Museum Content Research Articles

Cultural Diplomacy 2.0: Challenges and Opportunities in Museum International Practices

This study discusses several issues that museums face when utilizing social media in their international communication. This discussion is framed within the discourse of the new cultural diplomacy and this paper proposes a specific role for museums in cross-cultural diplomatic relations. This new model for contemporary museums as vehicles for a ‘trans-cultural encounter’, or a ‘forum’ is based on the shift within museum institutional structures across communication, educational and political dimensions. Drawing on empirical materials, this study identifies three specific ways in which museums can use social media in their international diplomatic endeavours. The first section discusses how social technology can aid museums in responding to issues and concerns originating from foreign communities. This is followed by a discussion of how social media can connect foreign audiences to the cultural content of museums through direct participation activities. Finally, social media can enhance cultural exchange among people from different cultural communities by bringing them together online for collaborative activities.

Personalized multimedia content delivery on an interactive table by passive observation of museum visitors

The amount of multimedia data collected in museum databases is growing fast, while the capacity of museums to display information to visitors is acutely limited by physical space. Museums must seek the perfect balance of information given on individual pieces in order to provide sufficient information to aid visitor understanding while maintaining sparse usage of the walls and guaranteeing high appreciation of the exhibit. Moreover, museums often target the interests of average visitors instead of the entire spectrum of different interests each individual visitor might have. Finally, visiting a museum should not be an experience contained in the physical space of the museum but a door opened onto a broader context of related artworks, authors, artistic trends, etc. In this paper we describe the MNEMOSYNE system that attempts to address these issues through a new multimedia museum experience. Based on passive observation, the system builds a profile of the artworks of interest for each visitor. These profiles of interest are then used to drive an interactive table that personalizes multimedia content delivery. The natural user interface on the interactive table uses the visitor's profile, an ontology of museum content and a recommendation system to personalize exploration of multimedia content. At the end of their visit, the visitor can take home a personalized summary of their visit on a custom mobile application. In this article we describe in detail each component of our approach as well as the first field trials of our prototype system built and deployed at our permanent exhibition space at LeMurate (http://www.lemurate.comune.fi.it/lemurate/) in Florence together with the first results of the evaluation process during the official installation in the National Museum of Bargello (http://www.uffizi.firenze.it/musei/?m=bargello).

Application of Digital Media Technology in Exhibition Design for the Geological Museum

The digital technology has been brought a profound social change to human, especially in the digital display technology. In order to explore the application of Digital exhibition in geological museum field, the author applies by the "building roaming + picture + text" way to the audience on the Architectural layout and displayed content of Henan Geological Museum, not the traditional construction roaming form, according to the "Henan Provincial Geological Museum exhibition design" case.

Understanding children's engagement with interpretation at a cultural heritage museum

This study aims to investigate how, and the extent to which, different interpretation techniques (e.g. visual, verbal and interactive) at a cultural heritage museum affect children's behaviour, associated with their engagement with interpretive materials and their understanding of the content and its key ideas and messages presented as cultural lessons. An exploratory study with classes of primary-school-aged children, adopting a qualitative method including observation and post-visit in-depth interviews, was carried out. The results did not indicate any discernible difference between the types of interpretation technique used, with regard to their interaction with the site, or their understanding of the museum's content. Rather, it is the circumstances under which the interpretation techniques were used by the children. Two main variations in the way that the children interacted with their peers and the interpretation were found to affect the level of understanding of different stories, and female and male children showed generalised preferences for different forms of behaviour. How these behavioural patterns impacted on their understanding of the interpretation and meanings of the displayed objects at the museum is discussed.

Thematic Analysis of the Children’s Drawings on Museum Visit: Adaptation of the Kuhn’s Method

Researchers are using techniques that allow children to express their perspectives. In 2003, Kuhn developed the method of data collection and analysis which combined thematic drawing and focused, episodic interview. In this article the Kuhn’s method is adjusted using the draw and write technique as a research methodology. Reflections on the technique are drawn from our experience of using it in study with primary school students aged 8 to 10 years. This was part of a larger study undertaken to investigate the relationship between the way younger school-age students perceive the museum and degree of didactic structuring of museum contents. The students are asked to draw a picture showing their museum visit to Museum of Ancient Glass in Zadar and to write a shot text about it. Free written expression of students and their drawings illustrate children’s abilities to convey their opinions when there is an enabling climate created. Analysis of children’s’ drawings has provided insight into the structure of students' perceptions, its orientation and content. At the same time it provided us with the information about the process of perceiving museum exhibits and museum environment by the students who were involved in the pre-visiting curricular activities and those who were not involved in them, as well as the information on students' perception of social interaction and abstract values that can be seen in the drawings.

