Images and Imagination of Impairment and Disability in the "Hans-Würtz-Collection"

This project is situated in the interrelated academic fields of Disability Studies and History, Disability Culture and Disability Art. The Principal Investigators (PI's) are Professor Dr McKeown (UK) and Professor Dr Musenberg (DE). Musenberg's research is situated at the intersection of History of the Discipline of Special Education, Cultural Disability Studies and inclusiveness in Historical Education. McKeown's research is situated in the fields of Art and Design, Disability Art and Disability History and Heritage.

Disability Studies (and in the UK Disability Art) emerged from the emancipatory Disabled People's Movements of the 1970's and 1980's and was established in academia in the context of the social sciences. Cultural perspectives brought additional points of contact with e.g. Literary studies, Cultural History and Disability Culture and the Arts. For the purposes of this project we have aggregated and described our interests as reflected by Cultural Disability Studies.

The project will view, analyse and disseminate a seminal body of disability and impairment related artworks collected and curated by the German disability pedagogue Hans Würtz (1875-1958) between 1910-1933 - a critical period in European history that saw the rise of National Socialism and its extreme attendant ableist and disableist thought and action. Würtz innovatively moved away from the prevailing medical perspective on impairments to a more cultural perspective that materialised in his outstanding collection both in regard to its size and content. The Collection, paradoxically, survived because the National Socialist authorities saw no value in it and allowed Würtz to remove the Collection to his place of exile in Czechoslovakia. Therefore the Collection survived in two Prague based archives.

The largely unmapped collection comprises 180 pottery, ivory and wood statuettes; 3500 images in the form of drawings, cartoons, lithographs, engravings, reproductions from magazines and photographs; 20 paintings; Glass plate negatives which document elements of the collection. One of the main research question is, how impairment and disability is represented (and staged) in the Collection; across the whole assemblage and through the closer investigation of a selection of key items? Following this question our key objectives are - to make the Collection accessible for our research (capture the Collection in a digital form) and to view and organise the Collection in regard to its themes and topics, - to analyse a sample of images and sculptures regarding the staging and production of disability within the artworks - to combine art historical contextualisation and iconology of the Collection with an reconstructive, qualitative approach of image interpretation (documentary method) - to contribute to Cultural Disability Studies knowledge by reflecting on the historic culturally 'fabrication' of the body and to contribute to the development of museology in relation to Disability Arts in the UK and in Germany. The project's outcome will be two scientific colloquia and two exhibitions in Berlin and Middlesbrough featuring key signature images including 2D artworks and 3D virtual statuettes in Berlin and Middlesbrough, a transdisciplinary anthology and research papers submitted by the two project PostDocs.