Museological Context Research Articles

Studies on the organization and representation of information in a museological context.

Studies on the organization and representation of information in a museological context.

Women artists in university art museums in Brazil: identifying initiatives

The present work aims to discuss the theme of women and their representation in the museological context, especially with regard to university art museums, of which we highlight three to guide our reflection: MusA (UFPR), MUnA (UFU) and MALG (UFPel). Initially, we focus on reflections that deal with women artists from the perspective of their constant invisibilization in the history of museum institutions. We then delve into the panorama of the formal teaching of museology as a discipline in Brazil, from the museum to the university context, highlighting the constitutive presence of women in its theoretical and historical corpus. And finally, by highlighting the panorama of museology and university museums in their specificity, we finally reach our dominant focus in the present study, by carrying out a survey of strategies and actions developed in the Brazilian context that give visibility to the extensive and powerful production of women artists in the institutional profile of the three museums listed for analysis. In addition to presenting the aforementioned initiatives, we consider their implications for the necessary constitution of women's protagonism, both in the field of museology and in the field of art, in practical, theoretical and poetic actions, as agents of their own experiences and demands, in a dissident and continuous movement that we aim to contribute to. Keywords: University Art Museums; Women Artists; Brazilian Museology; Social Museology; Gender.

Strategies of Visibilization

Abstract Strategies of Visibilization is a spatial installation that consists of the listings of artists who participated in exhibitions at the Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien-mumok between 1998 and 2018. The installation compares proportions of participation by gender and geopolitical origin. From a subjective-critical perspective and by addressing questions about representation, positioning in the artistic field, and power relationships within the museological context, the proposal seeks to contribute to the debates about loss, mourning, and restitution of women in the Global South who have been denied a position in the art field.

The Concept of ‘Play’ from the Point of View of Theories of Museology

In the first decades of the 21st century, the topic of the ‘playing’ person has become the core of interdisciplinary research on human activity. As museums have been adopting a new approach towards cultural dissemination and educational goals, the discourse of play is also becoming one of the current fields of research in museology. Although the cultural aspects of play and game have been discussed for a long time, the interpretation of the concept of play from the museological point of view is a relatively new field which requires the definition of the synonymously used terms and the respective concepts. The aim of this article is to highlight the concept and function of play in museology based on the analysis of museology theories, to identify the preconditions for the formation of play communication, and to identify the directions of the development of the concept of play in the contemporary museological research. The article is based on an integrated literature review of the analysis of the concept of play while focusing on theoretical texts and monographs of scholars studying the phenomenon of play, as well as on theoretical and empirical research articles analysing the expression of play in all types of museums. This paper also discusses the linguistic use of the terms play and game. In the Lithuanian language, we not only have to deal with the synonymous use of play (žaismas)/game (žaidimas) in the translation of spel, play, spielen, but also with the use of play in the translation of both play and game used in different contexts in the English-language literature. Since game is a structured form of play, and, in the museological research and practice, game is more commonly defined as the digital expression and referred to as gamification, it is suggested that play (as an action and a state of being) should be distinguished from game (as a structured form of action) by using two different terms in the Lithuanian language. The literature reviewed in this article has highlighted that the concept of play in the museum is linked to the development of new theories of museology, and it reveals itself as a creative construct that is shaped and sustained by the institution. Play is defined as the concept for communicating the theme of the museum, manifested through the act of play and the elements of game. This approach to the dissemination of content and the organisation of activities is expressed through the application of play and game methods which allow the audience to engage in a more intensive relationship with the museum’s theme and exhibits. Play becomes a necessary medium for the museum’s metagame which includes and expresses playfulness, play action, playful elements, real and digital games, whereas the audience is engaged by play to satisfy its educational and entertainment needs. To summarise on the interdisciplinary context of the phenomenon of play, in museology, it is most appropriate to associate play with an intellectual or conceptual state that involves exchange, change and playful action. The term game in the museological context is more commonly used to refer to a specific spatial, temporal or rule-based action which, in the museum practice, is more frequently associated with gamification.

