Bias in digital cultural heritage collections (BETA)
Progress
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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">2.1 Examples of biassed collections/objects</h2>
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<p>Just because something or someone isn’t represented in a museum collection doesn’t mean those events or people didn’t exist or that they weren’t important. We need to consider what might be missing from records and collections, why those gaps might exist, and what histories we might be missing out on now because of it.</p>
<p>It is well-known that Natural Science, History and Art museums established throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries in colonial and post-colonial European nations functioned to assert and justify narratives of colonialism and imperialism (and patriarchate as well, as a cultural feature strictly related to the colonial nations’ view of the world).</p>
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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">2.1.1 Value judgement on culture</h2>
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<p>As a result, non-colonial cultures and ethnicities were usually situated in the mythic past, positioned as unmodern relics of a time gone by. In European culture, pairs of opposing concepts determine mental and emotional values, as well as value judgments on culture.</p>
<p><img height="361" width="403" src="/assets/courseware/v1/2cbcc3e714789e4398c09785a4b1456d/asset-v1:europeana+BIAS_01+2024Q4+type@asset+block/DE-BIAS_InteractiveLecture_SusanPearce_1.png" alt="opposing concepts " style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></p>
<p><em>(Source: author’s illustration from Susan Pearce, On Collecting: An Investigation into Collecting in the European Tradition, Routledge, London 1995, p. 285)</em></p>
<p>It becomes the representation of a wider contrast between<strong> "us"</strong> (which is represented as normality, authenticity, importance) and <strong>"them"</strong> (understood as carriers of non -culture, abnormality, falsehood), thus also assuming a political value.</p>
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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">2.1.2 The essence of “us” and “others”</h2>
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<p>Within society these aesthetic, cognitive and political values are intertwined, and it is very difficult to distinguish one from the other and to understand the mechanisms according to which they operate. The differences that constitute the essence of <strong>"us"</strong> and <strong>"the others"</strong> can be identified on two main axes: the spatial and the temporal.</p>
<p><img height="333" width="500" src="/assets/courseware/v1/25887e1a21d886e766beec22d656bb74/asset-v1:europeana+BIAS_01+2024Q4+type@asset+block/DE-BIAS_InteractiveLecture_SusanPearce_2.png" alt="Differences and distances on the space and time axes between US and THEM" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></p>
<p><em>Differences and distances on the space and time axes between US and THEM (source: S. Pearce, op. cit., Routledge, London 1995, p. 313) - <a href="/assets/courseware/v1/25887e1a21d886e766beec22d656bb74/asset-v1:europeana+BIAS_01+2024Q4+type@asset+block/DE-BIAS_InteractiveLecture_SusanPearce_2.png" target="_blank">Open in new tab</a></em></p>
<p>The meeting point between the two axes represents the individual: within a certain distance from this, both along the time axis and along the space axis, there is all that is familiar and belongs to us (family, city, language, uses and customs, somatic characteristics, religion), while as we move away we find what is <strong>"different"</strong> which becomes more alien the greater the distance from the meeting point of the two axes. Having crossed the line of demarcation within which we are <strong>"us"</strong> Europeans, we encounter <strong>"the others"</strong> in a crescendo of geographical and temporal diversity, which lies beyond us in geographical terms and before us in temporal terms.</p>
<p>These assumptions and narratives have perpetuated discriminatory thinking for decades, based on race, religion and gender, with entire groups of people who have thus found their histories absent, erased or misrepresented in cultural institutions for well over a century.</p>
<p>For all these reasons, we are also facing an issue of lack of representation of different communities within cultural heritage institutions: visitors are not reflective of the diversity present in communities around the nation, hindering the idea itself of cultural institutions as democratic spaces for knowledge sharing and creation.</p>
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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">2.1.3 Decolonisation programmes</h2>
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<p>Lately, many national and international cultural institutions have set up programmes to 'decolonise' their collections or to highlight and explain the biases inherently linked to catalogue entries and descriptions accumulated over time. Actions and initiatives have been developed around the world to investigate language as one of the sources of the problem.</p>