Contemporary publishing by national museums and art galleries in the UK and its future

Changes in the format, design and content of museum and art gallery exhibition catalogues can be traced to the visibility and popularity of these souvenirs for the block-buster exhibitions of the 1970s. The increased museum revenue from these book sales and the need, perceived by the publishers recruited to museum staff from a trade background, to address the interests of a more diverse audience are identified as the two main instigators of these changes. The resulting exhibition catalogues play down the scholarly apparatus, offer more images particularly to enhance the reader’s contextual understanding and, in some cases, ameliorate the academic register of the writing. The uses made of exhibition books by institutions, their associated sponsors and museum visitors is commented on.

Investigating School-Guided Visits to an Aquarium: What Roles for Science Teachers?

The main goals of this study were to understand the different roles played by teachers and students during a school-guided tour to an aquarium and to analyse their different perspectives about the visit. The study focused on students’ and teachers’ behaviour during school-guided visits to an aquarium; students’ and teachers’ perspectives about this type of school visits; and the reasons provided by teachers to engage in a guided tour to a science museum. Direct observations of 39 guided tours were performed in order to describe the structure of the visit and the participants’ behaviour. A questionnaire was given to 145 teachers and 191 students after the visit, in order to describe their perspectives about the visit, and an online questionnaire was sent to a sample of 11 teachers, in order to understand their ideas about school visits to science museums. Data analysis showed that the guided visits, although well evaluated by both students and teachers, were mainly guide-directed and lecture-oriented, giving students and teachers very little choice and control over the learning agenda. Moreover, teachers showed a very passive role during the visit and reported limited plans for preparation and follow-up activities that would support the visit. Despite this scenario, the teachers who were questioned preferred guided visits to non-guided visits and recognized the potential of museums for learning. The possible role of teachers in establishing the necessary connection between guided tours and school science, and helping to bridge school curriculum, museum content, and student inquiries is discussed.

Earthquake damages to cultural heritage constructions and simplified assessment of artworks

Recent high-intensity earthquakes, such as those occurred in L’Aquila (2009), Christchurch (2010–2011) and Emilia Romagna (2012), have caused not only a significant death toll and huge economic losses, but also heavy damage to the worldwide cultural heritage. In this paper, earthquake damage to monumental constructions is discussed and the following critical issues affecting the seismic response of historic masonry structures are identified: masonry quality; connections among structural elements; diaphragm flexibility; out-of-plane resistance of masonry walls; structural irregularities; wrong retrofit interventions; and earthquake ground motion characteristics. As damage to artworks has induced invaluable losses from a social, cultural and economic standpoint, a simplified performance-based assessment procedure is proposed on the basis of Italian guidelines for seismic risk mitigation of cultural heritage, in order to support the interpretation of observed damage. This procedure could be used for small-to-medium size artworks such as museum contents, historic archives and libraries, and archaeological elements.

Legal Challenges Posed by Online Aggregation of Museum Content: The Cases Of Europeana and the Google Art Project

. Vagelis Papakonstantinou* and Paul de Hert** Abstract Museums are, in most cases, publicly-owned holders of vast amounts of information that are, by definition, open to everyone. Location restrictions, however, usually limit public access. The Internet could change this: once museums

Povezanost zavičajnog identiteta i muzejskog iskustva učenika

U radu je predstavljena ideja o osobnom identitetu muzejskog posjetitelja, u našem slučaju učenika, kao temelju doživljaja muzeja i njegovih sadržaja. Ideja je promišljana u istraživanju zavičajnih dimenzija učeničkoga muzejskog iskustva. Međusobni odnos zavičajnog identiteta učenika i njegove percepcije muzejskih sadržaja, promatran je na primjeru proučavanja dimenzija učeničkih percepcija u skupini učenika drugih i četvrtih razreda Osnovne škole iz Benkovca. Iako u Benkovcu djeluje Zavičajni muzej grada Benkovca, zavičajne dimenzije muzejskog iskustva praćene su u Muzeju antičkog stakla u Zadru. Time se u raznolikosti ukupnog muzejskog postava omogućilo praćenje učeničke usmjerenosti na povijesno-arheološke sadržaje benkovačkoga zavičajnog prostora, kao integrirane dijelove ukupnog postava. U istraživanju je korištena kombinirana metodologija. Kvantitativni su podatci prikupljani anketnim upitnikom, a kvalitativni slobodnim pisanim iskazima i crtežima učenika te iskazima njihovih učitelja, prikupljenim polustrukturiranim intervjuima. U zaključku rada je objašnjena povezanost usmjerenosti i sadržajnog strukturiranja učeničke percepcije muzejskih predmeta i zavičajne dimenzije muzejskog doživljaja učenika, dakle njihovog zavičajnog identiteta.

