Uncontainable Collections Research Project

Ongoing Research Project

The Uncontainable Collections Research Project is an online workshop series that invites local and global curators, conservators, scholars, and arts practitioners to discuss the care and engagement with institutional collections. The workshop series considers the main components of the AGYU’s collection: modern and contemporary art works, public sculptures, and cultural objects.

The first iteration of the series focused on African cultural and ceremonial objects. The invited speakers included Sanchita Balachandran, conservator and Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Near Eastern Studies; Dr. Gus Casely-Hayford OBE, Professor of Practice at SOAS in the Centre for African Studies and the Director of the V&A East Museum, London; M. NourbeSe Philip, a Toronto-based poet, writer, independent scholar, and former lawyer; and Ciraj Rassool, Professor of History at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa who directs the African Programme in Museum and Heritage Studies. Each speaker used their unique expertise and experience to address questions of community engagement, conservation, education, interpretative planning, repatriation, and the ethics of museological care.

The format of each series begins with each speaker first sharing their knowledge via a recorded video presentation (linked below) followed by a group dialogue. We then brought our speakers together for Holding Presence, Holding Histories: a live roundtable conversation moderated by the AGYU Curator of Collections and Contemporary Engagement, Liz Ikiriko.

This conversation, and The Uncontainable Collections Research Project at large, aspires to be a resource for students, faculty, curators, and museum educators, serving as a pedagogical tool that can contribute to new discursive frameworks that challenge the colonial legacies that have informed the care and stewarding of art collections. Furthermore, this iteration brought together these informed local and global voices to provide an opportunity for the AGYU to envision and engage Afro-diasporic communities in new strategies for greater cultural care of collections.

The Uncontainable Collections Research Project is funded in part through the support of the Elizabeth L. Gordon Art Program, a program of the Walter and Duncan Gordon Foundation and administered by the Ontario Arts Foundation.

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Prerecorded Presentations:

Working in conjunction with York University Professor Warren Crichlow, AGYU gathered questions from graduate students regarding museum collections to propose to our guest speakers. Our speakers were given the opportunity to respond to the questions and/or present their focus and perspective on collecting cultural and ceremonial objects. Each individual recorded presentation acts as an introduction to their professional and creative motivations regarding ethnographic, anthropologic, and museological considerations.

The presentations are linked below:

See also:

Uncontainable Collections 2024

Uncontainable Collections 2024

podcast series
Summer 2024

Uncontainable Collections 2023

Uncontainable Collections 2023

research project
4 May 2023

Sanchita Balachandran

Sanchita Balachandran

Uncontainable Collections
Spring 2022

Gus Casely-Hayford

Gus Casely-Hayford

Uncontainable Collections
Spring 2022

M. NourbeSe Philip

M. NourbeSe Philip

Uncontainable Collections
Spring 2022

Ciraj Rassool

Ciraj Rassool

Uncontainable Collections
Spring 2022