Maureen wrote a post on the Heritance.org blog entitled Handmeon: a new relationship to museum objects? It’s about Handmeon, the meaning of objects, and possible applications in the world of museums.

Heritance is a not-for-profit organization that coordinates a network of museum professionals who provide skills, knowledge, and services free of charge to museums in some of the poorest and most remote regions of the globe. Full disclosure: Maureen, the Executive Director of Heritance, is my wife.

Maureen writes:

Imagine a museum where in addition to viewing the collections on display, you could access a website associated with each object. Furthermore, imagine that you could gain this access on or off site and participate in the “writing” of the object’s story yourself whenever you felt like it.

It probably sounds iconoclastic to speak of a visitor “writing” the story of a museum object. But why not? The art you encounter in museums are “merely” objects. Their meaning is imparted by all of their appreciators, regardless of their credentials. Just like the meaning of any number of things in the world.

The idea behind Handmeon is that the content and history and social network associated with the object is the primary source of value and interest in the object. That is why each successive owner is invited to participate in bringing the gift into existence. You might say that the object is, in a variety of senses, a pretext.

Maureen has turned this notion on its head by extending the concept of shared ownership to include sharing the right to interpret the object, even if the physical object remains shackled to the pedestal in the rotunda. Sharing the act of interpretation opens the object by embracing difference. Over the last few years, we have seen the blogosphere whittle away at the effective monopoly of mass-market broadcast journalism. Maureen observes that the same process could be brought to bear on the interpretation of the past. This is particularly significant because Heritance believes it matters who owns the past:

Museums are generally thought of as stewards of culture and heritage. But history is not a simple mirror of the past. Our perception and interpretation of history, and our place in it, is constantly reconstructed through a social process of collective recollection. This continuous reinvention of the past is part of the process by which communities define and shape their present and their future.

We believe that museums can serve a vital role in community evolution, both as catalysts in the process of self-definition and self-determination, and as role models in the transparent and inclusive processes essential to open democratic societies.

_Heritance Mission and Objectives executive summary