What is it? Twentieth-century Artifacts out of Context
Figure 1. International Business Machines Corp. (est. 1914). Control panel for IBM 305 RAMAC (Random Access Memory Accounting Machine). Design date: 1950. Aluminum frame, aluminum wires, and plastic, 20 3/4 x 11 1/4 x 3”. Gift of the manufacturer. (SC13.1958). Location : The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, U.S.A. Photo Credit : Digital Image © The Museum of Modern Art/Licensed by SCALA / Art Resource, NY
Why does a control panel for a computer from 1950 (Figure 1) attract several viewers in the architecture and design galleries of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York, while similar objects rest unnoticed in storage rooms and science museums around the world? At the MOMA, where color and form are appreciated on their own terms, the tangle of primary-colored wires stands out as a delicate work of art from an unexpected source. The beautiful displays of the architecture and design galleries also help to create an inviting, comparative atmosphere. Whatever the reason, MOMA’s design gallery allows us to see a seemingly ordinary object in a new light, and, in this case, prompts novel questions about aesthetics (conscious or not) and engineering culture in the 1950s. What is happening in other surroundings? Are the objects too familiar, unremarkable? In his classic art history text Learning to Look, Joshua Taylor warned students “that too often it is with the recognition of the subject matter that our consideration of the work stops.”(1) The main challenge with recent technological artifacts, therefore, is to prod researchers, the public, and students to move beyond recognition, and to stimulate alternative perspectives and inquiry. As museums collect an increasing number of post-World War II technologies, multiple approaches to artifacts can only enrich scholarly and public understanding of science and technology.
Several scholars and museum curators are starting to deal with this challenge in creative ways through events, programs, exhibits, and research. Jim Bennett, for example, has suggested that we should embrace the “ambiguity of objects.”(2) Another way of exploring this issue is in the university classroom, where students and professors must face a basic question: what can we learn from post-World War II artifacts? Last winter, I had the privilege of teaching a fourth-year artifact-based seminar (History Dept., University of Ottawa) at the Canada Science and Technology Museum (CSTM). The class, which focused on medical technologies, took place in the aisles of one of the museum’s storage facilities (Figure 2).
Figure 2. Artifact seminar. Storage facility at the Canada Science and Technology Museum. (Photo by author, 2008)
There are two major challenges for such a course: first, the logistics of planning a museum-based course, and second, the difficulties of using objects as a resource for teaching and researching history. The first challenge is considerable. Lessons have to be built from the unique strengths of a collection, keeping in mind access and conservation issues and time constraints of museum staff. As a curator at the CSTM, I was able to hold a course in the storage facility, but there are a number of ways for outsiders to conduct versions of this course by coordinating with museum staff to host seminars or by developing a small teaching collection on your own campus. Almost every campus has a collection (official or not) from which a lively artifact course can be taught.(3)
The other challenge is working with artifacts. The museum storage facility is a stimulating environment, but also an intimidating one because students are not comfortable with actual objects. For most visitors, artifacts are something to identify, contextualize in a general sense, and then use as an illustration for themes that have little to do with the actual material object. As Taylor noted about art, rapid identification can often dampen curiosity. Even experts in a particular field will not necessarily notice or ponder details of an instrument they have written at length about.
One strategy is to arm students with a broad set of questions and examination tools based on the Winterthur method.(4) Basically, I began the artifact sessions by asking the students to examine and take notes on the most basic properties of the artifacts – materials, colors, finish, markings, modifications and manufacturing labels. These are followed by questions that deal with the history (when, where, who, and how was it made?), design (what is its physical structure and shape? is it ornamented?) and function (how it works and evidence of use?). Another part of the examination is more analytic with questions about the identity (what criteria do we use for identifying an object?), and aesthetic qualities (form, style and ornament; identify the unnecessary or non-functional elements). There are questions about construction, design, signs and symbols and what they tell us about a particular culture. I also encouraged the students to compare the object to others that come from the same time, geographical region, or culture; and objects that share a similar set of physical, aesthetic or symbolic characteristics. Finally, during or after classes I would walk the students through the collection to encourage unusual, unexpected connections.
The key to this exercise is a careful and wide-ranging interrogation of artifacts. The more the students examine, the more questions appear. With persistent questions, they begin to transcend the traditional narratives determined by the artifact’s name and classification. They start thinking critically about specific features and how these features represent choices and context of makers and users. Where there is choice there is culture, context, and history. Why these kinds of markings? Why this construction? Why this style of container? Why this kind of component over another? Why this kind of material? The latter question, to take one specific line of questioning, came up repeatedly in class. We examined a range of artifacts and asked from where the materials came and the conditions through which they were obtained and manufactured. These questions link the artifact to different geographies, historical spaces, environmental issues, scientific research, industrial, manufacturing, and commercial contexts. Mylar, for example, dating back to DuPont’s polyester research in the 1950s, appears in a variety of instruments in our collection, from space to medical artifacts, demonstrating cross-fertilization of skills and materials.
Figure 3. Theratron. c 1957. Cobalt-60 radiation therapy unit. Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. Among many features discussed (construction, industrial and nuclear connections, design, function and materials) this instrument stimulated a class discussion about the color green in post-war medical instrumentation. Canada Science and Technology Museum, acc. # 1966.0043.
