Connecting Collecting - Sveriges Museer

The Pool for Local and Regional SpheresBetween preservation and chanWhat traces do societalchanges leave on the physicalenvironment? That isthe overall question askedby the Pool for Local andRegional Spheres. The poolhas become an importantforum where participants canpresent ideas for projects,ongoing work, and results forshared discussions.By Barbro Mellanderand Anna Ulfstrand»In the 1970s the museums beganto work with cultural heritagemanagement, that is to say, they tookpart in community planning by identifyingphysical environments that are worthcaring and preserving. That work wasoften done separately from the museumwork with ethnology and cultural history,which in turn meant that the physicalsites were reduced to mere physical sitesand their links to non-material culturaland historical values disappeared. Oneof the pool’s most important tasks hastherefore been to serve as a forum wherethese two perspectives can be reconnected,as well as a place where scholars andpractitioners can meet.Another aspect is that the museumshave a dual role when working bothto build up knowledge and to performcultural and historic valuations. Sincethis is interesting from a museologicalperspective, the pool has included in itspolicy statement the task of scrutinizingthe selection criteria that serve as a basisfor preservation. Questions that can thenbe asked are, for example, whose culturalheritage we preserve for the future andfor whom it is preserved.From this perspective StockholmCounty Museum has examined the municipalprogramme for cultural heritagemanagement that the museum drew up,to examine how local history is presentedin it and used in the selection of sitesthat are considered worthy of preservation.It turned out that the descriptionswere free of conflict and poor innon-material traces. The programme’sassessments of the different sites centredaround three main themes: the unique,the typical, and the aesthetically pleasing.Sites that were well-preserved anduntouched by change were given thehighest status in the programme, whichmeans that narratives about how peoplehave used the sites have in many casesbeen rendered invisible.The Big City Project – assemblingknowledge about post-war buildingThe pool began its work at roughly thesame time as the project The Architectureand Cultural Environment of theBig City was launched, partly funded bythe National Heritage Board. The aimof the project was to develop work withthe built environment, especially in thesuburbs of the big cities built after 1945.Several of the pool members from local,regional, and national museums and twouniversity departments worked on theproject, and the project’s questions aboutpreservation and the user’s perspectivewere the theme of one of our first poolmeetings in Gothenburg.At this time the Swedish Museum ofArchitecture started an interview studywith many of the architects and plannerswhose work was mostly done inthe 1950s–1970s, and who had exerteda great influence on how Sweden wasplanned and built. They also interviewedsome of the people who had writtenabout the housing issue during the period.Bromölla and Södertälje – thewelfare state materializedModern industrial society has also beena theme of the pool’s work. Two majorprojects have dealt with communitiesThe welfare state is materialized. In the study of Bromöllathe Regional Museum and the director of museumsand sites in Skåne looked for the stories that buildingscan tell about a community in development and change.Photo: Ulla-Carin Ekblom©Regionmuseet Kristianstad.built up around, and depending on, largedominant industrial companies. TheRegional Museum and the director ofmuseums and sites in Skåne carried outa methodological study in the industrialcommunity of Bromölla to find out whatthe material expressions of a modernindustrial society can say about post-warpolitical, economic, and social changes.They also wanted to test new methods inthe study of the built environment. Thework did not proceed from the traditionalquestions asked in cultural heritagemanagement, which are often concernedwith the authenticity, representativeness,12 • Samtid & museer no 2/07