X3DOM AS CARRIER OF THE VIRTUAL HERITAGE

Abstract. Virtual Museums (VM) are a new model of communication that aims at creating a personalized, immersive, and interactive way to enhance our understanding of the world around us. The term "VM" is a short-cut that comprehends various types of digital creations. One of the carriers for the communication of the virtual heritage at future internet level as de-facto standard is browser front-ends presenting the content and assets of museums. A major driving technology for the documentation and presentation of heritage driven media is real-time 3D content, thus imposing new strategies for a web inclusion. 3D content must become a first class web media that can be created, modified, and shared in the same way as text, images, audio and video are handled on the web right now. A new integration model based on a DOM integration into the web browsers' architecture opens up new possibilities for declarative 3 D content on the web and paves the way for new application scenarios for the virtual heritage at future internet level. With special regards to the X3DOM project as enabling technology for declarative 3D in HTML, this paper describes application scenarios and analyses its technological requirements for an efficient presentation and manipulation of virtual heritage assets on the web.

Research from the fieldBuilt city, planned city, virtual city: the city museum

‘Built city, planned city, virtual city: the city museum’ is the title of a day-long seminar held in Turin, Italy, on 22nd March 2011. It is also the name of an Italian research project reasserting the role of urban historians and the historical and humanistic disciplines in defining the scope and content of the city museum.

Design, information organisation and the evaluation of the Virtual Museum of the Pacific digital ecosystem

This paper reports on the design, organisation and evaluation of a Semantic Web application designed to deliver a collaborative tagging and navigation system for a digital online museum. The key technical features of our application—called the Virtual Museum of the Pacific—centre on a browsing and retrieval interface based on formal concept analysis, query-extension for text search over a concept lattice, an extensible distributed data model to support collaborative tagging and its Web Services implementation. The objective of the project was to provide a practical demonstrator of an formal concept analysis-based system for browsing museum content, while reporting on its impact to the organisational environment and its relevance among stakeholder groups. This paper presents its key design features, an analysis of our collaboration with the Australian Museum and the results of two independent requirements gathering and usability evaluation sessions.

Symptomatologie des morsures d'ophidiens d'après le papyrus Brooklyn nos47.218.48 et 85 : aspects épistémologiques d'un texte égyptien ancien recopié au IVesiècle avant notre ère

Symptomatology of Ophidian bites according to Brooklyn Papyrus no. 47.218.48–85: epistemological aspects of an ancient Egyptian text copied out at IVth century B. C.EThis paper reconsiders the content of the ophiological Papyrus Brooklyn Museum no 47.218.48 and 85, edited by Serge Sauneron (1989), a remarkable document containing two treatises. The first one —*(Treatise entitled) symptomatology of snakes bites — consists of a catalogue of thirty-eight reptiles (including the Chameleon) whose bites are considered either as lethal, dangerous or having no consequences. The items include both a description and an analysis of bites. The second one is entitled Collection for making men extract venom of any male or female snake, of any scorpion, of any animal j(n)tš and any reptile, which is at the exorcist-of-Selkis' disposal, and which is used to expel any reptile as well as to seal their mouth. It consists of a group of prescriptions for treating non lethal bites. Moreover the author wonders about when this document has been copied (IVth Century B.C.), the personality of its writer and the priestly background within which it was created. He specially puts the emphasis on the first treatise (complete translation), yet with regard to the second treatise by means of several tables so as to give an objective general survey concerning ancient Egyptian ophiological knowledge and how treatments were applied to snakes bites. The paper opens iatromagical and mythological perspectives showing that a specific link between Egypt and the Ophidian world was supposed to exist in Antiquity.

Museums and Community

This case study of “Listen, Look, & Do,” a multi-visit preschool program at the Smithsonian's National Postal Museum, provides a model for how other history museums can program for young learners in their neighborhoods. In striving to meet local community audience needs identified by annual evaluations, staff created a program that shifted its focus from prioritizing the museum's content to improving the learners' experience. While still rooted in postal themes and objects, the program's key benefits to teachers and students emerge from the skill-and place-based modifications we made. This signature program's structure now informs all offerings developed by the National Postal Museum education department, as it seeks first to be for someone, and second to be about something.

