ABSTRACT
This chapter responds to Stuart Hall’s critique of museum institutional practices in relation to objects of heritage. ‘Objects’ is a term that Hall uses only once by name but is very much implied in his arguments. His reference to ‘heterogeneous assemblages of the cabinets of curiosity and wonder’ clearly implies objects as the basis of European aristocratic collections before the advent of public museums. In Hall’s argument, his discussion about the ordering, ranking and classifying of heritage opens up a series of important questions about the status of objects in heritage collections that I would like to revisit.
Drawing on a wide range of theoretical and professional critiques, I focus on a number of objects in heritage collections and one in an art museum, which foregrounds issues in Hall’s critique about the British inflection of heritage. The chapter probes a number of issues that continue to arise from the collecting, acquisition, display, status and conservation of objects. The main question asked is what role objects could play in a redefined theorisation and practice of heritage that does not operate in the nationally exclusive and imperious ways that Hall critiques.
