@article{4da12a776c9c4590bc2bd9af2d88ca48,
title = "Facing madness: The ethics of exhibiting sensitive historical photographs",
abstract = "In a research context of ever-widening public engagement, we are facing new ethical questions about the presentation of sensitive historical material. This paper explores the complex ethical negotiations faced by researchers when sensitive visual material is presented in museums and galleries. I explore this in relation to a recent exhibition on the history of a mental hospital which displayed portraits of patients from the early twentieth century. I consider how we might navigate a dual responsibility both to the privacy and confidentiality of long dead patients and their relatives with a commitment to challenge the myths and stigma surrounding histories of mental health. I conclude by suggesting that there are both opportunities and risks involved in the translation of research into exhibitions. For researchers, museums offer more creative forms of mitigation to help navigate the risks of exploiting vulnerable groups. However, ethical calculations need to take place in context, and considering the lives of the dead, the living and the imagined.",
keywords = "Ethics, Mental health, Museums, Photography",
author = "Elizabeth Gagen",
note = "Funding Information: My gratitude to three anonymous referees who provided particularly rich and insightful comments. I would also like to thank Peter Merriman and Paula Meth for reading earlier drafts. The paper was originally presented in a session at the RGS-IBG entitled {\textquoteleft}Conveying Geographical Collaborations: Display, Curate and Create{\textquoteright} convened by Cheryl McGeachan and Ebba Hogstrom, and benefitted from the thoughtful discussion that took place there. While sole responsibility lies with myself, the paper would not have been written without the energy, expertise and hard work of all those involved in the Cefn Coed Remembered exhibition. Hearty thanks to Martin Thomas who led the project; Rebecca Kelly, Heather Parnell, Fiona Edwards and Prue Thimbleby of the Swansea Bay University Health Board; Mary Gagen, Will Bryan, and Paige Jennings at Swansea University; Tim Kindberg, Pervasive Media; and Wayne Samuel who designed the 3D model installation. The article is the result of collaborations with Swansea Bay University Health Board Arts in Health and Heritage Team who were funded by a Heritage Lottery Fund grant to develop Cefn Coed Remembered at Swansea Museum. Support was also provided by Aberystwyth and Swansea Universities, HEFCW Welsh Scholarship Grant, Oriel Science, and CherishDe - Swansea University{\textquoteright}s Digital Economies Research Centre. Funding Information: Hilary Geoghegan points to the potential for further research on what she terms ?museum geographies?.11 Although her focus is more squarely on critical studies of museums, she also points to the opportunities for geographers to use museums as an outlet for their research findings. There is growing evidence that this more collaborative union between museums and exhibitions has accelerated over the last decade. While there is a regional bias towards the metropolitan London area, a bias which is also reflected in the concentration of arts funding in Greater London,12 collaborations are also emerging in a more ephemeral pattern via pop-up and temporary exhibits in borrowed corners of public spaces beyond the capital.13 Writing in the introduction to Research on Display: A Guide to Collaborative Exhibitions for Academics, Laura Humphreys writes that it is not only academics who seek out collaborations with museums as a way to reach a more diverse public, but that museums too are keen to take advantage of academics? research expertise.14 The Guide was the result of a workshop co-hosted by the Geffrye Museum of the Home, London, and the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) which developed ideas and shared good practice about collaborative exhibitions. It demonstrates both the richness of possibility in exhibiting historical geographic research and offers valuable practical guidance. Given the potential significance of exhibitions to facilitate public engagement, I suggest we are at a useful moment to consider the ethical and methodological implications of this strategy.For researchers using archives which include sensitive material about the past, this can raise awkward questions about the ethics of ethics. Where does ethical responsibility ultimately begin and end? These questions have come to the fore across a range of social science and humanities disciplines engaging with colonial archives22 and in relation to histories of trauma and the Holocaust. Rachel Einwohner, discussing her use of Holocaust testimonies in an oral history repository writes that despite being granted ethical approval to conduct her research, she continued to confront complex ethical dilemmas throughout her engagement with the archives. ?My experiences working with previously collected Holocaust survivor testimonies