Seminar: Revitalising Museum Collections: New Perspectives, Methods and Practices

Seminar: 

Revitalising Museum Collections: New Perspectives, Methods, and Practices 

Museum collections are not static repositories, but dynamic resources whose meanings and relevance are continually being redefined. This seminar brings together researchers and museum professionals to explore various methods of revitalising collections, such as research, interpretation, documentation, digital techniques, exhibition studies, and collection development. These approaches can reactualise museum holdings, strengthen their cultural significance, and foster new relationships between collections, institutions, and audiences by generating new knowledge and perspectives. The seminar also demonstrates how collection revitalisation can contribute to the sustainable development of museums by ensuring that collections remain active and relevant resources for the future.

The seminar is held under the auspices of the research program "Historical Studies of Arts and Culture (HISTAC)” at Aarhus University and its museum research network group.

The seminar is organised by Mette Harbo Lehmann, Senior Researcher at Skagens Museum and postdoc at Aarhus University, Rune Clark, PhD student at Aarhus University and curator at Museum Give, and Signe Stidsing Hansen, PhD, Collections Manager at Nordjyske Museer.

Time for the seminar: 

• 18 November 2026, 8:45-15:45

Place:
AIAS
Aarhus University. Høegh-Guldbergs Gade 6B, DK-8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
(The auditorium for the seminar: Building 1632, room 201 and the hall for lunch: Building 1631, room 101)

Programme: 

08:45-09:15: Arrival, coffee and bread

09:15-09:30: Welcome and introduction to the seminar

09:30-10:30: Elena Montanari: When the Display Becomes Collection: Conserving and Enhancing Historic Museographic Set-ups 

10:30-10:40: Short break

10:40-11:15: Mette Harbo Lehmann: What Does a Museum Gain from Art Historical Research into a Smaller Part of Its Collection? Case Study: Journeys from Skagen to Italy  

11:15-12:15: Aske Hennelund Nielsen: From Object Biographies to Usage Horizons: A New Approach to the Study of Historical Objects

12:15-13:00: Lunch

13:00-13:50: Mia Falch Yates: Listening to the Collection: Tracing Sound Culture and History Across the House Museum Collection

13:50-14:10: Coffee and cake

14:10-14:45: Rune Clark: Media Mix: Cross-Institutional Collections Research

14:45-15:20: Signe Stidsing Hansen: Making a Large Glass Collection Smaller and More Relevant

15:20-15;45: Wrapping up and thanks for today

The speakers are:

Elena Montanari. Architect and PhD in Interior Architecture and Exhibition Design. Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies of Politecnico di Milano, Italy.

Mette Harbo Lehmann. Senior researcher at Skagens Museum and postdoc at Aarhus University Department of Art History, Denmark.

Aske Hennelund Nielsen. PhD, Research fellow, Euthanasie«-Gedenkstätte Lüneburg, Lüneburg, Germany

Mia Yates. postdoc at Johannes Larsen Museum, Skagens Museum, and Center for Museology, Aarhus University 

Rune Clark. PhD student at Aarhus University, Department of Art History and curator at Museum Give, Denmark

Signe Stidsing Hansen. PhD, Collections Manager at Nordjyske Museer, Denmark

Presentations:

Elena Montanari: When the Display Becomes Collection: Conserving and Enhancing Historic Museographic Set-ups 
This contribution examines a specific aspect of museum practice: the moment when exhibition set-ups cease to function solely as instruments of display and begin to acquire heritage value, sometimes even becoming part of the museum collection itself. 

Focusing on historic museographic devices – such as display cases, supports, spatial sequences, and installation arrangements – the lecture explores their significance as material traces of exhibition design history and museum culture. Drawing on selected examples from Italy, the lecture investigates the challenges of preserving these settings in contemporary institutions. The lecture argues that historic display settings should be understood as active interpretive resources capable of enriching collections, revealing institutional histories, and fostering new visitor experiences, rather than as static relics.

Mette Harbo Lehmann: What Does a Museum Gain from Art Historical Research into a Smaller Part of Its Collection? Case Study: Journeys from Skagen to Italy 
This presentation focuses on the Skagen painters’ travels to Italy. It examines both the journeys themselves and Italy as a destination for Scandinavian artists in the late nineteenth century. Travel activity was embedded in the DNA of the artists’ colony in Skagen, and the collection at Skagen Museum features motifs from several European countries, major cities, and rural artists’ colonies. 

This project aims to generate knowledge that extends beyond the popular travels of the time to France, focusing instead on journeys to Italy. At the same time, the project will examine the significance of “the journey” in relation to the inner and outer development of the individual, the artist, and his career. 

Aske Hennelund Nielsen: From Object Biographies to Usage Horizons: A New Approach to the Study of Historical Objects
In recent years, the “Object Biography” approach has gained prominence across fields such as Material Culture Studies, Museology, and Art History, offering nuanced insights into the histories and meanings of individual objects.  While effective in tracing the trajectories of individual artefacts, the method provides only limited tools for understanding how similar objects were used across different historical, cultural, and social contexts. 

This lecture proposes a complementary framework, termed “Usage Horizon Analysis”, which combines object-centred investigation with broader contextual evidence to reconstruct patterns of use within an object category. Using the Geiger-Müller Counter as a case study, the lecture demonstrates how this approach reveals the diverse roles of the instrument, and highlights how its affordances and constraints shaped its significance within different scientific, medical, and social communities.

Mia Falch Yates: Listening to the Collection: Tracing Sound Culture and History Across the House Museum Collection

This talk presents a sonic approach to interpreting house museum collections and suggests how knowledge of their sonic dimensions can lead to new interpretations and more diverse sensory forms of visitor engagement.

Buildings, objects, and archives are usually considered silent. Yet approaching them with an interest in what they can reveal about the sounds of a specific period, community, family, person, or location can offer new sensory perspectives on a historic site and its collection. In the talk, I will present examples of how to study objects, artworks, letters, literature, and photographs as resources for learning about the sonic and intangible dimensions of a collection. Finally, I will discuss how these sonic dimensions can be used to develop sensory and engaging visitor experiences in historic house museums. 

Rune Clark: Media Mix: Cross-Institutional Collections Research
In this presentation, educational wall charts (anskuelsestavler) are seen as part of a broader visual culture. Rather than treating the wall charts as isolated pedagogical objects, they are approached as a form of media mix: a printed image type that borrowed, adapted, and circulated visual conventions from e.g. book illustrations, religious prints, and art reproductions.

Taking the large wall chart collection at the Royal Danish Library as a starting point, the presentation explores how digital methods can be used to reactivate and reinterpret museum collections. Using computer vision, image embeddings, and visual mappings of digitized collections, it compares wall charts with material from museums, libraries, and other image repositories. These methods make it possible to trace visual relations, repetitions, and representational patterns that are difficult to identify within individual catalogues. 

Signe Stidsing Hansen: Making a Large Glass Collection Smaller and More Relevant
In 2022, Nordjyske Museer reviewed its collection of Danish glassworks objects, comprising around 4,500 items. The aim was to deaccession and transfer objects to other museums and institutions where they would be more relevant for research and outreach purposes, while also enhancing the quality and profile of the part of the collection that was to be retained. The review was based on the understanding that the significance of museum objects is contextual and subject to change over time. 

This presentation discusses the experiences gained from this process and explores how targeted collection development can revitalise museum collections and strengthen their contemporary relevance.