Today marks the publication of a new book from UCL Press: Contemporary Art and the Display of Ancient Egypt by Professor Alice Stevenson. We are delighted to celebrate this new open-access publication by sharing an interview with Alice, exploring her background in the Museum Studies and Archaeology, her reflections on her research, and how the value of mundane tasks is underestimated in understanding how museums really work.
What motivated you to write and publish this book?
Some 25 years ago during my undergraduate degree in Archaeology, one of our course convenors – Professor Colin Renfrew – experimented with a new module on ‘Contemporary Art and Architecture’. At the time I was a bit bemused by it, thinking it well outside the scope of my training to study the past, but those first engagements with contemporary art have stayed with me as a means of thinking about how we interpret the tangible remains of the past, giving me confidence to enter into spaces and query artworks in ways I don’t think I would have done independently. Having had a career in museums since my undergraduate days, I was very aware of the popularity of combining archaeological displays with artists’ interventions but I was always a little dubious about the claims that these put the past and present ‘into dialogue’. It was such a ubiquitous refrain in interviews with artists and curators that I increasingly wanted to delve into the specifics about what these juxtapositions were really doing or achieving.
Tell us more about your background and experience.
I’m an archaeologist by training, but after my undergraduate degree, I sought more vocational training in Museum Studies before undertaking a PhD where I specialised in prehistoric (Predynastic) Egypt (4000-3000 BC roughly). Throughout my doctoral studies I spent a lot of time in museums studying material from old excavations and volunteering at several institutions on documentation projects. The latter meant that my first post-doctoral studies were nothing to do with Egypt, but were instead more general Museum Studies or Information Studies research projects. I also spent some time as the archivist and librarian of the Egypt Exploration Society before moving to Oxford to be a researcher in World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum. The latter was an influential couple of years in terms of understanding museums as complex institutions, about collecting histories and the implications for modern communities of historical collecting and representation. From there, I became Curator of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian and Sudanese Archaeology which further deepened my experience of all aspects of museum work, but now within my area of expertise. All the pieces came together! I’ve been teaching Museum Studies since 2017, and putting my collections-based experience in conversation with academic literature has be helpful in developing new projects.
How and why did you get into this subject area?
When I was trying to choose a university subject at the age of 16 I kept going back to the prospectus pages about Archaeology and was drawn to it, although I never had much interest in the excavating and surveying aspect of the field. My grandfather was an archaeologist and museum curator, and although he passed away when I was 11, I guess there was always a personal framework of love and value for museums work. From the outset of my interest in archaeology it was the material recovered and the narratives we could construct on the basis of excavated assemblages that really interested me. Having also trudged through many wet fields during my archaeological training I also figured museums were dryer and warmer (neither necessarily true, I found). I spent much of my undergraduate days volunteering in museums rather than doing more traditional fieldwork, and have been researching and working in them ever since.
Why did you choose to publish your work open access?
For this project I was a recipient of public funds through a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship and it is only right that the outputs should be fully publicly accessible. Moreover, open access increases, to some extent, the equity of engagement with academic work globally. The intellectual capital of keeping up to date with current research should not be limited to richest countries. Since my research is primarily on Egypt’s heritage that research should be available there too.
How do you see your research contributing to a better understanding of the world, and what potential benefits might it offer in the future?
Exploring the histories and legacies of past museum practice allows curators, artists and scholars to see what worked (or didn’t) previously, together with the contexts that constrained and enabled particular interventions. This helps us bring to the fore taken-for-granted assertions to see how they become established in the first place. Often there are agendas, biases and assumptions baked into such received wisdom that need to be actively revealed to help understand how we are making knowledge claims so we can forge a fresh path forward. It allows us to see more clearly how meanings are made and why certain ideas take hold (or don’t) at particular moments.
I hope the book can refresh a dialogue – not necessarily between past and present, but between artists, curators and archaeologists – that encourages experimentation and honesty about what can or cannot be achieved, and which is sensitive to the different sorts of values and experiences that art and archaeology can foster.