may therefore serve as a cautionary tale to other researchers working with similar, seemingly ?exempt? archival data, a tale that illustrates the importance of paying attention to ethical concerns in qualitative work beyond the IRB review?.23 Among Holocaust scholars, the particularities of archive material is crucial to the way ethical issues are navigated. The difference between private records ? diaries, letters, testimonials, particularly when these are privately held ? and public, official records, presents further ethical responsibility.24 Much of these discussions revolve around the equivocal issues of respect, dignity and trust when taking responsibility for reputational legacy and the raw sensitivities of representing unspeakable trauma. However, issues of ethical responsibility also extend to quotidian archives. Sarah Mills, writing about the ethics of researching the historical geography of the Scout movement, notes that ?the use of personal and biographical details of people no longer alive ?. necessarily entailed a series of important ethical considerations?.25 Without the reassurance of consent or any explicit guidelines from ethics review boards beyond their approval, researchers are left to navigate thorny decisions about how to protect and do justice to the lives of those they research without doing reputational damage to them or their descendants. Her work highlights the ethical responsibility left to the researcher to make decisions about how to, and indeed whether to, represent the experiences of young people involved in controversial political moments without their consent. It goes against all the principles of research ethics that guide our practice with contemporary participants, and is not without consequence. Even without the fear of direct reputational damage, there is a broader issue with presuming that we have no responsibility for the dead people we write about. As Paul Ricoeur rightly argues, ?As soon as the idea of a debt to the dead, to people of flesh and blood to whom something really happened in the past, stops giving documentary research its highest end, history loses its meaning?.26 I would argue, following Ricoeur, that our obligation is both potent and indefinite, and, moreover, has renewed significance in the current impact and engagement climate.This final section of the paper, reflects on the ethics of curating and exhibiting a history of Cefn Coed Mental Hospital, Swansea (see Fig. 1). The exhibition, entitled Cefn Coed Remembered, was held at Swansea Museum between January and June 2019, and was the culmination of a Heritage Lottery Funded project by the Swansea Bay and University Health Board, with support from researchers at Aberystwyth and Swansea Universities. The aim of the exhibition was to document the working life of the hospital from its opening in 1932 to its partial closure in 2018. My goal is not to consider the relative representativeness of the account, although I agree with MacKinnon and Coleborne who state that psychiatric exhibitions and collections invariably represent only some past actors, and ?through processes of selection, omission, and oversight, they also obfuscate and obliterate the voices of the majority?.65 Instead, I reflect on the decision to include images of patients taken from their private medical records in an attempt to give patients some presence, however burdened and ultimately limited.My gratitude to three anonymous referees who provided particularly rich and insightful comments. I would also like to thank Peter Merriman and Paula Meth for reading earlier drafts. The paper was originally presented in a session at the RGS-IBG entitled ?Conveying Geographical Collaborations: Display, Curate and Create? convened by Cheryl McGeachan and Ebba Hogstrom, and benefitted from the thoughtful discussion that took place there. While sole responsibility lies with myself, the paper would not have been written without the energy, expertise and hard work of all those involved in the Cefn Coed Remembered exhibition. Hearty thanks to Martin Thomas who led the project; Rebecca Kelly, Heather Parnell, Fiona Edwards and Prue Thimbleby of the Swansea Bay University Health Board; Mary Gagen, Will Bryan, and Paige Jennings at Swansea University; Tim Kindberg, Pervasive Media; and Wayne Samuel who designed the 3D model installation. The article is the result of collaborations with Swansea Bay University Health Board Arts in Health and Heritage Team who were funded by a Heritage Lottery Fund grant to develop Cefn Coed Remembered at Swansea Museum. Support was also provided by Aberystwyth and Swansea Universities, HEFCW Welsh Scholarship Grant, Oriel Science, and CherishDe - Swansea University's Digital Economies Research Centre. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2020 Elsevier Ltd",
year = "2021",
month = jan,
day = "31",
doi = "10.1016/j.jhg.2020.12.001",
language = "English",
volume = "71",
pages = "39--50",
journal = "Journal of Historical Geography",
issn = "0305-7488",
publisher = "Elsevier",
}
