The field of conservation was created to fight change: to prevent objects from becoming dusty, broken, or rusted. But fighting to keep cultural objects preserved creates a certain mindset — a mindset where it’s too easy to imagine objects and cultures in a state of stasis.
Sanchita Balachandran, Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum, founded Untold Stories to change that mindset in the conservation profession. Through events at the annual meetings of the American Institute for Conservation, Untold Stories expands cultural heritage beyond preserving the objects we might find in a museum.
In this episode, Balachandran talks about Untold Story’s 2019 event: Indigenous Futures and Collaborative Conservation, avoiding the savior mentality, and how the profession has changed since she was in school.
Topics and Links
00:00 Intro
00:14 The Conservation Profession
01:12 Sanchita Balachandran (http://www.objectsconservationstudio.com/)
01:35 Untold Stories (https://www.untoldstories.live/)
03:30 Mohegan Sun 2019: Indigenous Futures and Collaborative Conservation (https://www.untoldstories.live/mohegan-sun-2019)
04:58 endawnis Spears and the Akomawt Educational Initiative (episode 68) (https://www.museumarchipelago.com/68)
06:09 Savior Mentality in Conservation
07:37 Changing Working Practices
09:03 Changing Technical Practices
10:30 Changing Social Practices
11:25 Activating Cultural Heritage
12:15 Salt Lake City 2020: Preserving Cultural Landscapes (https://www.untoldstories.live/aic-2020)
12:30 Learn More About Untold Stories and Watch Recordings of Past Events (https://www.untoldstories.live/mohegan-sun-2019)
12:40 SPONSOR: StoriesHere Podcast (https://storieshere.com/)
13:40 Archipelago at the Movies ?️: National Treasure (https://www.patreon.com/museumarchipelago)
14:34 Outro
Photo credit: Jay T. Van Rensselear
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Sponsor: StoriesHere Podcast
This episode is brought to you by a new museum podcast, StoriesHere! The latest episode is an excellent two-part series about the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It includes the story of a family secret being hidden from a daughter, revealed after talking at the site with a former incarcerated person. If you like Museum Archipelago, check out StoriesHere!



Transcript
Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 73. Museum Archipelago is produced for the ear and the only the audio of the episode is canonical. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above.



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The field of conservation was created to fight change: to prevent objects from becoming dusty, broken, or rusted. But fighting to keep cultural objects preserved creates a certain mindset -- the mindset of protector. A mindset where it’s too easy to imagine objects and cultures in a state of stasis -- that this is how it always was and will be forever.


Sanchita Balachandran: Often, I mean, just given the Colonial and Imperial histories of museums, it was because people were going to be gone forever. That culture was gone. And so this is the last trace, but in fact, that's not how cultural heritage works. It's transformed. It's changed. It continues on in different forms. And a lot of the way that conservators think about cultural heritage is, is about mitigating that change, which makes it a little bit fossilized. But to me, that changes where things are really vibrant and exciting and people are so closely connected to cultural her