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About me

I’m Ananda Rutherford, and I am a museum collections manager and researcher.

In recent years both my research and professional practice has focussed on the documentation of museum objects, how information is presented, captured and accessed. I’m interested in the history and role of museum documentation and the digitisation of museum collections, but increasingly my focus is on the ethics of cataloguing practice in relation to structural racism and colonialist thinking.

My background is in art history, material culture and the history of the decorative arts and I have been working with UK museum collections for a while now: Ashmolean, V&A, the Museum of the Home, Sir John Soane’s Museum, Crafts Council.

This is not really a blog, it’s just a place to keep the bits of writing and projects that don’t really fit anywhere else, yet. Some posts are works in progress, some are bits of semi-formal writing, some are things completed, some are things that don’t count but should. A small flag in ground, place-marking, waving not drowning…

(More of me thinking outloud with the very excellent Dr Tehmina Goskar here and here ,on a proper and v useful blog from the Curatorial Research Centre).

A selection of talks and writing and stuff