Provenance Inconnue and Other Stories: Developing Engaging Labels for Ancient History Collections.

Museum labels are typically designed with fine art objects in mind and identify key elements of a work of art, such as the location, artist, and date of creation. This approach is generally unsuitable for telling the stories of archaeological collections, in which artefacts are often fragmentary, and the details of items are either unknown or not essential to understanding how they were used. This type of label does not allow much space for stimulating visitors’ imaginations, and it is even less conducive to inviting a critical response. As a thought-experiment in the possibilities of object biography, we offer a case study of a humble bronze figurine in Musée L’s archaeological collections. Despite its missing provenance and incomplete provenience, we developed a series of display interventions through which its story could be told in new ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]