Paper short abstract:

This paper investigates how utopian visions have been at the heart of two museum projects 300 years apart: The collection of The Royal Society of Sciences in Norway in the 18th century and the establishment of Digital Museum in the 2000s. Both cases concern the centrality of mediation of knowledge and values through copying practices. The different mediating relations are studied in the two cases.

Paper long abstract:

In his book on the history of art museums, Andrew McClellan draws our attention to an overlooked body of early modern literature where museumlike structures appear in famous utopian texts. He traces the appearance of a utopian museum ideal across Europe in step with the growth of a culture of collecting and curiosity. At the heart of the idea of a perfect society lay an institution for the collection, production, and dissemination of knowledge, he claims. Connected to this ideal, it is argued, was a concern for distribution of knowledge and values, just as much as a vision of the museum as a collection of objects. Taking a cue from this insight, this paper will investigate how visions of a better world has been at the heart of the establishment of two different museum projects 300 years apart: The collection of The Royal Society of Sciences in Norway in the 18th century and the establishment of Digital Museum in Norway in the 2000s. In both these cases I study how mediation of knowledge and values through copying practices has been at the heart of the museum. In both instances, it will be argued, copying practices are the means of communicating. The obvious differences lie in what relations they are meant to make, and what visions they are embedded in. The nature of these relations will be discussed in the paper.