BIOGRAPHY: ALL LIVES OF (FORMER) MUSEUM OBJECTS

Abstract

With "life history of things" approach, devel-oped by archeologists and anthropologists, as museolo-gists and heritologists we can identify meaning trans-formations of the same thing, from its creating till today. This "biography" approach suggests thing’s unforeseea-ble semantic potential. So, museum object is not just evidence of certain past, but it potentially testifies about all its pasts, i.e. realities. This premise is recognized as a starting point for insight and analysis of different memory cultures and its transformations through the thing’s "life", and for developing a fusion between herit-age theory and museology, memory culture and bio-graphical approach to things. We can identify presences and absences in collective memory and its ever changing interrelation, organized or spontaneous, with personal memory and memory of other groups, like family. Thus, (former) museum object is potential testimony of its museum sojourn, professional, social and political con-texts of acquisition, interpretation, presentation and, at last, putting away in boxes, or of its shifting to another institution. These premises are examined on example of entirety of former museum objects from, now closed, Museum of Illegal Partisan Printing Offices in Belgrade, Serbia

Keywords

• life history of things, biography of things, mus-eology theory, post-socialism, transition