House Museum Research Articles

FUNDAMENTALS AND IDEOLOGICAL CONTENT OF THE CREATION OF Y.V. GOETHE'S "WEST-EAST COLLECTION OF POEMS"

Background. The article tells about the work of the famous German writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe and about the history of the creation of the famous "West-Eastern Divan". Methods. The famous German writer Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) was a poet, playwright, literary critic, jurist, orientalist, historian and philosopher, painter, theater critic, naturalist, and scientist and statesman who made discoveries in biology and mineralogy. He was one of the first to use the term "world literature." His 143-volume artistic and scientific legacy includes his works such as Faust, The Sufferings of Young Werther, West-east collection of poems, Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him), Tawrida Iphigenia, Roman Elegies, Torquato Tasso, "The Evolution of Nabotot", "The Magic Whisper", "Information about Color", as well as more than three thousand poems have attracted the attention of readers around the world. Results. In particular, Goethe's main idea in his artistic heritage was to bring together the cultures of all the peoples of the world and to open the way to world literature. "West-east collection of poems" brought him a lot of fame. At that time, the poet was 70 years old. Discussion. Before Goethe created the "West-east collection of poems" (or “Mag‘ribu Mashriq devoni”), he began to study the Qur'an, the holy book of Islam, which the Orient worships. At that time, the Qur'an was translated into German, as well as into Latin, English and French. Although the poet was still young, more precisely, twenty-four years old, he studied these translations by comparing them because he knew all the languages listed above. He even mastered the Arabic orthography, through which he tried to understand and study the essence of the verses of the Qur'an. He also took a keen interest in studying the life of Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allaah be upon him) and the hadeeths that are his sayings. The full manuscript of Surat an-Nas, written by Goethe in Arabic, includes "Allah," "Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace." The manuscript is still housed in the House Museum in Weimar, Germany. Conclusion. Thus, Goethe, who from an early age was interested in the languages, history, literature, religious and philosophical views, customs and traditions of the peoples of the East, wrote the "West-east collection of poems", primarily under the influence of the Qur'an and hadiths, mystical teachings. as well as in the interpretation of the ghazals of such famous representatives of Eastern poetry as Rudaki, Firdavsi, Hafiz Sherozi, Saadi, Anvari, Nizami, Rumi, Jami, Navoi. He even chose the oriental nickname "Hotam" to create it

The role of bio-pollutants in the indoor air quality of old museum buildings: artworks biodeterioration as preview of human diseases.

Indoor air quality in buildings is strongly affected by chemical, physical, and biological agents. Long exposure to inadequate indoor air quality can be very dangerous for the building occupants and can lead to chronic diseases associated with the sick building syndrome (SBS). In this paper, the large presence of biological pollutants in the indoor rooms of an old building and its strict relationship with the outdoor/indoor air conditions were investigated studying Coronini Cronberg Palace Foundation, a historic house museum of the sixteenth century in Gorizia (Italy), where biological contamination affecting the artworks can soon become potentially harmful also for operators and visitors. Detailed aerobiological and microbiological analyses on organic natural materials, combined with a microclimate monitoring, were conducted to evaluate the influence of temperature and relative humidity levels within the Palace in the conspicuous growth and diffusion of microorganisms. Fungal and bacterial colonies damaging materials, mainly affected by the sudden fluctuations of hygrothermal values, were found to widely exceed Italian and international recommended levels for good air quality for both artworks and human beings. Understand their impact on human health would be strictly necessary to reduce biological risks for museum staff and cultural heritage users, but consequently to improve indoor air quality.

Women in the World Rugby Museum archive in three case studies

ABSTRACT An object without a story offers limited interpretation options to a conscientious museum team. The World Rugby Museum (WRM) houses objects classified as national treasures, such as the Calcutta Cup, but it is also home to a miscellaneous collection related to the history of female participation in rugby union. The newly refurbished WRM is dedicated to telling the multidimensional history of rugby, including women’s rugby. However, the gender bias of rugby as a male-dominated sport is reflected in the archives, and some of the female-specific archival sources have yet to be entirely understood. The collaboration between museum and academic partner through a research student allows the rich, but admittedly limited, sources at the WRM to be explored to their full potential, providing opportunities for further interpretation within exhibitions, and to expand the WRM archives regarding the history of women in rugby union. This paper presents three case studies to illustrate the ways in which the WRM is benefitting from a collaborative doctoral research project.

