Yale Architecture Forum
Irina Podgorny
Shipwrecked Arks: On the Perishable Nature of Museums
Museums are portrayed as solid, powerful structures to preserve the stability and continuity in history. Natural history museums, in particular, were metaphorically transformed into carriers of the future of biological diversity, refuges against irreversible harm, a transcendental goal, which contradicts their actual perishability. Museums are menaced by a double threat: firstly, natural processes of decomposition; secondly, catastrophic events and changing policies. This talk, referring to the second kind, aims to analyse several examples of (almost) complete (not always catastrophic) destruction of natural history museums and the processes developed to repair their loss. It focuses on some paradigmatic cases: (a) The WWII bombing and eventual restorations of the Natural History museum in Hamburg and the Hunterian/College of Surgeons in London; (b) The dismantling of the Anatomy Museum in Canberra, Australia; © The fire and excavation of the ruins of Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro (2018). They display some of the mechanisms used to preserve things amid change as part of the human struggle with the contingencies of history. But it also shows how, in this process, destruction is at once forgotten and used to repair continuity with the past and cement the idea of permanence.
Irina Podgorny is a permanent research fellow at the Argentine National Council of Science (CONICET). She studied at La Plata University, obtaining her PhD in 1994 with a dissertation on the history of archaeology and museums. Her current research deals with historic extinctions, paleontology, and animal remedies. In addition, she collaborates with Argentine cultural weeklies and Latin American artists.
Architecture Forum is a PhD-led symposium jointly organized by the Departments of Architecture and History of Art, providing an inclusive platform for scholars to present and debate new research on the history of the built environment.