Since the 18th century, Dartmouth has acquired thousands of objects from around the world. From coins and kitchen utensils to clothes, these items are important reflections of the diversity of global culture. Upon its founding in 1985, the Hood Museum of Art united many of these items under one roof, allowing for the rich abundance of artifacts, everyday objects, and art found in today’s collection. Now, the museum creates holistic academic experiences and powerful cross-cultural connections by conserving, exhibiting, and teaching with these items. Without a doubt, they have deeply benefitted the Dartmouth community.
However, it has been a struggle to deconstruct the ways in which currents of colonialism, soft violence, and harmful cultural hegemonies may be actively detrimental to the communities from which these objects were taken. As today’s museum practitioners, we can’t retroactively hold donors or curators who lived over 100 years ago to the standards of ethical museum practice we so diligently pursue now. The era of colonialism championed the belief that “foreign” or “other” objects belong in museums––and the ways they might get there are much less important. Calls for repatriation, diversity in museum employment, and critiques of the concept of a museum itself have become prevalent among the museums of major post-colonial powers, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. These discussions are all extremely important to the future of museums, but there is another significant issue that is much more behind the scenes: digital infrastructure.
One of the most revolutionary developments in museum practice is the ability to work digitally with a massive collection. A digital infrastructure can include several things, many of which are not my specialty. Broadly, this infrastructure involves the digital documents, databases, and drives that make collaboration, planning, and registrarial work more efficient. But just as we need to continually examine and improve our physical practices and spaces, we must also create ethical digital structures. That’s where I came in!
The database that the museum uses to organize and maintain its collection is called The Museum System (TMS). It is used by many museums across the United States and allows curators and registrars to digitally store object records, reports, and photos so that they won’t get lost or destroyed. It also acts as an important tool with which museum staff can locate objects in the Hood Museum’s collection. This specific function is very important, as there are thousands of items in the collection. Searching for a specific work of art or object is like trying to find a needle in a haystack, but TMS can make it happen with relative ease. Clearly, TMS is integral to our work at the museum. Like many other digital entities, of course, TMS was created to accommodate English speakers and the Latin alphabet. As a result, languages with other letters, different linguistic rules, and transliterations (the rendering of, for example, an Arabic word with English letters) were often left by the wayside during the digital transition, which shouldn’t be too surprising because they were neglected before computers were invented as well.
As a Middle Eastern studies major and an up-and-coming Arabic speaker, I immediately noticed this problem. None of the objects in the collection from Arabic-speaking countries had Arabic names on record. Instead, there were loose (often incorrect or incomplete) translations, or sometimes, transliterations that were either overly simplified or just wrong. It’s obvious I care a lot about making museums more equitable and accessible. While I’m not leading any repatriation efforts or creating museum policy, I saw a very clear way to make a change here. As a scholar of Arabic, I was in a unique position to fix the digital presence of Arabic works in our collection. Though I couldn’t address the unequal power structures that enabled these objects to be at Dartmouth in the first place, I could make our digital footprint more accommodating and inclusive for Arabic speakers in our community. As a special projects intern, I had found my special project!
First, I recorded every object I could find with an Arabic name in the Hood Museum’s collection. This included items from nearly every country in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region: Morocco, Tunisia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Palestine . . . the list goes on. This process was extremely time-consuming, because many of the searches of the region also brought up the Hellenistic, Roman, and ancient Egyptian artifacts in our collection. But a few weeks (and a monstrous spreadsheet) later, I had successfully collected enough objects to get started.
My goal was to make sure that every object and listing that had an Arabic name was standardized to include a complete transliteration and correct translation. As you might guess, this process was easier said than done. The first big hurdle was a lack of photography in the database. Many of these objects have been in storage for years, so photos have never been taken or added to TMS. Luckily, my supervisor, Jessica Hong (former Hood Museum Associate Curator of Global Contemporary Art), was able to hunt down these objects, collect photos, and send them to me as I worked from home due to COVID-19. Using the photos, I tried to figure out what the object actually was. For example, an object simply titled “robe” in TMS likely isn’t just a robe. It could be an abāyah, a bisht, or a thawb, to name a few. Plus, the names of such objects vary significantly across countries. These two problems shaped my cautious approach, which relied upon more research and outside help than I initially thought I needed. Arabic professors including Jamila Chahboun were invaluable to this process, and my ability to “phone a friend” ensured that I wasn’t attributing an incorrect Arabic name to an object.
Once I parsed out the correct word in Arabic, I wrote an accurate transliteration. While my work is directed at linguistic equity, it would be a problem if I included the Arabic word without giving non-Arabic speakers the tools to read it. So, I fixed the transliterations that were already in the system and added new ones when needed. The most important part of this step was standardization: making sure that one is using the same letters, symbols, and spellings across objects is incredibly important for the sake of clarity and respect for the original language. I used the Library of Congress’s guide for Arabic transliteration, which is often the standard for American transliteration projects.
Once this was all done, I sought and received approval to update the records in TMS. After speaking with the Hood Museum’s registrars, I went into the system and manually added the original Arabic, the transliteration, and the English translation. Once the information was added to the museum’s database, it was publicly visible online. This signaled a permanent shift in the Hood Museum’s practice towards a sensitive and nuanced approach to Arabic. However, I am not immune to human error, and I hope that future curators and Arabic speakers may be able to check and improve upon my work. This extra layer of collaboration is crucial, which is why I finished my project by creating a detailed guide for future use.
Although there is much happening publicly on social, legal, and academic fronts to make museum practice more ethical, what happens behind the scenes as the Hood Museum works to develop its digital presence remains important as well. My small project is just one intercession on behalf of the several voices and groups that have been left out of the conversation when it comes to museums. Though we are certainly moving in the right direction, we have a long way to go. But even in these small ways, inclusivity, social justice, and empowerment are slowly but surely becoming the underpinnings of the Hood Museum’s physical and digital spaces.
This post was authored by:
Katelyn Zeser ’22, 2020–21 Homma Family Intern
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Katelyn Zeser is a member of the Class of 2022 and an anthropology and Middle Eastern studies double major. She was a Special Projects Intern during the 2020–21 academic year. During her internship she focused on Hood Museum’s Middle Eastern art collection. Her work for the museum included writing curatorial reports and editing object files in The Museum System (TMS). Her research interests encompass Orientalism in art, the art of Palestine, Morocco, and Iran, and the history and databasing of the museum’s acquisitions from the region.
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