Haunted Intimacy: Spectral and Vital Space within a Historic House Museum

Merchant’s House Museum is haunted. While it functions as a historic house museum in Manhattan, the house remains the home of the Tredwell family who now appear as ghosts. For the museum, these ghosts become animating presences, continuing to keep the everyday things of the house embedded in the intimate space of a family’s home. Throughout this article, I explore how those connected to the house as staff, visitors, and volunteers present the ghosts of the Tredwells and, based on these peoples’ experiences, I examine the Tredwell house within a museological framework of, what I term, haunted intimacy, that keeps the house in vital relation to the family.

Mukhi House Museum Hyderabad Sindh

Mukhi House Museum Hyderabad Sindh

Rembrandt was here

Abstract In 1911 visitors to the Amsterdam house where Rembrandt lived between 1639 and 1658 were disappointed to find no working studio, bedroom or personal collections. In his design for the Rembrandthuis museum, the architect K.P.C. de Bazel had chosen not to create a period interior, but instead combined domestically scaled rooms with a museum displaying Rembrandt’s prints. The project registered early twentieth-century perceptions of Rembrandt as a modern, and contemporary debates about the restoration of historic buildings. Unlike many nineteenth-century house museums, it was designed to focus attention on the work rather than the life of the occupant. However, in 1998, the museum was reconfigured as a simulacrum of a seventeenth-century house, with a new annex for displaying prints and drawings and for exhibitions. The history of the Rembrandthuis illuminates changing approaches to the artist over time and their implications for architecture and museology in the age of modernism.

Exploring Heritage Archaeology at Indiana University

This article is an overview of a collaborative Indiana University (IU) Bicentennial Project designed to explore and raise awareness of the cultural heritage on IU’s historic Bloomington campus, protect the university’s archaeological resources, contribute to its teaching and research mission, and enhance documentation and interpretation of its historic house museum. The primary project partners were IU’s Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology and the Wylie House Museum, a unit of IU Libraries. Using state-of-the art remote sensing methods and traditional archaeological excavations, the project sought to locate the buried subterranean greenhouses at the home of first university president, Andrew Wylie. Historical research focused on the position of the Wylies and IU in the development of the city of Bloomington, particularly on the transition from subsistence farming in the mid-19th century to the development of leisurely gardening and floriculture later in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Through campus archaeological field school opportunities, internships, talks, exhibits, presentations on campus, and outreach opportunities throughout the university and Bloomington communities, the project contributed to the IU curriculum and promoted a better understanding of IU’s cultural heritage. Importantly, this campus archaeology project provided a unique opportunity to pursue place-based education and experiential learning that connected students, university, and community stakeholders to their local heritage.

History Re-Experienced: Implementing Mixed Reality Systems into Historic House Museums

As immersive technologies have become ubiquitous today, traditional museums are finding success augmenting existing exhibits to increase visitors’ satisfaction. However, due to the immutable nature of house museums, and their tendency to place visitors in direct contact with historical artifacts, museum managers are seeking original approaches to cultural preservation. Implementing mixed reality systems into historic house museums is one such approach. The goal of this study is to develop and test a conceptual matrix that guides how designers use the affordances of mixed reality systems to create experiences that align with the range of historical narratives found in house museums. Experiences that can contribute to improving visitors’ satisfaction, self-interpretation, and understanding of the homeowner’s life and the community within which they lived. Building on human-centered design methods, the researcher developed and tested a prototype of an augmented reality (AR) mobile application centered on the Pope House Museum in Raleigh, North Carolina. The outcome of the research suggests house museum visitors should have agency in deciding the lens through which they experience the variety of historical narratives present in the home.

Memorializing Dinah and Reckoning with Enslavement

Inequality in Bronze is a two-year project (2018–20) reckoning with the history of slavery at Stenton, a plantation house museum in Philadelphia, by commissioning a new memorial to Dinah, a woman enslaved at the property in the mid-1700s. Drawing on data collected throughout the project, this article argues that historic house museums need to move from “community participation” to “community integration” in their efforts to forefront racial equity. This article asks how we can redress centuries of erasure and the absence of Black lives at historic sites. It offers points of consideration for other historic house museums contemplating similar projects as the collective work to address the legacies of American enslavement continues.

