This CDP will examine the history of museum conservation through the evolving role of the conservator at the British Museum from 1960 to 1990. While museum studies have focused on collecting and display, the professionalisation of the museum workforce – especially conservators – remains underexplored. Existing scholarship often centres high status individuals perceived as establishing the sector, e.g. Alexander Scott (1853-1947), Harold Plenderleith (1898-1997), and William Oddy (1942-). The shifting and shared practices, material relationships, training, local and international networks, and daily activities of entire departments and the wide range of people therein are thus ignored. The 1960–1990 period is especially neglected, often underestimated as a period in which earlier museum principles, structures and methods were apparently already firmly established and endured.
Yet it is these activities and these communities of practitioners that have shaped the collections in museums today, through material treatments and professional practices embedded in scientific, technical craft skill and social norms influenced by the academic, political and cultural values of the late twentieth century. Scholarship on museum conservation in Germany, Norway and the US has highlighted the importance and indeed the sometimes devastating impact that long histories of conservation can have on contemporary collections and the people invested in them. The unique history of UK museum practice has an important role to play in nuancing and expanding this literature and informing future approaches to collections, including at the British Museum.
Further study is required to understand the contemporary impact of 1) institutional mission, e.g. the specificity of the BM’s aim to hold an interdisciplinary collection representative of world cultures, 2) individual trajectories, e.g. the ways in which long-serving and newly appointed staff beyond department heads traversed shifting institutional and professional boundaries, 3) the critical decades of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, when conservation departments were established and technicians renamed and retrained as conservators, and 4) the impact of international and placed-based networks (e.g. the conservation training centres at Jos, Nigeria, and the Institute of Archaeology at UCL) on conservation as professional practice.
This studentship will contribute to this agenda, and ask the following questions:
- How did the conservator role develop and professionalise in the UK, 1960-1990?
- How did conservation at the BM emerge and separate from departmental assistant and science-based roles? What values, norms and practices were established? In what context was the Department of Conservation established in 1975?
- What impact has this professionalising had on the preservation of the collection? How were decisions made to develop and retire object treatments in this period?
The student will define the project’s scope by selecting targeted additional institutions for research, e.g. museums which worked in particular partnership or distinction from the BM, tracing ideas and key staff through their careers where appropriate. They will also have the freedom to focus on specific types of conservation, collections and treatments related to their interests/career aims.
The studentship includes opportunities for development including a potential placement at the British Museum.
The student will be expected to spend time at both the British Museum (London) and the University of Brighton, as well as becoming part of the wider cohort of CDP funded students across the UK.
The studentship can be studied either full or part-time.
We encourage applications from a diverse range of people, from different backgrounds and career stages.