What do you think sets your approach apart from others in your field, and how do you stay innovative?
Understanding how museums work and thinking through intellectual questions as critical practice makes a difference. In other words, it is easy to critique work and representation from outside an institution with critical theory, but understanding the practical constraints and institutional structures through which knowledge is produced and reproduced is vital. I’m always looking to see what might be the wider contexts that are shaping the why’s and the how’s, so I try not to look at museum developments in isolation from the bigger socio-political forces or individual idiosyncrasies that influence them.
In terms of staying innovative, I think teaching really helps, as does writing synthesis pieces, as all of that gives you the opportunity to have a birds’-eye view of whole fields and you can see trends, gaps and challenges.
Surprise us with something unexpected you encountered in your research for this book.
I’m not sure it is unexpected but perhaps it goes against received wisdom that more recent archival records of work done in the 1990s or early 2000s will be comprehensive. I found them instead to be very sparse and harder to access than records of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that I’m more used to working with. The move to computers and online working has left much data trapped on outmoded forms of data storage (DVDs/1990s spreadsheets on floppy disks etc.), while the paper record is much thinner in terms of correspondence, etc.
In terms of research content, the biggest surprise for me was the dynamics of artists’ interventions at the British Museum which were much more radical than I think is generally known. Yet the fact that these interventions have not had as much of a legacy and impact in that institution is telling. Looking at the factors for why that may be is the subject of Chapter 3 of the book.
What do you see as the most exciting future directions for research in your field, and what breakthroughs do you hope to see in the coming years?
It’s refreshing to see more practitioner views and voices from outside the Eurocentric canons. Those ‘behind the scenes’ aspects of museums – collections management and storage – are also being shown to be anything but ‘background’ or ‘incidental’, and it is there that we are seeing transformations in practice that can shift the field. There’s also a heartening wider acceptance of the role that legacy collections play in archaeology and that innovative, dynamic and significant archaeological research can and does happen in museum spaces and not just through excavating more stuff in the field. The museum is not just about managing and exhibiting. Some of the old claims that the archaeological record is ‘finite’ (i.e. in danger/are limited) are really challenged by the many ways people can work with collections and the fresh perspectives different voices and backgrounds can bring.
What advice would you give to students who are interested in pursuing a career in your field, and what skills or qualities do you think are most important for success?
Don’t under-estimate the value of mundane or routinised work such as database entry, archival sorting, or administrative tasks. Understanding how museums or institutions work from the collections outwards, rather than critiquing it from the outside in, is really important for grounded, realistic and meaningful studies.
What do you do to stay motivated and inspired in your work, and how do you maintain a positive attitude even in challenging situations?
I take inspiration for getting time to immerse myself in museums, collections or archives. Too much sitting in front of a laptop and working through academic papers is draining. My research has to be grounded in working with things and engaging with people.
In terms of motivation I’m generally an optimist and am pretty stubborn by nature, meaning I tend to plough through things to get them done. Being from Edinburgh, with a long Scottish family heritage, I picked up the ‘Scottish Presbyterian work ethic’ early, which helps – although I somewhat dispense with the frugality and ensure I do treat myself. I have clear boundaries of never working after 9pm, always closing the laptop at 5pm on Friday to make way for wine and a nice dinner, making sure the weekend is for family. Regular catch ups with friends and colleagues keep me positive, as do regular gym workouts – I can never be bothered with yoga or Pilates, it has to fast and energetic like a HIIT or Circuits class to some upbeat tunes.
About the author
Alice Stevenson is Professor of Museum Archaeology at UCL’s Institute of Archaeology. She has previously held posts as the Curator of the Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology and as Researcher in World Archaeology at the Pitt Rivers Museum. Her academic specialization is Predynastic and Early Dynastic Egyptian archaeology, but she has a written on a broad range of topics including the history of archaeology, anthropology and museums.
Alice’s previous UCL Press publications include Scattered Finds (2019), Collections Management as Critical Museum Practice (as co-editor, 2023) and The Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology: Characters and Collections (as editor, 2015)
