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Blog: UHCL prof lectures Belgian students about object biography
October 10, 2019 | Sarah Costello
During my residence as a visiting scholar in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, I’ve been giving talks to various audiences at the Université Catholique de Louvain, and at the Musee L, the university museum. I first gave a talk in a lecture series for graduate students and professors in art history and archaeology. I spoke about “object biography” as an approach to ancient artifacts. We often focus on a single moment in the past history of an object; if you think about a museum label, it usually gives a place, a date, and some indication of what the object was, or how it was used. Objects, however, have long lives. They are made in one place, given or sold to someone else, change hands, break, are repaired, may be lost and found again, and eventually are lost to time. At some point in the more recent past, they are unearthed, by chance or by archaeologists. Some end up in museums. These moments are all part of their story, though are not often recounted in museums or classrooms. A fuller story helps us think about why we value objects from the past, and how our interests have shifted over time.
NOTE: UHCL Associate Professor of Art History Sarah Costello will be providing ongoing blog posts about her two-week residence at a university museum in Belgium.