Relative Humidity: Reuniting the Disciplines of Museological and Ecological Conservation

This article considers the concept of conservation from both a museological and ecological lens, locating its modern origins in the development of the mechanical hair hygrometer invented by Horace Bénédict de Saussure. Loosely employing the sociological method of a field study, the paper finds that ecological conservation and art/museum conservation not only share an origin but have begun to collapse back in on themselves in the face of climate change, where land art has become a “barometer” for rapidly changing ecosystems and protected living species have begun to be monitored with the exacting practices normally reserved for museum collections. It concludes with the arbitrary nature of what has the privilege—or burden—of being conserved, in relation to semiotic analysis (the arbitrary nature of the sign) developed by de Saussure’s Senior’s great-grandson, Ferdinand de Saussure.