Similar to the approach of an archeologist who recovers and studies a single object from a past civilization, a broad line of questioning creates distance and wider perspective. One of the seminar students, for example, wrote a descriptive essay about one of our CT scanner units from the mid 1970s. There is a large secondary literature on CT technology that deals with the development of computer tomography, the inventors, and the medical and scientific context. But the object itself had other stories to tell. The student focused on the main screen unit and placed the artifact in the context of console design and culture from the 60s and early 70s. The aisles and shelves of the storage buildings, filled with consoles from that period, became a source of questions and comparison.(5)
The cultural analysis of artifacts requires students to probe for hidden beliefs, values, associations, and meaning.(6) For the first descriptive essay, one student compared the shape and design of a small electrical inhaler to a tea cup as a way of linking the item to the domestication of medical electrical devices.(7) She also situated the electrical plug in a mid-century design context as a means for exploring underlying values related to selling and using medical technology at the time (Figure 4). To elaborate on this point, she compared the inhaler plug with other historic electrical plugs in our collection (and trade literature) from the same period. The examination of such a seemingly basic feature stimulated original research in the collection and insights into medical technology from that era.(8)
Figure 4. Design of electrical plugs in the 1940s and 50s. Canada Science and Technology Museum, acc. # 1999.0028. Photo by author, 2008
What can we learn by examining related artifacts from a different culture? In order to shift perspectives from Western post-war medical technology, we visited the Museum of Civilization (another national museum in Ottawa) to examine healing artifacts from the Northwest Coast. The students “read” the objects for evidence of choices, culture, and history (e.g. construction, materials, ornament, status, and symbolism). This exercise produced interesting contrasts and similarities with Western medicine and technology. The examination of several wooden rattles, for example, precipitated a discussion about the role of sound in medical technologies which in turn led to a discussion about MRI machines and their acoustic effects (moving gradient magnets in MRIs create unsettling bangs and sounds). In this way, the examinations lead to a different perspective on a recent, familiar technology. (The CSTM has a complete 1993 Philips MRI machine (the largest artifact in our medical collection) that will soon be displayed in an exhibit on medical imaging).(9)
The goal of artifact teaching, therefore, is the same as that of a museum—to broaden our experience and take us places beyond our present context. In Vladimir Nabokov’s short story “The Visit to the Museum,” the narrator wanders through the rooms of a French provincial museum suddenly finding himself back in the streets of Russia. Do twentieth-century artifacts have the potential to take us to forgotten historical spaces? Can museums, exhibitions and teaching reflect the many voices of these complex objects? In some cases, one could argue, artifacts are the ideal vehicle for a curious historical imagination. They invite speculation on a number of fronts. Immersion with objects and collections, combined with a broad framework of examination, can liberate students from traditional narratives about science and technology. There is nothing more rewarding than learning something new from even the most common object.
Figure 5. Soviet Thermoelectric Generator, 1959. This kerosene thermoelectric generator is a window into Soviet semiconductor research in the 1950s; it also embodies underlying cultural influences with its resemblance to orthodox vigil lamps. The American version from the same period simply rested on a table. Canada Science and Technology Museum, acc. # 1988.0288. Photo by Tony Missio 2008, Conservation Department at CSTM.
1 Joshua Taylor (1981). Learning to Look: A Handbook for the Visual Arts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, p. 51.
2 Jim Bennett (2000). “Beyond understanding: Curatorship and access in science museums,” in Museums of Modern Science, Svante Lindqvist (ed). Science History Publications/USA, pp. 55-60. Three years ago there was a workshop on this theme, “Curating 20th Century Science”
17 - 18 October 2005, Universiteitsmuseum Utrecht, the Netherlands. http://www.phys.uu.nl/~cocquyt/
SIC_workshop_2005
3 There have been two conferences related to this theme at Dartmouth College and the University of Mississippi, see http://www.dartmouth.edu/~sicu/ and http://home.olemiss.edu/~sicu2web/. Rich Kremer has transformed the Dartmouth collection into a teaching and research collection, see David Pantalony, Richard L. Kremer, and Francis J. Manasek (2005) Study, Measure, Experiment: Stories of Scientific Instruments at Dartmouth College. Norwich VT.
4 In 2003 Rich Kremer and I developed a course using Dartmouth College’s King Collection of Historic Scientific Instruments. We used a modified version of the Winterthur method for examining artifacts from Alison Nördstrom of the New Hampshire Humanities Council. E. McClung Fleming (1982). “Artifact study: A proposed model.” In Material culture studies in America, ed. Thomas J. Schlereth, pp. 162-73. Nashville. Also see Michael S. Mahoney (2003). “Reading a machine.” Unpublished ms. Available at http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/h398/readmach/
modeltfr.html
5 Matt Whibley (2008). “The EMI CT-1005 and the Scanner Revolution.” Unpublished term paper.
6 Jules David Prown (1993). “The truth of material culture: History or fiction?” In History from things: Essays on material culture, ed. Steven Lubar and W. David Kingery, pp. 1-19. Washington, D.C.
7 Mallory Schwartz (2008). “A Cup Full of Domesticity: The Duke-Fingard Inhalator in Context.” Unpublished term paper.
8 CSTM has a large collection of electrical plugs in our Ontario Hydro collection.
9 A good discussion of this challenge, with creative suggestions about MRI machines, can be found at Thomas Söderqvist’s blog on medical technology, http://www.corporeality.net/museion/.
– by David Pantalony
Curator, Physical Sciences and Medicine
Canada Science and Technology Museum
Adjunct Professor
History Department
University of Ottawa