Research and Training at the Fowler Museum at UCLA
NACCA PhD candidate Caitlin Spangler-Bickell speaks about her 6-month placement as a conservation intern with the Fowler Museum at UCLA and a Visiting Graduate Researcher with the UCLA/Getty Master’s Program in the Conservation of Archaeological and Ethnographic Materials that provided her with the opportunity to receive practical training and conduct research in a museum context:
As a researcher with the project NACCA (New Approaches in the Conservation of Contemporary Art), I am an external PhD candidate at Maastricht University based in Milan at MUDEC (Museo delle Culture). While much of my research is undertaken in Milan, an integral part of the NACCA PhD programme is a secondment to another institution for research and training. My placement was at the Fowler Museum at UCLA as an intern under the Head of Conservation Christian de Brer, participating in the daily activities of the conservation department as well as conducting ethnographic research in the museum pertaining to my thesis. In this research I was guided also by Professor Ellen Pearlstein of the UCLA/Getty conservation Master’s Program, with which I was associated during the secondment period.
My PhD project, entitled “Conservation of Contemporary Art and Ethnographic Materials: Relationships, Similarities and Differences“ focusses on ethnography as a mode of research capable of documenting the interplay between material and immaterial elements in works of art and cultural production, as well as the creation and communication of value and meaning. Case studies include two types of work that – if greatly different in origin and function – pose similar practical challenges to museum and gallery staff who take care of them: 1) relational art and 2) altars in museums. At the Fowler, I was able to investigate the latter category in depth.
The Fowler Museum “explores global arts and cultures with an emphasis on works from Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas—past and present,” and has produced exhibitions with an altar or shrine-like element for over two decades, demonstrating the dynamic nature of sacred aesthetic production. The Fowler staff was incredibly generous with, and supportive of, my research into this institutional heritage. Over the course of 6 months (February – August 2017) I conducted participant observation, formal and informal interviews, and material and archival study to learn about the production, preservation, and documentation of past altars and the creation and evolution of a shrine evocation for a new exhibition.
This experience exposed me to applied collections care skills, and yielded rich research data relevant to both museological theory and practice.
Link (for more information):
https://www.fowler.ucla.edu/
http://conservation.ucla.edu/
http://www.mudec.it/eng/
http://nacca.eu
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No. 642892.