This project directly addresses key questions in contemporary museological discourse and practice: how will digital representations change the place of the museum in society, the status of the object and the collection, the role of the visitor, and the work of museum practitioners? Through an interdisciplinary project involving researchers from a range of disciplines in the humanities, working in close collaboration with museum practitioners, we will address these questions from a combined historical and contemporary perspective. Cutting across current debates, we will raise questions from a new angle: We will follow copies, and the practice of copying, in the museum as it has transpired over a period of three centuries, employing historical findings to theorize the digitalization processes of today. Our hypothesis is that the museum has never been primarily a storehouse for the authentic, the original, and the real material object. Rather, the museum has provided a space for multifarious representations, within which it creates “the real” through a wide range of copying practices. The representation is what forms the basis of museum practice. This perspective, we believe, will allow us to produce a nuanced and innovative understanding of contemporary museums and to contribute significantly to current theoretical discussions.

WP leader: WP 4: Digitizing copies. In this WP digitization will be discussed on the basis of historical and analytical research by the project participants as well as invited guests. This WP will ensure the relevance of our research questions to the digitization debates. Main deliverance: A conference where all subprojects address questions concerning digitality will be held at the University of Copenhagen.

Body type: Forskningsprojekt støttet af Norges Forskningsråd