Jan Eric Olsn, Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen

Interweaving archival material and museum objects from the history of blindness
In his personal reflection on what it means to write history or the task of the historian, March Bloch draws our attention to two different types of historical sources, one that provides intentional evidence of the past and the other, which, as Bloch puts it, bears evidence of witnesses in spite of itself. With the first category, Bloch is of course referring to written sources that are deliberately intended to inform contemporary and future readers about specific events or facts. The second category, in contrast, indicates the type of sources that although linguistic to a certain extent, such as coins and papyri, point beyond language as a coherent narrative towards the very materiality that embeds the inscription. Drawing on Blochs distinction between conscious sources and what he has described as the tracks, which the past unwittingly leaves along its trail, I will approach the history of blindness or of blind institutes through the physical objects that comprised its daily trail. In fact the objects Ill be referring to, turn over completely on the material side of the intentional/unintentional boundary of historical evidence. In this sense, they truly emerge as historical sources in spite of themselves. Let me begin with a few words on the collection that constitutes the material heritage of blindness in Denmark, the country from which Im taking my examples. The objects, approximately 6000 of them, were previously displayed at a Museum of the History of Blindness, located in the premises of the Institute for the Blind and the Partially Sighted in Hellerup, just outside Copenhagen. A few years ago, the museum was closed and the collection transferred to Medical Museion in Copenhagen, a museum dedicated to the history and contemporary culture of medicine. This relocation of the collection entails a problematic shift in terms of how museums render their cultural heritage available to the public. Whereas the Museum of the History of Blindness enabled visually impaired visitors to access a large part of the collection through touch, the general policy of Medical Museion is to exhibit their collections behind glass, thus preventing a tactile experience of the objects on display. For the time being, the blindhistorical collection is tucked away in the storerooms of Medical Museion. It is difficult to imagine, however, that this collection will ever be

made available for visually impaired visitors, unless a change of museum policy is brought about. As to the objects in the collection, they are directly related to the educational activities at the State Institute for the Blind and the Partially Sighted in Copenhagen, founded 1858 and still in operation today. From Braille typewriters and embossed books to tactile earth globes and models used in object lessons, the collection evokes the everyday lives of the visually impaired. What could it have been like to strike the keys of the unwieldy Picht typewriter, remove the paper and read ones writing with gentle fingertips? Or to run ones fingers over the raised map of the tactile globe and simultaneously feel the round object spin under the palm of ones hand? These are the kind of thoughts prompted by the objects. Besides, sighted persons inevitably regard the typewriter and the earth globe in relation to our internal images of the exterior world. How are these objects represented in the mind if vision is put out of action? One could of course also ask what role typewriters like the Picht model played to improve the living conditions of blind people in the Nineteenth century. In a similar manner one could also ask how pedagogical objects like the tactile earth globe were used in the curriculum of blind schools like the one in Copenhagen. The kind of questions that consider the objects from a broader perspective, which ask what role and how, are typically the ones that direct our attention towards written sources such as historical memoirs, biographical accounts and archival material; towards the kind of sources that according to Bloch provide intentional evidence of the past. In the case of the State Institute for the Blind and the Partially Sighted in Copenhagen, the collection of pedagogical artefacts has a counterpart in the archive that the teachers, physicians and other employees left behind. It consists of meticulous records that report on the everyday routines of the institute, from regular eye examinations to lists of the subjects that were taught on a regular basis. Whereas the objects render the past palpable so to speak, the archive provides a sequential documentation of the institutional life. I will now continue with a few examples of how material objects such as the ones in the blindhistorical collection can yield additional evidence and indicate an object-focused approach to the history of blindness. Of all the various types of pedagogical aid that were utilized to give the visually 2

impaired an impression of exterior reality, the models of insects stand out as a particularly striking subgroup. However, neither the archive nor the memoirs written by the institute teachers have very much to say about these particular models. We can read that the institute made use of a collection of animals that consisted both of stuffed and fabricated models. Details are scant about the animal species represented in the models and not much is written about the materials that the models were made of or the scale in which they were conceived. Among other things, models were found useful as a complement to outdoor biology lessons. The teaching schemes keep referring to the use of models but the entries are rarely more specific than that. What the archive stresses time and again though is the importance of learning through the senses or what in Danish is referred to as anskuelse anschauung in German a concept that springs from Kants critique of pure reason in which the notion of anschauung signifies the knowledge one acquires when confronted via the senses with the object of knowledge. The archive states that the lessons should convey knowledge in an anskuelig way and that for that purpose teachers ought to employ various objects that render exterior reality anskuelig to the blind. Now, although the concept of anschauung mainly gave prominence to the role of visual perception, it implied an active use of the other senses as well. Hence, anschauung through touch became a widely used pedagogical method at blind schools such as the one in Copenhagen. If the archival records emphasize the importance of learning by means of tactile models, they are, as I mentioned before, less explicit about the models themselves. What did the blind at the institute in Copenhagen get to touch actually? This is where the collection provides the historian with a different kind of source, like the models of a cabbage butterfly here on the slide. The collection of insect models consists of nineteen objects that depict a number of our most common insects like the fly, the butterfly, the wasp, the spider and the beetle. They were designed by one of the teachers at the institute and are mainly made of wood, metal and papier-mch. A small fraction of the whole collection, the models are interesting in that they set the pedagogical ideal of tactile anschauung in concrete relation to the everyday life at the institute. Unlike other animal representations in the collection bears, monkeys, lions, crocodiles and fishes 3