Context of museology in social entrepreneurship IBS study in Nepal and Sandal Private Museum

Important aspects of museology or museum science are Collection Management, Documentation, Conservation Management and Exhibition Management. Fundamental objective of museology is collection, preservation and management of tangible and intangible form of natural, historical, cultural and scientific objects as well as intellectual work and knowledge for education. Collecting, preserving and managing the output of every scientific field is possible by Museum Science. Museum today is not the mere place of collecting and preserving the art work and cultural objects but becoming effective mode of informal education and communication. Basic objective of this paper is to delve into the different aspects of museum science, social entrepreneurship education in Nepal and contribution of Sandal Institute and museum. The methodology adopted is review of literature and cases as well as interviews. In this paper basic aspect of museology, importance of preserving objects with museum values has been discussed along with the context of social entrepreneurship and contribution of Fil. Dr. Jan-U. Sandal Institute in this field and it‘s context of Nepal as well. Entrepreneurs with their self-motivation and judgmental decision create innovation and are the creator of civilization. Education in the subject of Social Entrepreneurship is crucial to understand the role of entrepreneurship in social transformation. Study on the life and work of entrepreneurs is utmost important to understand the process of innovation. Establishment of Sandal Private Museum is an important initiation in this field and this will not only help the education of school students but education to educated individual in the entire sphere of the societies.

Exhibiting literature: The challenges of literary heritage’s value in the museological context

Literary heritage represents a complex system that connects tangible and intangible elements. For this reason, its management and valorization in museological context are convoluted, since curators have to deal with its ambivalent nature. This article seeks to identify the main challenges of valuing intangible literary heritage through the analysis of interviews with specialists in literary heritage and museology from different countries. Results show that, firstly, there is a need to clearly define the concept and scope of literary heritage and, secondly, the growing importance of connecting literary heritage with cultural tourism to find new strategies for passing on its intangible meanings.

La recherche en bioanthropologie dans un contexte muséologique : comment gérer les collections de squelettes humains mal identifiés?

Cette étude de cas fictive décrit le contexte muséologique dans lequel les chercheurs en bioanthropologie doivent parfois travailler. Elle met en évidence les défis éthiques en lien avec la gestion des collections de squelettes humains, dont l’identification est encore possible avec des documents écrits anciens qui étaient « oubliés » mais ont été « retrouvés ».

The Politics and Poetics of the Bushman Diorama at the South African Museum

This paper outlines the interplay of politics and poetics in relation to the history of the iconic ‘Bushman’ diorama at the South African Museum, now part of Iziko Museums of South Africa. From 1960 to 2001 the diorama, representing a hunter-gatherer encampment in the Karoo, was on public view and during this time responses to the display changed, as did the wider political context of South Africa and the conceptual context of museology. After prolonged controversy, in 2001 the diorama was closed to the public, pending possible rethinking and reopening. The diorama, however, remained closed. The conceptual and political shifts that underpinned the ascendance and decline of the diorama are traced, focusing attention on power-relations and ethics, while also discussing aesthetic resonance. Ironically, the closed diorama remains open to intellectual and creative engagement. As an archive, it has current relevance for museum studies.

Rotas de Investigação sobre a formação do patrimônio cultural da Bahia

This paper analyses the studies that exist on the development of cultural heritage in Bahia via processes of musealization within the context of Museology, affiliated with the GP Bahia Museology Observatory, in the field of the History of Museology in Bahia (Department of Museology/PPG Museu/FFCH/UFBA – CNPq). Issues relating to research, the field of museology and cultural heritage in Bahia are evaluated based on the hypothesis that exhibits, museums and collections (both public and private) contributed to the development of support platforms for the construction of this heritage. The objective is to identify the variables, participants and entities that were involved in this historic process. The methodology based on the identification, cross-referencing and analysis of sources of information has brought to light details regarding Bahian institutions and personalities that are a response to local social and cultural demands. Finally, an overview is presented of the studies currently available to provide support to the paper’s historiographic focus. Keywords: museology, exhibits, museums, collections, history of Museology in Bahia.

The Use of Non-Destructive Instrumental Methods in the Determination of Metal Objects from the Asian Collection of the Náprstek Museum

The article presents a methodical survey of standard non-destructive analytical methods applied recently to metal objects in the museum. These methods have helped to classify and describe particular pieces in the museum’s collection of metal objects in a more complex ethnological, historical and museological context.

Transmedia Story Telling and Alternate Reality Games in Museums – Promising Novelties or Unsuitable Gimmicks?

Alternate Reality Games try to combine the real and the virtual world by interactive Transmedia Story Telling/Transmedia Narrative taking place in real-time and evolve according to the participants’ responses. Traditionally, there is only online information on an exhibition in the real museum world or a completely virtual “exhibition” on the screen only. Alternate Reality Narratives (ARN) shift between the two realities. Since 2008 several projects have been launched in museums. Before the appearance of a virtual cyber world, it could be said that our lives took place in three different realities: the primary real everyday one, the secondary fictitious one recombining elements (mainly physically) from the former (for instance in a museum), and the secondary personal recombining elements (intellectually or physically) from the two others. We constantly move between those realities. If we consider that the real and fictitious realities are both physical (things, people) and that the personal reality is virtual, we could, by adding the cyber reality, create a dichotomy physical/virtual. Alternate Reality Narratives use our permanent and very often unconscious shift between the two realities to augment the museum experience. We discuss the title question in a museological context including theoretical considerations as well as practical aspects.