A unified content and service management model for digital museums

This paper presents a unified content and service digital museum (UCSDM) concept model to depict the issues of unifying global content, services and users and connecting numerous value-added applications in both virtual and physical spaces to meet the needs of individuals and target groups from a global and long-term perspective. A unified content and service management system framework, which comprises the unified content and processes, unified content and services structures, and a unified content and service management system to fulfil the UCSDM concept model is proposed. A practical implementation of a large-scale digital museum project that includes virtual and physical content, services, and users of a natural science museum has been successfully implemented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed framework.

Museum of African art in Belgrade and its anti/colonial discourse

The Museum of African Art, Veda and Zdravko Pečar Collection (MAA), was always a specific space of representation, where two main discourses, largely in opposition, intertwined. The first one corresponded with the museum as authority: a Western institution that collects researches and represents cultural heritage. Although this model was openly criticized as colonial (particularly focused onto African collections in Western institutions as product of 'colonial plunder'), to embrace it meant to establish the continuity of the MAA within Western representations. The second one that corresponded with the anti-colonial and non-aligned rhetoric of the time tended to shape this museum as an African cultural center, where dynamic exchange with colleagues from African countries would take place: artists in residence, curators, and theoreticians. In this sense, the MAA was supposed to create a unique approach to different topics from African arts and cultures, establishing a close collaboration with experts from Africa, who would take part in the realization and creation of its programmes. Historic circumstances have changed the position the Museum of African Art in Belgrade once held. Bearing in mind that every museum's image relies upon a sum of different representations that had shaped museums as institutions, and had been shaped by them, it can be concluded that past elements of museum discourse inevitably make part of its current setup. This paper therefore suggests that the anti-colonial narrative in the MAA should be understood and researched as cultural memory in the present. Through contemporary curatorial and artistic interventions in/on the Museum space, of which some excellent examples could be found in the work of curator Dejan Sretenović and artists Zoran Naskovski and Barthélémy Toguo (in the period 2004-2006), an authentic and self-reflective approach both to museum content and its current purpose can be achieved.

Surface and Interface Analysis in Cultural Heritage

Surface and Interface Analysis in Cultural Heritage

Museums, Galleries, Politics and Management

Politics takes diverse forms within the museums sector, from the effect of national government policies and funding decisions to the manner in which the contents of museums are presented to the public. This diversity of political forms leads to the creation of a range of administrative and managerial contexts within which museums operate. This paper explores the relationship of political practices and administrative and managerial regimes for the manner in which museums and galleries in the United Kingdom undertake the functions that they are responsible for, and indicates the possibilities and problems for museum and gallery practice that are associated with different political forms.

Deconstructing the Acropolis

Built after an international design competition, won by starchitect Bernard Tschumi, the new Acropolis Museum replaces the small (1,450 m2) 19thand mid 20th-century museum nestled into the sacred hill's surface. Containing 14,000 m2 of gallery space, it is tightly inserted in neighbor ing Makriyianni. Decades ago, in the area earmarked for the museum, an ancient urban site, ranging from before the fifth century B.C.E. to the Byzantine period in the ninth century C. E., was discovered. A 23,000 m2 museum and plaza have, nonetheless, finally been constructed (for 130 million), raised directly over this important site; supporting columns and seismic isolators avoid archaeological features.2 The Acropolis offers an aerial view of the museum. The building proper is a tripartite structure, characterized by an increased use of glass as it rises. The top floor?a glass enclosed rectangle, with dramatically cantilevered corners, rotated off-axis from the museum's lower levels?is designed to house the Parthenon sculptures and intriguingly echoes the temple's own orientation. During the day, however, the glass looks dark and opaque, and the museum's contents cannot be discerned. An inscrutable angular form planted amid Athens' urban sprawl of small, pale buildings relieved by green hillocks, the huge new museum is unrewardingly disjunctive. Arriving museum visitors descend flights of steps and cross an uninviting gray marble plaza with glass windows (slip pery despite nonskid black dots) that afford glimpses of the archaeological site (fig. 2). The excavation is exposed beneath the outsized entrance canopy, whose upper surface is a terrace for the museum's restaurant with an Acropolis view. Inside the unprepossessing, low-ceilinged, black-marble floored lobby, visitors purchase entrance tickets ( 5) from prominently placed cashiers. More black-dotted glass floor panels afford further views of the archaeological site. Glass and black marble floors, given the dirt tracked in, require frequent mopping?a distressing allocation of labor when, lacking funds for guards, parts of Athens' National Archaeo logical Museum are closed.