UiO's cultural heritage in a cluttered bomb shelter
"We at MUV work to preserve the cultural heritage of the University of Oslo in collaboration with departments and faculties. Our approach is to engage in dialogue with academic communities, the owners of the objects, to help them take responsibility for their own history, in collaboration with us," explains Jon.
The starting point for the work on the exhibition was a dusty bomb shelter in Helga Eng's House at the Blindern campus. At the Department of Education (IPED), there was a desire to clear out the room, which got the ball rolling. A large number of boxes filled with so-called "psychometric" tests were stored there.
For leading researchers in the field of education, among them Helga Eng who founded the Educational Research Institute in 1938, the tests had been important tools.
In one of the boxes that was opened, they found Helga Eng's correspondence with the famous Rorschach test's originator, Hermann Rorschach.
In other boxes were the American version of the IQ test "Stanford-Binet" along with the instruction book "Measuring Intelligence" by Terman and Merrill. Helga Eng had purchased these tests for the new research institute and would later translate them into Norwegian and adapt them to Norwegian conditions.
Jon explains that he immediately thought that what he found in the storage room was interesting material for research:
"Intelligence testing has significant societal implications. For example, IQ testing contributes to creating perceptions that certain societal groups—races, or ethnic groups—are smarter or dumber than other groups. I was not aware that this had been so important at the University of Oslo, so I became curious about what this was and how it had been used. There were discussions at that time, which still continue today, about whether intelligence is hereditary and to what extent human destinies are determined from birth—whether it lies in the genes."
A collection, a research Project, and an exhibition come together
Researchers in the academic community at the Department of Education (IPED) knew of funds that could be applied for to finance a research assistant to catalog the material. The University Library (UB) was invited to join the project and accepted, and MUV was given the responsibility to lead the work.
The funding came through, and Solveig Siem was hired to review all the material, create a categorization and classification system, and enter it into the Alvin database, which was acquired by UB.
"What is a bit special about this project is that the objects we are talking about here are a mix of things that naturally belong in a museum context and paper; which is archival material, or books that might belong in a library. And it is precisely this type of objects and collections that tend to fall between the cracks. So the collaboration with UB has been very important," Jon points out.
"While Solveig was physically organizing the material—putting it into archival boxes and entering it into a system—it was also photographed by Helge Brekke, our photographer," Jon explains.
"This was both with the thought that things could be made available online, for documentation photos, and for images that could be used for dissemination."
Jon points out that this nicely illustrates how MUV works in parallel with management and dissemination. Research is part of the same process:
"There is an artificial distinction between these things because the work Solveig did to gather the information, organize the material, and categorize it, is part of a research process. It allows the rest of us to just go into the database and retrieve the information we need."
This is how MUV wants to work:
"We create projects where we do these things in conjunction so that we can save time and effort and achieve a 'win-win situation,' or mutual synergy, as it is elegantly put."
Jon further explains how the research project and the exhibition came about:
"I decided to create a project and got a group of researchers on board to submit an application to the Research Council's SAMKUL program, which supports projects relevant to understanding the societal challenges we face today. The project received funding, and an exhibition was the first thing we did. It was built on the work that Solveig did to transform a storage room into a museum collection. It was through that work that we became aware of what kind of material was in the collection, what kinds of stories were there."
Exhibition as a research tool
"We thought we should create the exhibition early in the project because it could help us become familiar with the material and think through what types of issues are relevant to research and discuss today. It is important to ask historical questions that are relevant to society," says Jon. In this way, you are forced to reflect:
"What is interesting to showcase here? What kinds of texts are interesting to write for an exhibition? What sorts of questions and issues are interesting to address? And who might be interested in seeing this exhibition and reading these texts?"
"In the exhibition, the focus is on the tests. It is not the history of IPED, the institute they come from at the University of Oslo, or the history of the field of education that has been chosen as the focal point. Jon explains that the objects on display in the exhibition are primarily IQ tests that were widely used, and that researchers, through source material, have discovered were standard equipment in a psychology office or in the educational-psychological service (PPT). They have chosen to try to tell some of the history surrounding these tests.
The tests that were widely used in Norway were also the ones most used internationally. There are also some tests that, initially, are not IQ tests, such as the Rorschach test. It is essentially a type of personality test, but according to its originator, it could also be used as an intelligence test, and systems were developed to use it as both an intelligence test and a personality test.
By setting up the exhibition at Blindern, where students and staff frequent, we wanted to make it accessible for educators, psychologists, and others interested in the field. In this way, the exhibition could also serve as a tool to engage with the academic communities that are the successors to the history the material is part of.
"And that's actually how it has worked. We have had several professionals visit here, we had features at conferences held here at Blindern, and we had a session in the exhibition. Internally within the project, the exhibition has also had great value:
"When you take an item out of a cluttered room, put it in a display case, and place it within a system and show it off, it changes in character, right? Suddenly it becomes an interesting object, not just dusty clutter. And thus, it can help trigger some conversations and reflections."