Spanish house museums on the web and with the web: a galaxy of technologies

ABSTRACT This study examines the relationship between house museums and ICTs by looking at well-known examples which demonstrate that the use of ICTs in this context is not generalised. The benefits derived from the implementation of ICTs prove that this implementation is necessary to allow house museums to take a step forward and integrate data analysis into their communication plans with the objective of placing museum visitors at the centre of museum services. House museums will thereby be able to optimise their decision-making and adopt strategies that will improve the quality of visitors’ museum experiences. Obtaining and analysing data about museum visitors and their experiences is made easier with Data technology, which can forecast patterns that illustrate types of visitor behaviour, helping museums to better understand and more fully profile visitors. In an increasingly digitalised market, house museums must generate interaction and interest to improve visitors’ museum experiences.

A Survey on Interior Textiles at İzmir Atatürk House Museum

This study deals with the interior textiles of the house that Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey, used as headquarters and resided for a short period of time. Interior textiles in the house museum provide a useful framework for understanding how home culture was shaped, experienced, and imagined in that period. Interior textiles in a house museum provide a rich source for researchers to get background information. These textiles can be original, non-original or replicas. During the research, it was found out that the original upholstery fabrics were replaced with the fabrics that did not match with the original ones as a result of the restoration of Atatürk House Museum. For this reason, the research was carried out with the non-original textiles. Here, the critical question is “Do the non-original textiles fail to reflect the spirit of a nation or a personal taste?”. This study investigates the connection between the non-original textiles and the early republic period. Within the scope of the research, the researcher has interpreted the design features and upholstery fabrics of one armchair, one sofa and three chairs, which stand in the drawing room, bedroom, dining hall and meeting hall.

Joining reinterpretation to reparations

ABSTRACT In 1752, on land cultivated by Nonotuck and other Indigenous people for millennia, Moses and Elizabeth Porter established a farmstead along the Connecticut River in Western Massachusetts. This property remained in the family for 200 years, becoming a museum in 1949. A traditional historic house museum for decades, more recently the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum has shifted focus to the site’s enslaved, indigenous, and hired laborers. More inclusive storytelling is necessary, but the museum also seeks more direct impacts. In spring 2021 the museum collaborated on a Reparative Farming project enabling Somali refugees to grow their own crops. The museum plans to expand this pilot-project into a permanent program for communities of color – enacting links between racial and environmental justice. This co-authored provocation situates this fledgling project within larger interpretive genealogies, suggesting ways small museums can begin to confront the histories of colonization, enslavement, and displacement they narrate.

Introduction to <i>19 Live</i>

This issue of 19 Live explores how four house museums have navigated the challenges and opportunities of curating the nineteenth century in lockdown.

Curating Historic Interiors at the Charles Dickens Museum during Covid

Emma Treleaven gives us an insight into Dickens’s interiors and reveals how the Dickens House Museum faced the challenges of lockdown.

‘A Budding Morrow in Midnight’: Facing Challenges and Embracing Opportunities during Lockdown at the Keats-Shelley House Museum in Rome

Giuseppe Albano discusses the activities of the Keats-Shelley House, Rome during the period of lockdown in Italy.

The establishment of Soviet cosmonautics through the prism of its founders: historiography and sources

History marks the events that can be truly called the scientific and technological breakthroughs. One of such achievements is the flight of the first man into space in 1961. However, the flight of the austranot in the spacecraft is just a small part of this event. Behind it are those who developed the spacecraft, launch vehicle, braking system, life support system, lodgment, spacesuit and many other systems. This reviews and systematizes the sources of personal origin, such as diaries, memoirs and correspondence of the scholars, who were the pioneers of the Soviet cosmonautics, as well as works on the history of space exploration. The object of this research is the circle of scholars and engineers, members of the Council of Chief Designers of 1946–1967. The article relies on the materials from the library of the Russian State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation, Russian State Historical Library, as well as the collections of the Russian State Archive of Scientific and Technical Documentation, collection of the Memorial Museum of Cosmonautics, and archive of the Academician S. P. Korolev Memorial House Museum. The analysis employs the sources of personal origin, such as correspondence, diaries and memoirs of the designers, which contain mentioning of their work, as well as give assessment of the activity and personality of their colleagues.

Mobile Games for a house museum.

