How to be Dynamic – The
and finally, from the 1960s onwards, developing forest machines started to sig- nificantly change heavy and human-powered forest work. It was all part and a continuum involving the great post-war intensifying project of Finnish forestry.
Finland had lost about 12% of its forest area as a war indemnity and was in the middle of structural change. Forests and forestry played an important role in recovering from the war, as there was a need to produce more, and much more efficiently. It was also part of the modernisation of the Finnish society (Pakkanen
& Leikola 2010, pp. 303–308, pp. 384–387, pp. 319–331).
With the help of its stakeholders, Lusto collected 17 forest machines during the years 2000–2010. Most were donated to the museum by Metsähallitus (a state-owned enterprise responsible for the management of state-owned land and water areas) and the former Jämsänkoski Forestry School (Karhunkorva &
Paaskoski 2008a, p. 10). There were many challenges for a museum collecting large, mechanical and old artefacts such as these machines. On the one hand, there was a need to present history from the first processor to modern solutions in forestry, but without too many space-demanding machines in the collection.
On the other hand, many forest machines were demolished already, and the museum was forced to choose from what was left in the field. There were thus somewhat random objects left to be collected for a museum in Finland. This inevitably led to a situation in the collection where some key objects were missing (as there were none left in Finland) and some were duplicates (as the museum later found a better example of a particular artefact). Another challenge was the physical condition of the machines, which had not been used in a long time, and that sometimes had been exposed to the elements for decades and sometimes were over-restored with plenty of new paint. Finally, the third challenge had to do with information, i.e., cultural heritage knowledge, as there was not always enough information available to be able to create the rich metadata of a museum object (Karhunkorva & Paaskoski 2008b). The forest machine collection put together during those years can be seen as a museological compromise.
A museological compromise is often a part of museum work. It means balancing between different viewpoints and criteria in collecting and valuing museum ob- jects. Museum collections have had various tasks and aims throughout museum and collection history. They have been sources for research, objects to be exhibited and the tangible heritage of society, and have told various stories about both the past and the present (Pettersson & Kinanen 2010). They are believed to tell about society and human life, but they also tell us about museum professionals, their visions and affections. Nonetheless, the cultural heritage information itself, collected and connected to the objects, has not dramatically changed through- out the course of museum history (Ekosaari 2009). In our cataloguing work in Finnish museums, we still concentrate on describing the appearance of artefacts, instead of pointing out their meanings and significance. Cataloguing is, in fact, seen more as a technical process of recording than as a process of producing content, meanings and stories (Museoiden luettelointiohje 2014, p. 9).
The need to produce better cultural heritage information and more meaningful museum collections has arisen in many ways during the 2000s. For example, participation, co-operation, the professional-amateur movement and the idea of shared cultural heritage are all seen as means for creating dynamic collec- tions. According to Peter van Mensch and Leontine Meijer-van Mensch (2015, pp. 24–26), we should talk more about collection development than collection management. At the same time, various methods for assessing significance have been created around the world.
Lusto’s forest machine collection is partly the background of why we became interested in Significance, an Australian method of assessing the significance of cultural heritage objects and collections (Russell & Winkworth 2001). The first efforts were made in 2011, when Lusto’s artefact collection curator Sari Jantunen used the method in her short-term studies concerning museum work.
The class took place at the Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences;
the method was introduced by teacher Heikki Häyhä. Sari used Significance to assess a part of Lusto’s forest machine collection. The degree work, Kookkaita koneita – Raskasta rautaa (Large Machines – Heavy Metal) (Jantunen 2011), proved that the method was feasible and worth further examination. Next, in 2013, we started evaluating the museum value of the forest machine collection in co-operation with Lusto and the students of Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences’ Degree Programme in Conservation. One of the concrete problems to be solved was that Lusto had two PIKA50 processors from the 1960s–1970s and, as they are enormous objects and expensive to preserve, the museum had to choose the better one to be musealised and kept for future generations. We successfully used the Australian Significance method in making this deaccession decision for the other machine. The concepts of significance analysis (merkitysanalyysi) and significance statement (merkityslausunto) were collectively defined in Finnish with the Metropolia conservation students and museum professionals at this time. Later on, we ended up working even more with significance analysis.
Figures 1. and 2. From left to right: The too-rigorously restored PIKA50 (V1M0607) was chosen to be disposed of from Lusto. The authentic PIKA50 (dcs5297) was conserved and relocated to the exhibition hall.
Examples of Significance Analyses Methods
Through the experience of analysing and evaluating Lusto’s forest machines in 2013, we considered the Australian Significance method inspiring, but it ap- peared to need some developing to fit the particular needs of Finnish museums.
We started a project, Merkitykselliset museokokoelmat – Museo-objektien ja -kokoelmien merkitysanalyysimenetelmän kehittäminen (Museum collections of significance – Developing a significance analysis method for museum objects and collections), funded by the Finnish Heritage Agency and carried out in 2014. In this project, we developed the criteria and certain concepts concerning significance analysis, as well as making a method that was more flexible and easier to use. Before we got to this point, there were several foreign examples to be thoroughly investigated. In the following, we introduce the Australian, British and Dutch methods for analysing significance, created from 2001 to 2014.