<p>Several American cultural institutions, too, have issued statements about the harmful or offensive language in descriptions and bias in cataloguing.</p>
<p>European institutions are also addressing the issue, but shortages in staff and budget concerns hindered a targeted and efficient approach and the development of a pan-European strategy. One important initiative has been undertaken by the National Museum of World Cultures in The Netherlands: The publication Words Matter. An Unfinished Guide to Word Choices in the Cultural Sector contains a glossary to help cultural heritage professionals understand why a word can be particularly sensitive to a person, suggesting alternatives to potentially harmful terms.</p>
<p>Other European counteractions to be noted are the Europeana Initiative’s <a href="https://pro.europeana.eu/project/diversity-and-inclusion-task-force" target="_blank">Diversity and Inclusion Task Force</a> and the working group of Europeana Aggregators which explored this theme and the specific challenges related to aggregation and working with content providers. Both groups ran throughout 2022 and the latter provided the initial to the DE-BIAS project’s work (see the working group’s <a href="https://app.moocit.fr/asset-v1:europeana+BIAS_01+2024Q4+type@asset+block@Identifying_and_managing_diversity_in_cultural_heritage_data_-_case_studies_report.pdf" target="_blank">Case studies report (PDF)</a> and <a href="https://app.moocit.fr/asset-v1:europeana+BIAS_01+2024Q4+type@asset+block@Recommendations_for_identifying_and_managing_diversity_in_cultural_heritage_data.pdf" target="_blank">Recommendations on "Identifying and managing diversity in cultural heritage data" (PDF)</a>.</p>
<p>If you want to go more in depth on this topic, you can read the following sources:</p>
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<li>Patricia Harpring, <a href="https://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/cco_cdwa_for_museums.pdf" target="_blank">Cataloging Works at Museums and Special Collections: Documentation, Indexing, Access with CDWA, CCO, and the Getty Vocabularies</a>, Getty Vocabulary Program, revised February 2022;</li>
<li><a href="https://cataloginglab.org/list-of-statements-on-bias-in-library-and-archives-description/" target="_blank">List of statements on bias in library and archives description</a></li>
<li><a href="https://amsterdam.wereldmuseum.nl/en/about-wereldmuseum-amsterdam/words-matter-publication" target="_blank">Words Matter - Publication</a></li>
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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">2.1.4 Example 1: Fred Wilson, Mining the Museum</h2>
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<p><strong>Fred Wilson, Mining the Museum, 1992-1993, Maryland Historical Society Museum, United States</strong></p>
<p>Wilson is an artist-curator who describes policies, collections and archives. In this work, co-curated with Lisa Corrin at the Maryland Historical Society Museum, he highlights history as an act of interpretation and draws attention to forms of institutional racism and colonial bias, through researching, excavating, and exhibiting deliberately excluded archival material and silenced histories, alongside contemporary art pieces. He puts objects behind barriers or facing walls and juxtaposes the museum’s 'legitimised' objects against 'hidden' objects from the stores, "because what they [the museum] put on view says a lot about the museum, but what they don’t put on view says even more" (Karp, I. and Wilson, F. (2005) ‘Constructing the Spectacle of Culture in Museums’ in B. Ferguson, R. Greenberg and S. Nairne (eds), Thinking about Exhibitions, London: Routledge, pp. 182).</p>
<p>Wilson famously places 'beautiful' things next to 'horrific' things, including Metalwork 1793-1880, where iron slave shackles were positioned next to silver pitchers, steins and goblets. He designs graphics and writes interpretative materials – including changing artefact labels to highlight where objects were made by enslaved people, as well as removing the 'owners' names (in many cases colonisers), powerfully questioning provenance, toying with ideas surrounding authority and 'truth' and, exploring not what objects mean but how meaning is made when they are 'framed' by the museum environment and museum practices.</p>
<p><img height="333" width="501" src="/assets/courseware/v1/72525c5d39cc39e4bc98b4e91fa3c4e8/asset-v1:europeana+BIAS_01+2024Q4+type@asset+block/image19.jpg" alt=" “Mining the Museum", a 1992-1993 installation by artist Fred Wilson at the Maryland Historical Society. MS 2008." style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></p>
<p><em> Courtesy of the Maryland Center for History and Culture, “Mining the Museum", a 1992-1993 installation by artist Fred Wilson at the Maryland Historical Society. MS 2008.</em></p>
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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">2.1.5 Example 2: ‘Being Human’, Wellcome Collection</h2>
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<p><strong>‘Being Human’, Wellcome Collection, London, United Kingdom</strong></p>
