ours doesn’t magically appear but is a witness to choices of past decision makers, canon formation and democratic utopia, as our guest Christiane Wanken, from the Kunstmuseum Gelsenkirchen, put it during this week’s inventory talk “What is the communal of the collection?”.
This analysis raises questions linked to the past as well as the future: Who collected? Who was collected for? What was collected? And most importantly, what can we draw from this for future practice?
2. Even a communal collection is built on individuals’ choices
A big part of the team is still quite new to the museum, which gives us the chance of a hopefully less biased look at it. In the context of Özlem’s work, she envisions our inventory process as an opportunity to explore the raised questions in much more depth, since it uncovers the history and the processes of artworks, collections and museum practice. To elaborate, the inventory reveals the choices, the concept of art and the worldview of the respective collectors and decision makers from the past. It sheds light on artists, artworks, and perspectives that have gained appreciation and recognition through the very personal and subjective choices of individuals. The acquired artworks were kept safely and taken care of, and found a home, a shelter within the walls of the museum.
3. Not all artworks are treated equally
However, it is hard to oversee that not all of the objects within the collection experienced the same kind of appreciation and recognition. They didn’t all encounter equal care. While some of the objects have been showcased in different exhibitions and written about in several publications, others stayed locked away in the dark waiting, in a sense, for their time to shine. Unfortunately, their time was not worth the while. Some artworks and their artists are now forgotten and their names have vanished, as they have not been documented with the same care as others. Some of them remain unidentifiable for us today.
4. We want to figure out who is missing in our collection
And then there are works of art that have simply been denied a place in the collection in general. Artists and artworks who have been overlooked and completely forgotten. Maybe because they were not in the sphere of interest of past collectors and therefore not noticed by them, or maybe they were just not perceived as worthy enough to be given a place in the collection. Whatever the reason, it forced them to stay outside these walls. Which raises further questions: Who are we missing? How can we recover what is lost? But most importantly, how can we change our practice in the present and the future?
5. We aim for decision-making within transparent structures
“Inventur” is an opportunity to not only rediscover forgotten artworks within the collection, but also to rethink previous practices and by doing so, to discover overlooked artists and artworks. It discloses who is already here and who should have been given the chance of being here. It also constitutes evidence to the reality of power structures leading to the fame and glory of some, and to the vanishment of others. So, who should make such decisions in the future and how can we create inclusive and transparent structures for it?
We’re always glad to read your thoughts in the comments, and look forward to sharing more of our processes with you. Thank you for taking the time to read us, see you next week!
- ÖA
A view of the collection in storage - © Heinrich Holtgreve, 2022
About us:
The Kunstmuseum Bochum is a small art museum in Bochum, Germany, rethinking its collection.
Through these Weeknotes we want to document insights and share thoughts about our ongoing inventory process at the Kunstmuseum Bochum. We call it “process”, not “project” on purpose because beyond a need of order, our collection needs a re-telling of its stories, in all its iterations. For more information, you can contact us at: cnies@bochum.de or if you’re reading this for the first time, join our Substack for regular updates.