(UNTITLED, DATE UNKNOWN) or the potential of the once forgotten as seen by Nietzsche and Warburg

Abstract

This essay attempts to explore the notion of memory and forgetfulness in relation to the collection at the Trondheim Museum of Art. Memory can in this case be understood as the information about the collection, what is known about the objects and how they came into the possession of the museum, forgetfulness being the instances where this information is missing, often without the museum being conscious about it. The Eik-Nes-collection is going to be used as an example of a collection within the collection where information about provenance is lacking without the museum being aware of it. Using the Greek mythology’s underworld as a geographical structure, this text tries to see what the forgetfulness does with the use of the collection, and if there is a possibility to use the forgetfulness to the museum’s advantage. Through the reading of texts by Nietzsche and ideas from Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, we can see that forgetfulness could open up for the possibility to re-evaluate the previous established canon, and use the collection to explore what is considered art now. The artist Martin Tebus’ work Collection is an example of how this could be done.