Studium Generale | Bewaren | What to Keep? - Sharon Macdonald & Jennie Morgan

Your smartphone, the painting that you inherited, the empty can of the soda you just drank... The things we own and use not only reflect our personalities, but also characterise the time we live in. Museums collect a broad variety of these fragments of time that are of significant cultural or scientific value. But how do these institutions decide what (not) to keep? There are so many possible things that might be held on to for the future, but what ends up being kept in museums and in people's own homes? Which values, motivations, emotions, and properties of things themselves shape what does – and what does not – make it into our future?

This lecture draws on research from the Heritage Futures research programme*. This research included studies of museums and also of individual homes, looking at topics such as collecting, storage and disposal. All of which are relevant for the archives that will be available in the future.

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