The research group WONA Worlding Northern Art at UiT The Arctic University of Norway (https://uit.no/research/wona) calls for papers for the session "Bringing Collections Home" as part of the 13th triennial NORDIK Conference of Art History in the Nordic Countries.

Collections are the basis for art history as we know it. Whether in museums or on the pages of treatises, we bring objects and artworks together and ascribe meaning to them. Through history, artmaking has been deeply entwined with collecting. Collections give power – over history, over art, over taste, and ultimately over the future. Arguing about and intervening in collections can also be a fight for alternatives and other futures, or a way to right past wrongs. Collections are born from creativity, and they can stifle new creations. Many artworks are collections in themselves and the collection itself can be seen as an artwork. No matter the perspective, collections are deeply bound to art history.

Bringing Collections Home
Through the Sámi repatriation project Bååstede (2014-2019) the transfer of more than 1600 objects from the Norsk Folkemuseum / the Norwegian Museum of Cultural History and the Museum of Cultural History at University of Oslo to six Sámi museums in Norway was made possible. Although the concept of repatriation in Bååstede was used to describe a physical homecoming, historian Veli-Pekka Lehtola (2018) talks about other forms of repatriation when he describes how Sámi individuals and communities re-engage with material from photographic archives and collections. Similarly, Kirsten Dobbin (2013) speaks about visual repatriation in which it is not necessarily desired to have physical objects and photographs returned, but rather elements of history, memory, and identity that are embedded in the images found in collections. Art historian Anja Heiß (2017) advocates that restitution and provenance research can only be meaningfully carried out within collections, and that institutions need to problematize their own collections through such curatorial/institutional projects. Alongside research projects and art historical investigations, artistic and curatorial interventions can contribute to alternative forms of repatriation and restitution, working both with(in) collections, involved communities and the wider public. An example of such a project is Sámi artist Katarina Pirak Sikku’s longstanding engagement with the pictorial and written material of the archive and collections of the former State Institute for Racial Biology, held by the library of Uppsala University. Another example is the art and research project Ládjogahpir (2020) developed by Sámi artist Outi Pieski and archaeologist Eeva-Kristiina Harlin, introducing rematriation as a counter-concept to the patriarchal concept of repatriation.

Bringing Collections Home welcomes papers addressing research projects, as well as artistic and curatorial interventions in collections/archives that enable and critically reflect on processes of repatriation, restitution, and care.

Questions raised in these papers can include:
-How do museum professionals, curators, art historians and artists work to re- engage with archives and collections to create different kinds of homecoming?
-What kind of concepts and methods can be applied to successfully repatriate and restitute material that belongs to descendants of violated individuals and communities?
-How to address the public to make them aware of such violations?

Submission requirements:
Proposals for individual papers should be submitted by e-mail in the form of an abstract (100-150 words) along with an e-mail address to: stephanie.von.spreteruit.no
Papers will be selected competitively based on the abstracts. We recommend sending in papers that have not already been substantially published. If the paper relates to previously published material, it should focus on a particular aspect of such. Papers should be maximum 20 minutes in length. Paper presentations are followed by a Q&A led by the session’s moderator.
A short vita of the presenter will be required once the abstract is accepted.

For further information and submission of papers, please contact:
Stephanie von Spreter, stephanie.von.spreteruit.no