Green Museum Research Articles

Romantic image in the creation of a literary museum (on the example of the Alexander Green Museum in Feodosia)

Romantic image in the creation of a literary museum (on the example of the Alexander Green Museum in Feodosia)

Green building education in the green museum: design strategies in eight case study museums

ABSTRACT The choice to create or renovate museum buildings to green building standards is a growing trend for science museums. With access to green facilities comes the potential to extend informal science learning into the three-dimensional architectural environment. To examine how and if museums with green buildings interpret their buildings for the public, this study used photographs systematically taken by researchers in eight science museums across the United States. Results show that recycling, water, energy, green materials, and eco-landscaping were the top five green building themes interpreted by museums. Moreover, all museums use the passive strategy of educational signage to communicate green building themes, though several museums attempted to provide more active, hands-on learning opportunities. The analysis additionally uncovered a series of distinct strategic choices museums made concerning centralized versus decentralized displays, media types, passive versus active engagement, and targeting a range of visitor outcomes from green knowledge to behaviors. The potential for enhancing green building education in museums with certified green buildings is discussed.

What James Saw: The Bethnal Green Museum and Charles Eliot Norton

This paper draws upon unpublished letters from Charles Eliot Norton to Henry James regarding James’s visit to the Bethnal Green Museum in London; and considers the similarities and divergences between James’s review, “The Bethnal Green Museum,” published in the Atlantic Monthly in 1873, and a comparable review of Norton’s “The Manchester Art Exhibition,” published in the same magazine some two decades earlier.

Life cycle energy analysis of museum buildings: A case study of museums in Hangzhou

This study investigates and analyses the energy consumption of two museums in Hangzhou, China. Life cycle analysis (LCA) is used to calculate the energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the life cycles of two museums, thereby determining both their potential and feasibility of energy-saving. Three strategies of using solid walls instead of curtain walls, adding shading to skylights and curtain Walls, and controlling air conditioning temperature have been proposed for Museum A which has higher greenhouse gas emissions. And it would help to reduce CO2 emissions in the life cycle to 30.58%, 4.81%, and 4.22% respectively according to the simulations. The study also offers guidance to the construction green museum architecture and its operation with low energy consumption.

Reinvigorating Childhood

AbstractHoward Watson is uplifted by the ‘brave, graceful subtlety’ of Caruso St John's redevelopment of the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood in east London. He finds the pared‐down spaces of the interior surprisingly in accord with the original Victorian structure, drawing their inspiration from ‘the regimented order of grand Victorian museology’. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Green Museum Design: Is It Good for Collections?

Green building design and construction is a form of stewardship compatible with most conservation practices in collections-holding institutions. Green design is based on deep respect for the natural environment, the need to reduce consumption, and use of renewable and reusable resources. It offers a new framework and set of practices for museum renovation, expansion, and new construction, with the expectation that high-performance systems, environmental monitoring, air filtration, and non-toxic interiors will be cost-efficient and good for collections as well as people. Special needs of collections can be met by adapting some green-building practices, while overall monitoring of air quality, measuring fluctuations in temperature and humidity, and filtering against pollutants are highly compatible in green building. A generation of so-called green museums—ranging from replacement of mechanical systems to all-new buildings—will provide performance data over time on whether high-performance buildings reduce energy use, are cost-effective, and contribute to the health of collections.

'MAN AS HE WAS AND MAN AS HE IS': General Pitt Rivers's collections

Lieutenant-General Augustus Henry Lane Fox Pitt Rivers (1827–1900) is renowned as an early British archaeologist and donor of the founding ethnographic and archaeological collection to the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford in 1884. This paper gives biographical details of the General's life with particular reference to his collecting and his intellectual interests, information about the museum displays with which he was associated at the Bethnal Green Museum in London and the Farnham Museum, Dorset, and details of the founding collection that came to Oxford.

Design History and the History of Toys: Defining a Discipline for the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood

Design History and the History of Toys: Defining a Discipline for the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood

Visitor survey at the Bethnal green museum of childhood: Two viewpoints

Visitor survey at the Bethnal green museum of childhood: Two viewpoints

Visitor survey at the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood: Two viewpoints

During 1984 and 1985, the Department of Arts Policy and Management at City University, London, conducted at the request of the Keeper a major survey of visitors to the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood. This paper, in two parts, first describes the background to this particular research project and analyses why the Bethnal Green Museum wanted a visitor survey; and secondly gives a general account of research methods which can be utilized in museum visitor research and of the methodology which was adopted at the Bethnal Green Museum.

Research Items

AN AMERICAN PITT-RIVERS MUSEUM.—The famous ethnological collection made by General Pitt-Rivers first became known to students when it was exhibited at the Bethnal Green Museum in 1874–75. In 1883 it was presented to the University of Oxford, and since then, under the direction of Mr. Henry Balfour, its value has greatly increased. The distinguishing feature of this museum is that the exhibits are arranged, not in geographical or racial order, but in series illustrating the evolution of the chief human inventions. A collection of the same kind was made by the authorities of the United States National Museum for the Trans-Mississippi Exhibition held at Omaha in 1898, and since then it has been developed by distinguished anthropologists like Mason, Holmes, and Walter Hough, the author of an interesting pamphlet discussing it, entitled “Synoptic Series of Objects in the United States National Museum illustrating the History of Inventions.” This pamphlet describes, with a good series of illustrations, the chief inventions in the order of their development—fire-making, torches and candles, lamps, cooking utensils, knives and forks, and so on; The vast resources of the American collections have produced a fine series of examples. The present pamphlet, adapted to our collections, might well serve as the basis for a popular manual of ethnology.

The Closing of Museums

ACCORDING to the Secretary to the Treasury, “His Majesty's Government are of opinion that the following museum's and galleries should be closed to the public: British Museum, Natural History Museum, Science Museum, Geological Museum, Bethnal Green Museum, Tate Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Wallace Collection, London Museum.” The precise sense of the word “should” will appear from events. At any rate, the decision has been made definite in the case of all departments of the British Museum except the reading-room, but the National Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum are not to be closed.

Bethnal Green Museum, London

Bethnal Green Museum, London

On the Principles of Classification Adopted in the Arrangement of His Anthropological Collection, Now Exhibited in the Bethnal Green Museum.

On the Principles of Classification Adopted in the Arrangement of His Anthropological Collection, Now Exhibited in the Bethnal Green Museum.