The paper discusses a formal didactic activity in a higher education context, which brought to the design, development, and testing of thirteen Location-Based Mobile Games (LBMGs) for the Bagatti Valsecchi House Museum. The activity involved BSc Design students in developing and testing interactive solutions aimed at reaching out to the "under 35" community of the museum with engaging and entertaining experiences. For this purpose, the stakeholder group of the museum experts was also involved in co-designing the solutions. On the one hand, this study focuses on the beneficial approach of involving Design students in the multiple roles of designer, player/visitor, and target audience. On the other hand, it looks at those aspects that may turn LBMGs into a means for engaging and entertaining museum visitors' experiences. We focus on four LBMGs (out of thirteen) that the museum selected to be tested with their younger community, highlighting those elements that emerged as particularly relevant for enhancing visitors' engagement and motivations. In this regard, three aspects stand out as the most impacting: (i) the benefits of a design approach based on the early involvement of both experts (the museum) and the target audience (students themselves); (ii) an intelligent orchestration of narratives and game mechanics, specifically designed to leverage the fascinating museum space, and (iii) the ability of such games to stimulate social engagement.

Experiencing Authenticity at Alvar Aalto’s Experimental House

Experiences of authenticity are studied at Alvar Aalto’s Experimental House – today a modern house museum – which has gone through renovations and changes. Visitors were interviewed to find out how they feel about the authenticity of the place, if the changes affect their experience of authenticity, and if they share the same opinions. A review of the literature on the concept of authenticity is carried out and its implications for museum contexts is considered, and then the research questions are answered by analysing 30 interviews of visitors to the Experimental House.

Integration of Laser Scanner and Photogrammetry for Heritage BIM Enhancement

Digital 3D capture and reliable reproduction of architectural features is the first and most difficult step towards defining a heritage BIM. Three-dimensional digital survey technologies, such as TLS and photogrammetry, enable experts to scan buildings with a new level of detail. Challenges in the tracing of parametric objects in a TLS point cloud include the reconstruction of occluded parts, measurement of uncertainties relevant to surface reflectivity, and edge detection and location. In addition to image-based techniques being considered cost effective, highly flexible, and efficient in producing a high-quality 3D textured model, they also provide a better interpretation of surface linear characteristics. This article addresses an architecture survey workflow using photogrammetry and TLS to optimize a point cloud that is sufficient for a reliable HBIM. Fusion-based workflows were proposed during the recording of two heritage sites—the Matbouli House Museum in Historic Jeddah, a UNESCO World Heritage Site; and Asfan Castle. In the Matbouli House Museum building, which is rich with complex architectural features, multi-sensor recording was implemented at different resolutions and levels of detail. The TLS data were used to reconstruct the basic shape of the main structural elements, while the imagery’s superior radiometric data and accessibility were effectively used to enhance the TLS point clouds for improving the geometry, data interpretation, and parametric tracing of irregular objects in the facade. Furthermore, in the workflow that is considered to be the ragged terrain of the Castle of Asfan, here, the TLS point cloud was supplemented with UAV data in the upper building zones where the shadow data originated. Both datasets were registered using an ICP algorithm to scale the photogrammetric data and define their actual position in the construction system. The hybrid scans were imported and processed in the BIM environment. The building components were segmented and classified into regular and irregular surfaces, in order to perform detailed building information modeling of the architectural elements. The proposed workflows demonstrated an appropriate performance in terms of reliable and complete BIM mapping in the complex structures.

Review: Active Collections, edited by Elizabeth Wood, Rainey Tisdale, and Trevor Jones

Book Review| May 01 2021 Review: Active Collections, edited by Elizabeth Wood, Rainey Tisdale, and Trevor Jones Active Collections edited by Elizabeth Wood, Rainey Tisdale, and Trevor Jones. London: Routledge, 2018. 167 pp., illustrations; clothbound, $132.00; paperback, $31.96; eBook, $31.96. Meghan Gelardi Holmes Meghan Gelardi Holmes Gibson House Museum Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar The Public Historian (2021) 43 (2): 184–186. https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2021.43.2.184 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Meghan Gelardi Holmes; Review: Active Collections, edited by Elizabeth Wood, Rainey Tisdale, and Trevor Jones. The Public Historian 1 May 2021; 43 (2): 184–186. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2021.43.2.184 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentThe Public Historian Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2021 by The Regents of the University of California and the National Council on Public History2021 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.