insects inhabit our domestic environments and transgress the borders between indoors and outdoors. It is not far-fetched to assume that the insect models were employed with this in mind to teach the blind to be not afraid of these tiny creatures, which are so easily encountered both outdoors and indoors during summer. Given their miniscule size and fragile nature, insects in their natural milieu are difficult to study through touch. More often than not it is the insects that touch us when we least expect it. This reciprocity of tactile contact, which naturally is an intrinsic characteristic of touch, is interesting to consider when discussing the insect models. Besides, in order to render entomology tactiley anschauulich, the models hade to be made both larger and in other materials than in real life. For lack of written evidence, one can only speculate about the use of these models. But as witnesses in spite of themselves, to again quote Bloch, the objects raise a number of questions that archival material does not provoke. Take for example the relation between the firm model of a spiders web made of wood and wire and the fine, almost insubstantial material of the real web. Then add to this the tactile qualities that informed the visually impaired about this relation. From the point of view of a sighted historian, the insect models shed light on a statement made by one of the directors of the blind institute in Copenhagen, Johannes Moldenhawer. Talking about the role of representation for blind people, Moldenhawer said that, faithfulness to nature is not the same for the hand as for the eye, words that kept eluding me until I took the time to take a closer look and touch at some of the objects in the blindhistorical collection. Now, I would like to say a few words on representation. The blindhistorical collection has to do with representation in various ways. For sighted persons, I would say, the objects represent the inability to use ones eyes in general, not necessarily historically. In this way, representation uncovers blindness as a timeless predicament, equally affecting today as yesterday. On the other hand, if we ignore the museum setting and imagine the collection in its historical context, the objects point to the institutional activities of the blind school and the pedagogical techniques that were developed there. The act of representation is then tied to the teachers and pupils who handled the objects on a daily basis, who by touching the different models helped the act of anschauung along the way. Representation here is literally embedded in matter and form and emerges historically as the means through which the blind acquired knowledge. Critically speaking, many of the tactile models in the blindhistorical 4

collection are more revealing of the way that sighted society perceived blindness and visually impaired people. Take for instance this model of an enlarged fly that is more reminiscent of a three-dimensional translation of the view in the microscope than a representation through which the blind would truly grasp the nature of the insect. With Moldenhawer, the old director of the Copenhagen Institute, we can ask if the maker of the fly model wasnt confounding how nature appears to the hand with how it appears to the eye. One can also wonder to what degree tactile representations such as this one hinged on the visual culture of science. There are other models in the collection that give yet another meaning to the idea of tactile representation. Stored away in boxes that havent been opened for decades are the clay models that blind pupils made as a way of training their conceptual understanding of reality. Whereas some of these models are easily recognizable as depictions of faces, animals, books, flowers and other everyday objects, others arent possible to identify at all, at least not for the eye. Drawn out of the boxes these models can easily be taken for failed representations, lumps of clay that were meant to resemble an object of some kind but where the process of mimesis came to a standstill beforehand. However, considered from the viewpoint of tactile insight or anschauung, the models could just as well be interpreted as tactile representations in the making, as material evidence of how our mind constantly interacts with exterior phenomena. In contrast to the insect models, which are fixed objects that exemplify touch as a pedagogical method, the clay figures can be seen as materializations of a subjective touch that had to rely on its inner impressions so as to provide representation with an exterior form. The use of modelling with clay was a chief element in the pedagogical program of the Danish blind school. Archival sources testify to the important role that modelling had in the examination of the pupils. But as in the case with the insect models, the archive does not provide a very detailed, or might we say palpable account of how the activity of modelling was carried out. Hence the clay figures, like the tactile models, present us with alternative evidence, objects that the history of blindness unwittingly left along its trail.

To summon up, archival records are very informative about the pedagogical importance of touching but far less specific about the kind of things that the visually impaired got to touch. It is here that the museum objects complement the discursive touch with a material and palpable expression of what the written sources refer to as tactile anschauung. This is an example of how archives and museum objects intersect with one another, bringing together historical sources that have been separated due to our understanding of how the past should be studied. I would like to conclude with another aspect, one that illustrates the incompatibility that exists between archival records and museum collections. If the insect models and clay models provide the concept of tactile anschauung with a sensible and historical form, they do not evoke the individuals who touched and handled these objects. The archive on the other hand is replete with the names of the persons who were registered at the institute. Unknown people who were submitted to the institute, spent most of their childhood and adolescence there, and later moved to lead their grown up lives in different parts of Denmark. The scribbled down names in the institute archive point to the individual fate of being born with deficient eyesight during a period in which blind institutes were established on defined ideological grounds. That the individuals who spent a formative period of their lives in institutes such as this one were educated with the aid of tactile models is made evident from the museum collection. What they thought and how they felt when touching the different objects is another question though, one that inescapably falls between the archived name and the preserved museum object.