Museum Sector Research Articles

The Museum Istiqlal The Case of an Indonesian Islamic Museum

This article describes the conflicted genesis of the Museum Istiqlal, the history of the creation of the collection, and the state of the institution relative to other Indonesian museums. It emphasizes both positive developments underway and the historical problems facing the institution. Above all, it focuses on the role the museum was originally intended to serve for the Indonesian Muslim public sphere and the significant potential the museum has to better serve that mission in the national and international sphere. In short, the article emphasizes that in the context of the Government of Indonesia’s current four year plan to revive the museum sector, the problems and opportunities presented at the Museum Istiqlal are symptomatic of endemic national challenges for both the museum and the education sector.

The Development of Sport in Museums

Sport as a topic for museum collection, display, and interpretation has gradually developed over the last 100 years. However, until recently, there has been very little discussion or examination of the material culture of sport within the literature. Consequently, there is a misconception that sport in museums is relatively new, little is understood about the role and value of sporting heritage, and sporting collections are rarely used to inform historical study. In turn, the museum sector would benefit from more opportunities to work with sports historians whilst developing and delivering their sporting provision. Therefore, this paper examines the development of sport in museums, explores the current activity being developed in the field including the work of the Sport in Museums Network and the National Sporting Heritage Day, and offers practical information about how partnerships between academics and museum practitioners can be established to create a better understanding of the history and heritage of sport.

Museums’ community engagement schemes, austerity and practices of care in two local museum services

In recent years, geographers have paid attention to the practices and spaces of care, yet museums rarely feature in this body of literature. Drawing on research conducted with two large museum services – one in England, and one in Scotland – this paper frames museums’ community engagement programmes as spaces of care. We offer insights into the practice of community engagement, and note how this is changing as a result of austerity. Our focus is on the routine, everyday caring practices of museum community engagement workers. We further detail the new and renewed strategic partnerships that have been forged as a result of cutbacks in the museum sector and beyond. We note that museums’ community engagement workers are attempting to position themselves relative to a number of other institutions and organisations at the current moment. Drawing on empirical material from the two case study sites, we suggest that museums’ community engagement programmes could be seen as fitting within a broader landscape of care, and we conceptualise their activities as expressions of progressive localism.

Stories of impact: the role of narrative in understanding the value and impact of digital collections

Cultural heritage institutions leverage digitization to fulfill their mission to preserve, represent, and provide access to collections under their care. Despite their common interest in documenting the progress of digitization and online access, the library, archives, and museums (LAM) sector lacks a conceptual framework for assessing and demonstrating the impact of digitized ethnographic collections. Reporting the findings of a yearlong interdisciplinary study, this article underscores the importance of storytelling in articulating the value and impact of digitized ethnographic collections held in cultural heritage institutions. We begin with an overview of the literature on the assessment and describe the methods we employed in our study. Next, we identify and discuss the different ways that stories and storytelling are strategically mobilized in conversations about the impact of digitization. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings for cultural heritage practice and collection development.

Curating in the Postdigital Age

Curating in the Postdigital Age

Fashioning the Curator: The Chinese at the Lambing Flat Folk Museum

Fashioning the Curator: The Chinese at the Lambing Flat Folk Museum

Dealing with UK Museum Collections: Law, Ethics and the Public/Private Divide

Abstract:In the UK, there is a public perception that, if a cultural object is given to a museum, it will remain in its collections forever. But does UK law reflect this? This article analyses UK law and discusses whether a commercial approach is not always well suited to serve the needs of the museum sector and whether there should be more thought given to the public nature of museums. It calls for law reform in order to ensure that UK law and ethical guidance relating to deaccessioning and disposals from collections is sufficient to maintain public trust, so that people continue to visit museums and to offer objects for their collections.

Factors affecting the role of designers in interpretation projects

The application and significance of what is commonly known as interpretation design is increasing as museums and other cultural institutions seek to attract, educate and engage visitors, yet the field remains under-examined in relation to its methods, management and outputs. Institutional practices outside the mainstream museum sector have often not kept pace with interpretation design’s role, and museum professionals often lack understanding of design and experience in its management. Research into practice and articulation of the designer’s knowledge supports the optimal contribution of design expertise. Based on interviews with practitioners, the paper examines the factors that influence the role of consultant interpretation designers. Timing of engagement, sequencing of contracts and client understanding of interpretation design emerge as the key factors that affect the scope and clarity of the designer’s role and effective application of their expertise. The paper argues that interpretation design by external consultants can be more strategic and effective when supported by appropriate project structures.