<p>In 2018 RCMG - Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, based at Leicester University, was approached by the Wellcome Collection to establish a collaboration that would help to shape their new permanent gallery<em> <a href="https://wellcomecollection.org/exhibitions/XNFfsxAAANwqbNWD" target="_blank">Being Human</a></em>. RCMG convened a steering group of disabled artists and 'disrupters' – Tony Heaton, Catherine Long and Zoe Partington – with input from additional external experts, to work through a process of co-production with the Wellcome Collection team. Medical museums have too often portrayed difference as a deficit and presented physical differences as curiosities for the non-disabled gaze. Disabled people here are often nameless, reduced to the characteristics that mark them out as different and held up as a deviation from an idealised norm.</p>
<p>Through a year-long process of co-production – adopting an approach that allowed for different forms of expertise, such as medical, scientific, historical, curatorial, as well as expertise derived from or informed by lived experience of disability – the artists fed into processes of object selection and interpretation to shape a deeply anti-ableist gallery that would tell stories of medicine and science, but in ways that actively affirmed rather than negated disabled people’s lives and challenge widely held negative attitudes towards difference and disability.</p>
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<p><br /><img height="330" width="500" src="/assets/courseware/v1/77e59775452cf819b4c13ff85e1c847d/asset-v1:europeana+BIAS_01+2024Q4+type@asset+block/FriendshipBench.png" alt="Friendship Bench" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em style="text-align: center;">© Wellcome Collection, photo by Steven Pocock</em></p>
<p>A <em>Friendship Bench</em> from a project in Zimbabwe that encouraged people to talk about mental health.</p>
<p><img height="334" width="501" src="/assets/courseware/v1/c81cdbf8e889636edf79b3a380a2ba91/asset-v1:europeana+BIAS_01+2024Q4+type@asset+block/image13.jpg" alt="Interactive jukebox" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em>© Wellcome Collection, photo by Steven Pocock</em></p>
<p>An <em>interactive jukebox</em> loaded with songs from around the world relating to illness and epidemics, designed by Kin with Bethan Laura Wood to include a rotating glass sculpture.</p>
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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">2.1.6 Example 3: Permissible Beauty</h2>
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<p><strong>Permissible Beauty, 2023, Hampton Court Palace, London, United Kingdom</strong></p>
<p><a href="https://permissiblebeauty.le.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Permissible Beauty</a> was an innovative research and portraiture project that responded to the absence of Black Queer visibility in Britain’s national story and heritage, and explored and celebrated what is unique about British Black and Queer identity. Led by RCMG in collaboration with performer, songwriter and art historian David McAlmont, photographer Robert Taylor and film director Mark Thomas of Soup Collective, the three-year project resulted in a short film and immersive installation at Hampton Court Palace (Historic Royal Palaces).</p>
<p>Drawing inspiration from the renowned 17th century portrait paintings, known as the Windsor Beauties, and shot on location at Hampton Court Palace, the group explored how fresh ways of celebrating beauty might be revealed. They worked with six 'Contemporary Beauties' – artists, drag queens, performers, models and activists – whose portraits lie at the heart of the film and installation. Permissible Beauty set out to create an experience that was affirming for audiences that rarely see themselves reflected in the nation’s heritage and an enriching, stimulating, joyful and surprising engagement for all visitors.</p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img height="334" width="501" src="/assets/courseware/v1/98a1a24b6e9c5a3bea60c2b25d59adc6/asset-v1:europeana+BIAS_01+2024Q4+type@asset+block/image7.png" alt="Permissable beauty" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><img height="346" width="500" src="/assets/courseware/v1/e48d12b0df97afe8a726d0b4c8b57fe9/asset-v1:europeana+BIAS_01+2024Q4+type@asset+block/image1.png" alt="Permissable beauty" /></p>
<p style="text-align: center;"><em> Permissible Beauty</em> installation at Hampton Court Palace. Photos © Robert Taylor.</p>
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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">2.2 Ways to recontextualise contentious collections</h2>
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<p>Though many gaps are likely coincidental or unintentional, other gaps were historically intentional or at the very least embedded so firmly in colonial thinking and processes in cultural institutions that blind spots persisted. In the last decades, cultural institutions have worked hard to establish better relationships with unrepresented, misrepresented or underrepresented groups to redress these historical wrongs and commit to telling more accurate and inclusive stories through a post-colonial lens.</p>
