ONLINE COURSE

ENCOUNTERING

THE ARCHIVE

THROUGH EXHIBITION

DR PETER LESTER

From a manuscript written on gold leaf to photographs of trains in Kenya; from medieval illuminated gospels to contemporary digital records, archives provide diverse, exciting, engaging and reflective subjects for exhibitions.  Little explored in archival scholarship, exhibitions are nonetheless a key aspect of archive practice, ranging from displays of treasured manuscripts to family letters and diaries, accounts of colonial expansion and dispossession to personal experiences and memories. This course explores the diverse practice of archive exhibitions, the aims and intentions of archivists and designers in creating them, and the way narrative and design work to shape our experience and understanding of the archive.

Located within archival scholarship, the course explores the historical and contextual influences on exhibition-making and the impact of different and diverse audiences on the archive.  Examining new spatial reconfigurations of archival buildings, it considers how exhibition provides a forum for engaging with archives in various ways.  It explores how design and narrative work to create experiences with authentic, material archives and how they open up political, reflective and activist understandings of history and the role of archives in this.  It considers the implications of contemporary exhibition-making on how we understand and experience the archive and the different ways that we encounter new stories, perspectives and people both in the past and the present.

COURSE STRUCTURE

The course takes place over one month and includes four in-depth sessions of three hours each, held weekly.

As part of the programme, participants will enjoy complimentary access to ARCHIVO’s public events throughout the course duration, including the Webinar Series and the Open Sessions, offering further opportunities for discussion, and exchange.

Peter Lester is an archivist and researcher. 

He holds a PhD from the University of Leicester. 

His research interests focus on the exhibition and display of archives, encounters with archival material and the design and experience of archival spaces.  He is also a professionally qualified archivist with over ten years’ experience in the UK archives sector.  His book Exhibiting the Archive: Space, Encounter and Experience was published by Routledge in 2022.