Cataloguing the ‘oriental’ in MoDA’s Silver Studio Collection

This is a Culture & New Museum School Advanced Programme and University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies project.

New Museum School Advanced Programme aims to open up who makes and enjoys arts and heritage by allowing professionals to continue full-time employment while attending distance learning. The course has a flexible and modular structure leading to post-graduate qualifications from PGDip to MA level. The accessible recruitment process for applicants with a wide-range of experiences and budget aims to diversify the Arts and Heritage workforce.

In this project, Kirsty Kerr looked at the use of the word ‘oriental’ as a descriptive term in the Museum of Domestic Design & Architecture (MoDA)’s Silver Studio Collection. It was used by studio designers to describe a loosely-defined set of visual characteristics that gestured vaguely towards ‘Eastern’ motifs, either in their own work or in visual reference material. Subsequent cataloguers of these items have continued to use the term ‘oriental’ uncritically. The project was not simply about reporting the terms used by the Silver Studio, but how MoDA describe the collection now - primarily in their internal catalogue, but also considering its impact on wider practice. It aimed to build on work going on elsewhere in the sector, which draws attention to the need to tackle in-built assumptions inherent within museum databases. Reflecting on current discourse, the report explores how MoDA might unpack the word today to add more specific or suitable terms to the catalogue, in order to be both more appropriate and more useful to all users in finding relevant items.

The project spanned eight weeks, with one dedicated work day per week. The first three were onsite and to familiarise with MoDA’s collection stores and database, and the items therein. The remaining weeks took place remotely and involved collating research, grounding it within relevant theory and critically reflecting on museum practice.