<p>This process is taking place in all the functional areas related to cultural heritage, such as collection, programmes, design, advancement, technology, and operations.</p>
<p><img height="281" width="500" src="/assets/courseware/v1/b644c8fd439273b3cffffa91a7b2474c/asset-v1:europeana+BIAS_01+2024Q4+type@asset+block/image16.png" alt="Guiding questions to think about Bias" /></p>
<p><em>Source: <a href="https://brilliantideastudio.com/art-museums/guiding-questions-to-think-about-bias-in-museums-by-functional-area/" target="_blank">Guiding Questions to Think about Bias in Museums (by functional area)</a>, Seema Rao, Brilliantideastudio. <a href="/assets/courseware/v1/b644c8fd439273b3cffffa91a7b2474c/asset-v1:europeana+BIAS_01+2024Q4+type@asset+block/image16.png" target="_blank">Open in new window.</a></em></p>
<p>Furthermore – as we have seen from the examples shown in the first part – a very important role is being played by contemporary artists, who very often become the triggers to new visions and perspectives, creating strong bonds with local communities and engaging them in these processes.</p>
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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">2.2.1 Ethical frameworks</h2>
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<p>All the above-mentioned activities should be framed within ethical frameworks that might not provide all the answers, but have proved to be a powerful way to support work that draws on and adds to leading-edge ethical thinking and practice. In socially-engaged projects that have a public output – an exhibition or display, an artwork or an events programme – ethical frameworks can help ensure that these are presented in ways that have a positive social impact.</p>
<p>This topic has been tackled by the EU-funded project <a href="https://contesteddesires.eu/" target="_blank">CDCD - Contested Desires: Constructive Dialogues</a>, for which the partner RCMG realised a report listing ethical frameworks to be taken into account:</p>
<ul>
<li>Acknowledge your own partial knowledge and experience, work to de-centre the cultural institution and to draw in a diversity of ideas and insights, and prioritise minoritised voices, lives and experiences;</li>
<li>Recognise and fairly remunerate expertise (lived, learned, professional, academic) and contributions from all parties;</li>
<li>Work in ways that recognise the potential for sites, collections and interpretations to exclude, discriminate and cause harm;</li>
<li>Co-create safe spaces for constructive, inclusive and democratic conversations around topics that can prompt divisive and sometimes discriminatory opinions;</li>
<li>Stay abreast of debates amongst grassroots and community activists as well as cutting-edge scholarship and practice around decolonising;</li>
<li>Robustly defend your organisation’s commitment to decolonising and inclusive practice in the face of complaints and opposition;</li>
<li>Seek to create experiences for groups who rarely see themselves represented in heritage and that also enrich understanding for all visitors;</li>
<li>Shape projects in full awareness that the stories that are told in cultural institutions have effects in the real world.</li>
</ul>
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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">2.3 Fostering communities and community allies to recontextualise cultural heritage</h2>
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<p>In an increasingly globalised world, cultural institutions are faced with the challenge of remaining relevant and serving not only as custodians of cultural heritage, but also as bridges for integration and dialogue with the different components of society. Furthermore, the adoption of innovative technologies offers additional tools to engage global audiences and facilitate cultural exchange, opening new horizons for accessibility and interaction.</p>
<p>Collaborations between cultural institutions and communities are essential to:</p>
<ul>
<li>Promote cultural integration and mutual understanding;</li>
<li>Stimulate interest in art and culture in diverse audiences;</li>
<li>Develop inclusive educational programs that reflect the diversity of contemporary societies.</li>
</ul>
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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">2.3.1 How cultural institutions engage communities</h2>
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<p>Cultural institutions adopt different strategies to actively engage communities:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Participatory art projects:</strong> direct involvement of citizens in the creation of works of art;</li>
<li><strong>Targeted educational programmes:</strong> development of educational paths that respond to the specific needs of local communities;</li>
<li><strong>Inclusive cultural events:</strong> organisation of exhibitions, workshops and conferences open to all.</li>
</ul>
<p>Community based collaborations have a positive impact on several levels:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Cultural:</strong> they enrich the artistic landscape with new voices and perspectives;</li>
<li><strong>Social:</strong> they foster inclusion and a sense of belonging in communities;</li>