The relevant museum: defining relevance in museological practices

This article takes a look at the concept of relevance as it is discussed in connection with museological development and participation. Museums throughout the world seek to create relevant experiences in many ways and to varied audiences. Yet, the concept of relevance has rarely been defined in connection with museology. To become relevant organisations, it is essential that museums form new contemporary articulations to match new participatory practices. This paper will look at a few theoretical concepts of relevance in order to define the term in a museological context. Three different examples that each has attempted to implement relevance in the museum sector will be described as well: one on political level, a nationwide programme of contemporary collecting and finally a direct participatory exhibition approach. Each initiative has been created from a wish to develop, innovate and experiment with collections, visitor interaction, cooperation and political influences on cultural heritage.

Musealização da Arqueologia: Diagnóstico do patrimônio arqueológico em museus potiguares

As coleções arqueológicas quando em contextos museológicos são muitas vezes pouco articuladas com outros conjuntos patrimoniais, revelando relações que foram estabelecidas para com esses bens e evidenciando um processo de isolamento e esquecimento dos objetos arqueológicos enquanto constituintes das memórias locais, regionais ou nacionais. Esta "estratigrafia do abandono" é observada no Rio Grande do Norte a partir dos bens arqueológicos existentes nos museus Câmara Cascudo, Lauro da Escóssia, Seridó e Soledade. Assim, estudando realidades institucionais distintas, busca-se contribuir para a percepção não só do potencial informativo e comunicativo das coleções arqueológicas potiguares encontradas nesses museus, mas também tem-se por objetivo evidenciar a maneira como esse campo do patrimônio cultural brasileiro tem sido abordado no Rio Grande do Norte.

Embracing a New Understanding of the City: The Museum of Vancouver's Vision in Action

The Museum of Vancouver recently undertook a major rethinking of its role in the city. New interplays are being proposed between emerging conceptions of urbanity and civic participation, and the museum's collection and function as facilitator and advocate. This short paper provides a brief overview of the museum's recent transformation, situates it in the larger museological context, and examines the articulation of the new vision by zooming into MOV's upcoming exhibition, Sex Talk in the City. In doing so, the paper contributes toward defining the specificity and interpretive contribution of city museums.

Embracing a New Understanding of the City: The Museum of Vancouver's Vision in Action

The Museum of Vancouver recently undertook a major rethinking of its role in the city. New interplays are being proposed between emerging conceptions of urbanity and civic participation, and the museum's collection and function as facilitator and advocate. This short paper provides a brief overview of the museum's recent transformation, situates it in the larger museological context, and examines the articulation of the new vision by zooming into MOV's upcoming exhibition, Sex Talk in the City. In doing so, the paper contributes toward defining the specificity and interpretive contribution of city museums.

A Museological Approach: Radio as Immaterial Heritage

Radio is a major part of our media heritage, but it is seldom featured in exhibitions or as part of museum collections. Museums traditionally operate with a material concept of artefacts, but with the advent of electronic and digital media the need for a broader concept to accommodate intangible forms of heritage, such as radio, has become apparent. This article outlines the challenges of conceptualising the sounds of radio as artefacts of cultural heritage to be exhibited in a museological context. These challenges range from the purely theoreti- cal matter of delineating intangible artefacts to more practical and methodological concerns about presenting these kinds of artefacts in exhibitions. An appreciative understanding of radio heritage calls for didactic strategies for bridging the knowledge gap that exists between the majority of modern audiences and the historic radio material. This article proposes possible responses to this challenge based on insights from learning and design theories.

From Loss of Objects to Recovery of Meanings: Online Museums and Indigenous Cultural Heritage

The debate about the responsibility of museums to respect Indigenous peoples’ rights (Kelly and Gordon; Butts) has caught our attention on the basis of our previous research experience with regard to the protection of the tangible and intangible heritage of the San (former hunter gatherers) in Southern Africa (Martin and Vermeylen; Vermeylen, Contextualising; Vermeylen, Life Force; Vermeylen et al.; Vermeylen, Land Rights). This paper contributes to the critical debate about curatorial practices and the recovery of Indigenous peoples’ cultural practices and explores how museums can be transformed into cultural centres that “decolonise” their objects while simultaneously providing social agency to marginalised groups such as the San.