The Pursuit of Responsive Museum Governance: Community Engagement in Turkish Public Museums

The public museum sector does not remain untouched by the main trends and changes in public administration, even if it has some different characteristics from other government agencies in terms of administrative priorities and purpose. This is why the sector has been largely influenced by the prevailing administrative model of the era. Today, community engagement has become one of the main topics in the sector in parallel with the changes in public administration. Thus, the objective of this study is to propose and test a model that explains Turkish public museums’ community engagement performance. Findings of the research show that goal clarity is the most important factor in the community engagement performance of Turkish public museums, whereas museum infrastructure is surprisingly the least significant factor. Furthermore, this study reveals the positive correlation between the fulfilment of endogenous and exogenous functions of the public museums. Therefore, any effort to make them more engaged in their community should not be regarded as an alternative of their primary functions, namely endogenous functions.

Communicating sustainability priorities in the museum sector

This paper analyses the sustainability priorities evident in the annual reports published between 2001/2002 and 2010/2011 of Australia's six state-museums (which represent the largest and most financially viable cultural heritage tourism organisations in the country). The study provides insight into the communication of sustainability priorities in the heritage tourism sector and offers a fine-grained understanding of what is required for such organisations to effectively manage such priorities. Based on a content analysis of the annual reports, the paper proposes a Sustainability Priorities Model for Cultural and Heritage Organisations. The Model reflects two important findings: first, that the communication of sustainability practices has emerged to play a central strategic role in the annual reporting of the leading cultural heritage organisations in Australia; second, that the conceptualisation of sustainability in the cultural heritage context has widened to include the allocation and utilisation of a wider range of resources. The Model provides a framework for cultural heritage tourism organisations to follow in order for them to effectively identify and communicate the optimal mix of sustainability practices to salient stakeholder groups.

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.

Making an Exhibition of Ourselves? Academic Libraries and Exhibitions Today

Recent years have seen a noticeable increase in the size and scope of libraries' exhibitions. To investigate this observation, interviews were conducted at five academic libraries: the Bodleian Library, British Library, Royal College of Physicians Library, Royal Society Library and Wellcome Library. Each reported growth in their involvement in exhibitions, which feature in their strategies. Exhibitions are increasingly aimed at the wider public, not necessarily with the target of increasing user numbers.Participants reported growing exhibition loan activity, yet there are no initiatives in the library sector to promote this. Investigation found that the sector has not developed practice to evaluate library exhibitions, and most participants did not have established means of doing so. Library professionals are also not formally prepared for involvement in exhibitions. Although practice from the museum sector can be used by libraries, they also face challenges specific to their exhibitions.This paper argues for both the closer integration of library and museum professionals, and further research into library-sector-specific issues. Exhibitions can be a valid and valuable undertaking for libraries, but more research is needed if they are to benefit fully from them, especially if they are using exhibitions as an example of public outreach.

Dwelling in Possibility

Challenges to historic house museums are often mired in the rhetoric of crisis. Toward countering that rhetoric, this essay attempts to draw attention to it and to the complicated history of narrative (and storytelling) in interpretation and the academy. It argues that literary house museums are sites of innovation within the house museum sector with lessons for us all. These lessons include a willingness to leverage “the old, bad history” toward reflective practice and continuity for multigenerational audiences; creating inventive university and school partnerships toward insuring strong community stakeholders; embracing the history of race, gender, and sexuality; and perhaps most importantly, making the most of fiction toward embracing multiple points of view about the past.

Vernacular museum: communal bonding and ritual memory transfer among displaced communities

Eclectically curated and largely ignored by the mainstream museum sector, vernacular museums sit at the interstices between the nostalgic and the future-oriented, the private and the public, the personal and the communal. Eluding the danger of becoming trivialised or commercialised, they serve as powerful conduits of memory, which strengthen communal bonds in the face of the ‘flattening’ effects of globalisation. The museum this paper deals with, a vernacular museum in Vanjärvi in southern Finland, differs from the dominant type of the house museum, which celebrates masculinity and social elites. Rather, it aligns itself with the small amateur museums of everyday life called by Angela Jannelli Wild Museums (2012), by analogy with Lévi-Strauss’ concept of ‘pensée sauvage’. The paper argues that, despite the present-day flurry of technologies of remembering and lavishly funded memory institutions, there is no doubt that the seemingly ‘ephemeral’ institutions such as the vernacular museum, dependent so much on performance, oral storytelling, living bodies and intimate interaction, nevertheless play an important role in maintaining and invigorating memory communities.