<li><strong>Educational:</strong> they foster curiosity and continuous learning among people of all ages.</li>
</ul>
<p>Despite the many benefits, community-based collaborations also present challenges:</p>
<ul>
<li><strong>Limited resources:</strong> the need for adequate funding to support long-term projects;</li>
<li><strong>Cultural barriers:</strong> overcoming prejudices and stereotypes to build authentic dialogue;</li>
<li><strong>Measuring impact:</strong> evaluating the effectiveness of initiatives in terms of cultural integration and civic engagement.</li>
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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">2.3.2 Empathy</h2>
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<p>These types of collaborations cannot ignore a fundamental element: empathy. To foster it, it is necessary to create adequate physical spaces for personal encounters through contemporary themes.</p>
<p>The experiences in which the cultural institution has invited, or simply let in, fragile groups and communities have more reason to exist than many temporary exhibitions, workshops or frontal seminars, and bring out a new image of an institution that also asks itself the question of social cohesion and its own responsibility in this regard.</p>
<p>Several museums around the world have already implemented successful projects:</p>
<ul>
<li>The Louvre Museum in Paris has launched art therapy programs for people with Alzheimer's, promoting psychological well-being through art;</li>
<li>The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York offers art courses for refugees and immigrants, facilitating their integration into US-American society;</li>
<li>The Tate Modern in London collaborates with schools and youth groups to develop artistic projects that reflect the city's diverse cultural identities.</li>
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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">2.3.3 What if somebody forces entrance into a cultural institution?</h2>
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<p>There are many examples of cultural institutions which decide to let people in (those who are discriminated against, or those who simply ask to be heard, following an emergency, a political crisis, a news story). Cultural institutions can, perhaps should, be one of the interlocutors, an antenna to catch societal challenges and needs.</p>
<p>But what happens if migrants, for example, force entrance into a cultural institution? The occupation of the Musée de l’Histoire de l’Immigration in Paris by undocumented migrants in 2010 was emblematic. The museum has thus become, without having chosen to do so, a living icon of its own discourse: a place of representation, of claiming visibility, of plastic translation of its mission. The museum could have made a programme out of it, transformed it into a high point, almost the pinnacle of its troubled history - though it did not do so.</p>
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<p style="text-align: center;"><em>Image: <a href="http://www.courrierinternational.com/article/2014/02/13/histoires-d-immigration" target="_blank">Lionel Brouck, The occupation of the Musée de l’Histoire de l’Immigration in Paris, 2010</a></em></p>
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<h2 class="hd hd-2 unit-title">2.3.4 The cultural institution as a place of debate</h2>
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<p>This is the case of the hundreds of people who gathered at the Missouri History Museum, in August 2015, to discuss the killing of Michael Brown and the events in Ferguson.</p>
<p>Opening the doors means deciding to face dissent: but what tools can cultural institutions acquire to manage situations of tension and facilitate dialogue? A particularly useful tool is the <em><a href="https://museumcommons.com/2015/03/front-page-dialogues-museum-resources-for-timely-responses.html" target="_blank">Front Pages Dialogues</a> </em>promoted by the National Coalition of Sites of Consciousness, forms of immediate response to "hot" topics by cultural institutions, to address possible questions or reactions from visitors and communities of reference with respect to current events.</p>
<p>If you want to know more about this topic see:</p>
<ul>
<li><span style="font-size: 1em;">Cimoli, A.C. (2016), <em><a href="https://www.roots-routes.org/musei-pregiudizi-empatia-gettare-corpo-nel-dialogo-anna-chiara-cimoli/" target="_blank">Musei, pregiudizi, empatia. Gettare il corpo nel dialogo</a></em>, Year 6, n. 22 May to August 2016, Gettare il corpo nella lotta, a cura di Giulia Grechi, Roots&Routes [in Italian]; </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 1em;">Krznaric, R. (2015). <em>Empathy: Why It Matters, And How To Get It</em>. London: Penguin Random House; </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 1em;">Message, K. (2014), <em>Museums and Social Activism. Engaged Protest.</em> London-New York: Routledge; </span></li>
<li><span style="font-size: 1em;">Sandell, R., Nightingale, E. (eds.) (2012). <em>Museums, Equality and Social Justice.</em> London-New York: Routledge.</span></li>
</ul>
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