Vogue and the V&A Vitrine

Pristine new garments selected from the international catwalks, and on occasion period pieces and items from the High Street, are styled by Vogue to entice, inspire, and assist their readers' own fashion and style choices. Fashionable dress for the forthcoming season is presented in the context of consumption. But, when the occasion calls, how does Vogue convey, textually and visually, the history and museological interpretations of its subject to the reader? This paper focuses upon the museological significance of the images and text that have appeared in British Vogue in relation to fashion exhibitions staged at the V&A since 1971, and in particular upon “Fashion: an anthology by Cecil Beaton”. A Chanel suit dating from 1937-38, originally worn by Vogue's one-time Fashion Editor Diana Vreeland and subsequently photographed for the magazine's 1971 preview article on Beaton's exhibition, is case-studied to explore the implications of re-presenting worn dress that possesses biography within the context of Vogue. Briefer reference is made to more recent exhibitions which have focused upon “worn” clothes, or where Vogue has engaged with the clothes they have photographed in a museological context. This includes reportage of the dress worn by celebrity guests attending the private view parties for the magazine's “People” page or commissioned still-life photography of “empty” garments, to illustrate fashion exhibition previews.

Museums and Globalization

It has now been almost fifteen years since Rosalind Krauss published her influential essay on the cultural logic of the late capitalist which identified a profound shift in both the identity of museums, and the increasingly corporate nature of the contexts in which they operate.1 From our vantage point today in the twenty-first century, museums appear to have completed this shift and firmly entered a new era of existence. Everywhere around us we see an increased public interest in museums, and a heightened role and renewed visibility for them in our society. Every year seems to bring either a new museum controversy, like the Sensation exhibit in Brooklyn, or a new mega-museum itself, always bigger and better than the last, like the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, or the Tate Modern in London. It is widely recognized that museums are central to urban redevelopment, and that the museum commission for an architect is considered the capstone of an architectural career. At the same time, the most recent economic downturn has led the media to increasingly speculate that museums are suffering from an identity crisis today, perched precariously at the financial brink while over-marketing their collections and sacrificing their institutional integrity.2 So what exactly is the nature of this new era, and how should we critically approach these numerous and often contradictory trends? Clearly, there is no pure oppositional practice vis a vis the contemporary that is to say, no museological context wholly uncontaminated by the circuits of capitalism, or the history of power of the western museum. How, then, should we begin to assess the range of emergent museum practices and counter-practices within an era of globalization? What standards of judgment are appropriate for this kind of critical task? And what is the role of the museum in the new public sphere dominated by globalization? Such questions, I argue, point to the necessity of a global perspective in a critical approach to museums today, one that is not exclusive to the logic of the art but rather grounded in the dynamics of a broader emergent culture of exhibiting, and situated within a historical frame. By briefly examining the international practices of the Guggenheim Museum, in particular, I offer in this essay one critical approach to the phenomenon of the globalising museum, and suggest the value of a postcolonial perspective for a museum studies that is relevant to the twenty-first century. The McGuggenheim Effect As Krauss recognized, the new era of the late capitalist museum was perhaps best embodied by the figure of Thomas Krens, the aggressive director of the Guggenheim Museum, who became somewhat of a Donald Trump or a Bill Gates of the museum world. Krens earned this reputation during the 1990's by presiding over a major expansion of the an initiative he called the Global Guggenheim, which many feel was unprecedented in the art museum world. When Krens arrived at the Guggenheim in 1988 at the age of forty-two, with an MBA from Yale instead of the requisite doctorate in Art History, the museum consisted of the famous Frank Lloyd Wright building in New York and a small subsidiary collection in Venice. Under Krens, the Guggenheim built new branches in New York's Soho, Berlin, Las Vegas and of course Bilbao, and pursued much-hyped additional projects in Venice, Brazil, Russia, and lower Manhattan. In an interview with Forbes Magazine in 1998, Krens continued to tick off the places he wished to see more Guggenheims installed: Two or three institutions in South America, he boasted, as well as East Asia, South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.3 Such bravado also drove several blockbuster shows at the New York Guggenheim under Krens like The Art of the Motorcycle in 1998 and Giorgio Armani in 2000/2001, an exhibition consisting famously of clothing made by the fashion designer. The official sponsor of the latter was In Style magazine, but Armani himself made an individual gift-reportedly fifteen million dollars-to the museum. …

The Montané Anthropological Museum in Cuban Culture

Anthropological museums are special institutions because they usually curate the material and spiritual legacies of quite different communities and societies. An archaeologically-oriented anthropology museum is particularly important in a museological context because it focuses on both the biological and sociocultural aspects of humanity.