Museologist

Oss på MiA - Museene i Akershus forteller om digitalisering av fotosamlingen i samarbeid med Nasjonalbiblioteket.

This vintage grinder is as old as me. It’s a Soviet design and was produced in 1986 in the Straume factory in Riga, Latvia. Like many mass-produced items back in the day, almost every household had one like that. After the Berlin wall came down in 1989, items like that became unwanted heritage.

Just before Christmas I visited Lillehammer Art Museum. I went there primarily to gather data for a new research project. After that was done, I had a pleasure to see recently reopened and refurbished exhibitions, among them one which I got very excited about: “Out of the living room…”. In this project, the museum invited members of their audience to present their own favorite privately owned artworks. A new piece is displayed every second week until April.

This Christmas my favorite read was a book from my gift wishlist: “Start to love design. How to collect Polish industrial art”. The book turned out to be so gripping that I even skipped an annual gathering at one of my uncles. Learning about designers behind the iron curtain developing brilliant yet little known projects in the West felt like reading a crime story. Inspired by the book, I started to scrutinize mid-century modern and vintage design in my Oslo house.

My chapter ‘Museum crowdsourcing—detecting the limits: eMunch.no and the digitisation of letters addressed to Edvard Munch’ has now been published as part of The Routledge International Handbook of New Digital Practices in Galleries, Libraries, Archives, Museums and Heritage Sites. Details below!