From 1998 to 2020, wood conservator Helene Tello worked at the Ethnological Museum of the National Museums in Berlin. She was responsible for 70,000 objects and wrote her doctoral thesis “on the side” on “Pest control in museums
From 1998 to 2020, wood conservator Helene Tello worked at the Ethnological Museum of the National Museums in Berlin. She was responsible for 70,000 objects and wrote her doctoral thesis “on the side” on the subject of pest control in museums
Helene Tello’s dissertation deals with contaminated collection objects from the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. And it does so retrospectively and for the first time. The wood conservator writes a “history of the use of pesticides” from the end of the 19th to the beginning of the 20th century. She explores the question of where the museum staff got their knowledge of chemical agents for pest control, as well as the questions of which ones they used and who decided on their use.
The doctoral thesis deals very informatively with the classification of pest control in history and collection policy as well as with the history of the conservation of cultural objects made of organic materials. Helene Tello skillfully situates her research in the current discussions in cultural studies, which understand museum objects as contemporary witnesses. This means that the history of their contamination is also part of their history and thus part of these contemporary witnesses.
The research and explanations on the Ethnological Museum in Berlin are extremely enlightening, as they show the history of the collection from the perspective of those who had to store and preserve the collections. This not only expands our knowledge of the individual pieces, but above all of the conditions under which they were collected, stored and preserved. For a long time, these conditions were rather inadequate and not very professional. Tello describes in detail and in a readable manner how procedures and experience grew, which industrial products were tried out and used, and what the staff of the Berlin museum developed themselves.
Her summary tables, in which she summarizes, for example, the networking of museum experts between 1874 and 1934 and makes it clear who corresponded with whom, are very clear. The look at pest control at ethnological museums around the world at the same time is an exciting extension of the topic and makes it possible to place it in historical developments.