Social Inclusion, the Museum and the Dynamics of Sectoral Change

In the last two years, the term social inclusion has been widely adopted, though frequently misapplied, within UK museum sector policy and rhetoric. Originally understood by many to be simply a synonym for access or audience development, (concepts that most within the sector are at least familiar, if not entirely comfortable, with), there is now growing recognition that the challenges presented by the inclusion agenda are, in fact, much more significant and the implications more fundamental and far-reaching1. A growing body of research into the social role and impact of museums suggests that engagement with the concepts of social inclusion and exclusion will require museums - and the profession and sector as a whole - to radically rethink their purposes and goals and to renegotiate their relationship to, and role within, society. In short, if museums are to become effective agents for social inclusion, a paradigmatic shift in the purpose and role of museums in society, and concomitant changes in working practices, will be required. Though the focus of this paper, the instigation of change, draws upon government policy development and research within the UK context, a consideration of the relevance of the concept of social inclusion to the museum highlights the broader, international relevance of this discussion.

Information Policies for (Digital) Information in Archaeology: current state and suggestions for development

The introduction of digital data capturing and management technologies has transformed information practices in archaeology. Digital documentation and digital infrastructures are integrated in archaeologists' daily work now more than ever. International and national institutions and projects have contributed to the development of digital archiving and curation practices. Because knowledge production in archaeology depends heavily on documentation and information dissemination, and on retrieval of past documentation, the question of how information is managed is profoundly intertwined with the possibilities for knowledge production. Regulations at different levels articulate demands and expectations from the emerging digital information practices, but how are these different regulations coordinated, and do they support archaeological knowledge production?In this article we look into the state of information policy - the sum of principles guiding decisions about information - in archaeology and related areas. The aim of the article is to shed light on how information policy directs practice in archaeology, and to show that analysis of such policies is therefore vital. Information policy in legislation and guidelines in Swedish archaeology serves as a case study, and examples from development-led archaeology and the museum sector illustrate how information policies have varied roles across different heritage sectors. There are historical and local trajectories in the policy documents specific to Sweden, but the discussion shows that the emergence of Swedish policies have many parallels with processes in other countries. The article provides recommendations for information policy development for archaeology and related areas.

Evaluating Results of Public Sector Reforms in Rechtsstaat Countries: The Role of Context and Processes in the Reform of the Italian and French Cultural Heritage System

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the results of public management reform in Italy, focusing on its managerial significance in the field of cultural heritage. The primary aim is to overcome the general lack of studies analyzing the impact of managerial reforms in governments with a Rechtsstaat tradition and to understand if, besides the political and institutional context characterized by a highly legalistic system, there are other important factors that might affect results of reforms. Through an in-depth analysis of the reform of the Italian ministry and a comparison with the French museum sector, the paper demonstrates that the way in which the process of change is managed significantly affects the results of reform. Specifically, the author affirms that, in order to obtain good reform results, a greater active involvement of senior bureaucrats in the process of designing reforms is necessary.

From Princess to Punk: Digitisation in the Fashion Studio

The Zandra Rhodes Digital Study Collection project was a unique collaborative venture between staff and students at the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) and their Chancellor, the British fashion and textile designer Zandra Rhodes. Working within the designer’s private studio space, this initiative has developed the first digital record of her personal collection of garments and drawings, supported and enriched with behind-the-scenes video interviews and tutorials, for worldwide educational use. This paper examines the benefits and strategies for undertaking the project in situ within the designer’s private studio environment. It outlines the need for a bespoke, flexible approach to digitisation in the visual arts that respects the individuality and creativity of the artist, whilst drawing on established documentation standards and expertise from the library, archive and museum sector.

Transnational cultural ties in a settler colonial world: Carnegie cultural philanthropy and the 1933 Australian museums inquiry

In the 1930s, the Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY) sponsored a series of inquiries into museum provision in countries of the British Empire. This article examines the 1933 inquiry into Australian museums and art galleries. It argues that existing analysis of the inquiry tends to dismiss its significance in terms of museum sector development in Australia. The article looks beyond this national focus to locate the Australian text within the context of the British Empire inquiries, and CCNY's concern about the underdevelopment of social and educational infrastructure in British colonies of settlement. The article deploys settler colonial theory to draw attention to the racial politics that surrounds the Australian inquiry, particularly evident in its concern with encouraging a “museum movement” in Australia's small towns and country districts.

Carnegie Cultural Philanthropy and the 1933 Australian Museums Inquiry

In the 1930s, the Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY) sponsored a series of inquiries into museum provision in countries of the British Empire. This article examines the 1933 inquiry into Australian museums and art galleries. It argues that existing analysis of the inquiry tends to dismiss its significance in terms of museum sector development in Australia. The article looks beyond this national focus to locate the Australian text within the context of the British Empire inquiries, and CCNY’s concern about the underdevelopment of social and educational infrastructure in British colonies. The article deploys settler-colonial theory to draw attention to the racial politics that surrounds the Australian inquiry, particularly evident in its concern with encouraging a ‘museum movement’ in Australia’s small towns and country districts.