Media Contributions

As any collection open to the public, the collection of plants at the Huntington Botanical Gardens is framed by curating hands, continuously sculpting and framing the narrative of what the visitors get to see and experience. Part of this narrative is shaped by the signs in the garden: often subtly and without much explanation, half-hidden behind gigantic leaves, or unseemingly dangling from a nail in the trunk of a tree, but nevertheless telling a story much bigger than the few words engraved on them might indicate at first glance. In light of recent demands to diversify and decolonise museums, which has influenced curatorial practices the world over, I decided to explore how the Huntington Botanical Gardens communicate colonial legacies of plants to the visiting public: How are the stories of the plants that pre-date their so-called ‘discovery’ presented and how are Indigenous uses and names of plants included in their dissemination?

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Photo of the Rose Hill Foundation Conservatory in the Huntington Botanical Gardens by V. Nielsen (2024).

Article by Linacre JRFs Vibe Nielsen, Elsa Panciroli and Tea Ghigo, presenting a series of tours that we organised for the Junior Research Fellow community at Linacre College, University of Oxford. The tours provided behind the scenes visits to some of the University Museums in Oxford, and included a rare sight of the Oxford Dodo, which is normally safeguarded away from the public eye at the Natural History Museum, recently collected quilts made by craftswomen in Hawaii at the Pitt Rivers Museum, and a specially designed workshop at the top of the Ashmolean Museum, where we got to try out identifying pigments of selected artworks with a view of the rooftops and dreaming spires of Oxford’s city centre.

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Photo by K. Kapitan (2023).

Udtalelse i debatinterview af Jens From Lyng:

"Kunst bliver netop spændende, når vi inddrager mange forskellige perspektiver i en samtale. Sådan bliver man klogere. Men der er visse situationer, hvor tiden ikke er moden. I feltarbejdet til min ph.d. om Sydafrika forholdt jeg mig for eksempel til fjernelsen af en statue i Cape Town af den britiske imperialist Cecil Rhodes efter massive protester blandt de studerende på University of Cape Town. Jeg er sikker på, at den statue engang kan bringe masser af spændende diskussioner med sig, hvis den bliver udstillet på et museum, men jeg tror ikke, at tiden er moden til det nu. Statuen er forbundet med alt for meget smerte for alt for mange mennesker".

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Detail from Leiv Eiriksson oppdager Amerika by Christian Krohg (1893). Photo by B.H.A. Bjørgli reproduced in agreement with the National Museum of Norway.

Hvordan skal man som museum forvalte Italiens fascistiske arv, nu hvor den yderste højrefløj er tilbage ved magten? Erfaringer fra det etnografiske museum i Rom.

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Photo of Palazzo della Civiltà Italiana by V. Nielsen (2021).

Black Lives Matter! Hvad gemmer der sig bag kampråbene, og hvorfor væltes statuer af europæiske koloniherrer og slaveejere i kølvandet på protesterne?

Ikke endnu er svaret. Den nye såkaldte born free-generation kræver forandringer og mener, at tiden er kommet til at de privilegerede hvide tager ansvaret og forandringen på sig.

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Photo of Cape Town seen from Table Mountain by V. Nielsen (2016).

Regeringens omfattende besparelser på den offentlige kulturformidling gør Danmark til et fattigere land at leve i. End ikke Winston Churchill lod det gå så vidt: Da den berømte og berygtede britiske premierminister i det første år af Anden Verdenskrig blev spurgt, om ikke besparelser i støtten til kunst og kultur kunne finansiere Storbritanniens krigsindsats, skal han efter sigende have svaret: »Then what are we fighting for?«.

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Photo from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek by V. Nielsen (2024).