Curatorial Practice in Curriculum and Community Engagement of Near Eastern Archaeological Collections: The University of Melbourne’s Classics and Archaeology Collection

Van de Ven, Annelies [UCL] Jamieson, Andrew

The era of preserving artefacts for the sake of collecting has drawn to a close. In the present, archaeological collections that do not incur a degree of engagement have become vulnerable as casualties of the ‘storage wars’. In order to justify the resources that we put into archaeological collections it is becoming necessary to prove their usefulness not just within research, but also to a wider public. As a solution to this problem, as argued within this paper, is the use of archaeological collections for curriculum and community engagement. In the Classics and Archaeology Collection located at the Ian Potter Museum of Art in the University of Melbourne, a model of object-based learning has been developed in which the artefacts function as bridges between various sources of knowledge in different fields and at different levels of learning. The archaeology collection, focussed around Near Eastern excavations from the 1920s to the 1960s, features not only in Ian Potter Museum of Art exhibitions, but is also used in university modules, school visits, and public outreach programs. Though the University of Melbourne’s collection originated as a teaching resource, its curation model can serve as a guide for the development of object-based learning programs around the world to ensure the sustainable long-term management of these collections into the future. This paper will approach the problems of collections-management, using the Classics and Archaeology Collection as an example of how an integrated curation-education program can simultaneously raise awareness for Near Eastern archaeology and history, combat disciplinary isolationism and promote lifelong learning.