14 min

73. Sanchita Balachandran Shifts the Framework for Conservation with Untold Stories Museum Archipelago

    • Places & Travel

The field of conservation was created to fight change: to prevent objects from becoming dusty, broken, or rusted. But fighting to keep cultural objects preserved creates a certain mindset — a mindset where it’s too easy to imagine objects and cultures in a state of stasis.


Sanchita Balachandran, Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum, founded Untold Stories to change that mindset in the conservation profession. Through events at the annual meetings of the American Institute for Conservation, Untold Stories expands cultural heritage beyond preserving the objects we might find in a museum.


In this episode, Balachandran talks about Untold Story’s 2019 event: Indigenous Futures and Collaborative Conservation, avoiding the savior mentality, and how the profession has changed since she was in school.


Topics and Links


00:00 Intro
00:14 The Conservation Profession
01:12 Sanchita Balachandran
01:35 Untold Stories
03:30 Mohegan Sun 2019: Indigenous Futures and Collaborative Conservation
04:58 endawnis Spears and the Akomawt Educational Initiative (episode 68)
06:09 Savior Mentality in Conservation
07:37 Changing Working Practices
09:03 Changing Technical Practices
10:30 Changing Social Practices
11:25 Activating Cultural Heritage
12:15 Salt Lake City 2020: Preserving Cultural Landscapes
12:30 Learn More About Untold Stories and Watch Recordings of Past Events
12:40 SPONSOR: StoriesHere Podcast
13:40 Archipelago at the Movies 🎟️: National Treasure
14:34 Outro


Photo credit: Jay T. Van Rensselear


Museum Archipelago is a tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, or even email to never miss an episode.



Sponsor: StoriesHere Podcast
This episode is brought to you by a new museum podcast, StoriesHere! The latest episode is an excellent two-part series about the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It includes the story of a family secret being hidden from a daughter, revealed after talking at the site with a former incarcerated person. If you like Museum Archipelago, check out StoriesHere!





Transcript
Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 73. Museum Archipelago is produced for the ear and the only the audio of the episode is canonical. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above.




View Transcript



The field of conservation was created to fight change: to prevent objects from becoming dusty, broken, or rusted. But fighting to keep cultural objects preserved creates a certain mindset -- the mindset of protector. A mindset where it’s too easy to imagine objects and cultures in a state of stasis -- that this is how it always was and will be forever.



Sanchita Balachandran: Often, I mean, just given the Colonial and Imperial histories of museums, it was because people were going to be gone forever. That culture was gone. And so this is the last trace, but in fact, that's not how cultural heritage works. It's transformed. It's changed. It continues on in different forms. And a lot of the way that conservators think about cultural heritage is, is about mitigating that change, which makes it a little bit fossilized. But to me, that changes where things are really vibrant and exciting and people are so closely connected to cultural heritage, that it really feels alive.



This is Sanchita Balachandran, Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum.



Sanchita Balachandran: Hello, my name is Sanchita Balachandran. I’m a conservator and I’m trained in the conservation of archaeological materials in particular. And my day job is the Associate Director at the Archaeological Museum at Johns Hopkins University.



Balachandran founded Untold Stories, a project that pursues a conservation profession that represents and preserves a fuller spectrum of human cultural heritage. For the past few

The field of conservation was created to fight change: to prevent objects from becoming dusty, broken, or rusted. But fighting to keep cultural objects preserved creates a certain mindset — a mindset where it’s too easy to imagine objects and cultures in a state of stasis.


Sanchita Balachandran, Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum, founded Untold Stories to change that mindset in the conservation profession. Through events at the annual meetings of the American Institute for Conservation, Untold Stories expands cultural heritage beyond preserving the objects we might find in a museum.


In this episode, Balachandran talks about Untold Story’s 2019 event: Indigenous Futures and Collaborative Conservation, avoiding the savior mentality, and how the profession has changed since she was in school.


Topics and Links


00:00 Intro
00:14 The Conservation Profession
01:12 Sanchita Balachandran
01:35 Untold Stories
03:30 Mohegan Sun 2019: Indigenous Futures and Collaborative Conservation
04:58 endawnis Spears and the Akomawt Educational Initiative (episode 68)
06:09 Savior Mentality in Conservation
07:37 Changing Working Practices
09:03 Changing Technical Practices
10:30 Changing Social Practices
11:25 Activating Cultural Heritage
12:15 Salt Lake City 2020: Preserving Cultural Landscapes
12:30 Learn More About Untold Stories and Watch Recordings of Past Events
12:40 SPONSOR: StoriesHere Podcast
13:40 Archipelago at the Movies 🎟️: National Treasure
14:34 Outro


Photo credit: Jay T. Van Rensselear


Museum Archipelago is a tiny show guiding you through the rocky landscape of museums. Subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, or even email to never miss an episode.



Sponsor: StoriesHere Podcast
This episode is brought to you by a new museum podcast, StoriesHere! The latest episode is an excellent two-part series about the Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia. It includes the story of a family secret being hidden from a daughter, revealed after talking at the site with a former incarcerated person. If you like Museum Archipelago, check out StoriesHere!





Transcript
Below is a transcript of Museum Archipelago episode 73. Museum Archipelago is produced for the ear and the only the audio of the episode is canonical. For more information on the people and ideas in the episode, refer to the links above.




View Transcript



The field of conservation was created to fight change: to prevent objects from becoming dusty, broken, or rusted. But fighting to keep cultural objects preserved creates a certain mindset -- the mindset of protector. A mindset where it’s too easy to imagine objects and cultures in a state of stasis -- that this is how it always was and will be forever.



Sanchita Balachandran: Often, I mean, just given the Colonial and Imperial histories of museums, it was because people were going to be gone forever. That culture was gone. And so this is the last trace, but in fact, that's not how cultural heritage works. It's transformed. It's changed. It continues on in different forms. And a lot of the way that conservators think about cultural heritage is, is about mitigating that change, which makes it a little bit fossilized. But to me, that changes where things are really vibrant and exciting and people are so closely connected to cultural heritage, that it really feels alive.



This is Sanchita Balachandran, Associate Director of the Johns Hopkins Archaeological Museum.



Sanchita Balachandran: Hello, my name is Sanchita Balachandran. I’m a conservator and I’m trained in the conservation of archaeological materials in particular. And my day job is the Associate Director at the Archaeological Museum at Johns Hopkins University.



Balachandran founded Untold Stories, a project that pursues a conservation profession that represents and preserves a fuller spectrum of human cultural heritage. For the past few

14 min