Dr Nushelle de Silva (She/her) received her PhD in architectural history from MIT. She is an Assistant Professor in Art History at Fordham University, US. Her research examines architecture’s infrastructural role in mediating the movement of people, objects, and ideas, and her current project looks at traveling museum exhibitions in the latter half of the twentieth century. Nushelle reflects on her time at Brighton as a Visiting Research Fellow in 2023:
I was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Brighton’s Centre for Design History in May 2023 hosted by Dr Claire Wintle. I’ve long been familiar with Dr Wintle’s work on exhibitions, and she and I had had a particularly fruitful exchange on our shared interest in professionalization within the museum sector after a paper I’d presented (on a 1953 UNESCO manual for museum workers on how to care for objects sent for exhibition at other institutions) at the 2021 Museums and Galleries History Group Conference. She invited me to become part of a new AHRC-funded research network, Making Museum Professionals, and suggested I share my work at the Centre.
My three weeks in the UK in 2023 were extremely productive, as I divided my time between conducting archival research at the National Gallery in London and presenting my work at various fora. On the 25th of May, I shared a slice from my current book project at the Centre for Design History, on how standardized international protocols for traveling museum exhibitions coalesced in the latter half of the twentieth century. In my talk, I traced the history of colonialist biases that underpin seemingly scientific standards, such as for climate controls in museums. When objects are to be loaned for exhibition, borrowing institutions are usually required to demonstrate their capacity to match the internal climate of the lending institution for such loans to be approved. Using findings from my archival research conducted at the National Gallery, I discussed how controls set for air-conditioning at the National Gallery in 1950 (a temperature of approximately 20°C at 50% relative humidity) have now become a global requirement for museums, despite the specificity of the tests conducted to suit the National Gallery’s collections of fragile panel paintings.
I appreciated the lively discussion and generous feedback I received from my interlocutors from across the Centre. In the talk, I discussed how ideas about the perceived relationship between civilization and a temperate climate influenced the specific conditions set at the National Gallery. I referenced economist-politician Sydney F. Markham’s 1942 book, Climate and the Energy of Nations, in which the author claimed that certain combinations of temperature and humidity facilitated greater productivity, while other climates induced indolence. When presenting my material, I suggested that this discourse may have shaped the National Gallery’s failure to test the relationship between a wider range of climate conditions and the wellbeing of their collections. Claire pointed out that Markham also had longstanding ties to museums, having served as first Secretary, then President, of the British Museums Association in the interwar years (he also served as a “Monuments Man” during World War II). Her comments made me realize that the connection between Markham’s book and museum climate might be stronger than I had posited!
Conservation professionals are now entreating museums to reassess their climate requirements for collections because the apparently salubrious relationship between these climate conditions and object health is increasingly uncertain. In undertaking this research, I realized that calls to curtail the indiscriminate use of air-conditioning cite the concurrent climate and energy crises as worthy reasons to pursue this goal, but there is little to no acknowledgement of how colonial views of “civilization” shaped this climate standard (although there is a growing body of work in architectural history that discusses the coloniality of air-conditioning, particularly in tropical regions). Yet my argument was not a surprise to the many scholars at the Centre who work on South Asia and are familiar with this aspect of colonial administration—including Claire and Megha Rajguru, and Prof Rebecca M. Brown from Johns Hopkins University, who was visiting the University of Brighton as a Global Fellow. All offered feedback on the talk—and I was very gratified to see them nod along as I made my case!
I’m very grateful for this engagement with my work, and I’m looking forward to using what I learned during my stint as a VRF to refine my current book project, which looks at a seemingly neutral series of administrative protocols (including climate requirements) that regulate the movement of objects for museum exhibitions.
Conservation workshops observed in an Open House tour of conservation laboratories at the Hamburger Bahnhof, 8 June 2024. Photo: Nushelle de Silva
Since my time in Brighton, I’ve continued to collaborate with Dr Wintle on the Making Museum Professionals research network’s programming. We’ve hosted three further workshops (two online and one at Technische Universität Berlin in June 2024) that have gathered research on navigating museum careers, and on the transnational forces shaping museum professions. I presented my research at this last workshop on how conservation professionals maintain museum environment, and how this has changed over the latter half of the twentieth century. Conservation manuals from the 1950s blithely recommend the use of toxic pesticides to eliminate insects in museum spaces. But the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring and its transformation of agricultural practices has also impacted how museum professionals manage pests in the museum since the late 1980s. You’ll see more bio-based and fewer chemical solutions for pest management in museums now.
Moth trap observed in an Open House tour of conservation laboratories at the Hamburger Bahnhof, 8 June 2024. Photo: Nushelle de Silva
Most of what I presented drew on archival research at the Getty Conservation Institute, but I was also able to include my learnings from an open house tour of conservation laboratories at the Hamburger Bahnhof just before the conference, where conservators talked about practices of pest management, which include sticky traps that are monitored every few months, pheromone traps for moths, and the use of parasitic wasps to eat moth eggs. Artists are also inviting us to take these little creatures seriously, as I observed at the Unseen Stories exhibition on view at the Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen du Berlin. Runo Lagomarsino’s Tales from the Underworld brings nineteen pests captured at Berlin’s Ethnologisches Museum back into the gallery, to comment on the politics of who is classified as unwelcome, in the museum and in the world.
Exhibit from Runo Lagomarsino, Tales from the Underworld (2020), Unseen Stories exhibition, Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen du Berlin, image taken by Nushelle de Silva
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Each year The Centre for Design History welcomes applications from both early-career and established scholars to join us as Visiting Research Fellows. If you are interested in applying, please refer to the guidance on our website.
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