‘Whose Object is it Anyway?’ – Four Workshops at the Aga Khan Museum investigating the ‘Properties of Things’

Abstract

In October 2018, the Aga Khan Museum was invited to contribute to the conference ‘Properties of Things: Collective Knowledge and Objects of the Museum’, sponsored by Ryerson and Mount Allison Universities. The event was conceived to throw an innovative, and intellectually bold, multidisciplinary spotlight onto curatorship within a museum context, and to engender discussions around the multifarious ways in which objects might be re-considered, re-contextualised, and re-interpreted for the benefit of and in line with the interests of a broad, contemporary public. What follows is a summary of the conceptual considerations and questions that underpinned the workshop explorations the Museum devised for four distinct display contexts: the Bellerive Room, the Permanent Collection Gallery, and two temporary exhibitions on show at the time: ‘Emperors and Jewels – Treasures of the Indian Courts from the Al-Sabah Collection, Kuwait’ and ‘Transforming Traditions,’ an exploration of the arts ofnineteenth-century Iran.