Museum Research Research Articles

Authorship, Ethics, and Community‐based Museum Research

Authorship, Ethics, and <scp>Community‐based</scp> Museum Research

Limitations and ethical reflection on the application of big data in museum visitor research

ABSTRACT In the past two decades, big data has been gradually introduced into visitor research of museums globally. However, there are technical limitations in data collection, such as sample deviation and data quality in data collection, and data analysis limitations, such as weakening causality and inaccurate judgement of human emotions. This has also raised many ethical issues, such as human subjectivity, privacy, and social justice in applying big data in museum visitor research. Thus, it is imperative to clarify the application scope of big data and formulate ethical regulations to promote the development of extensive data research methods for museum visitors.

The Case of the Director of the Kamіanskе museum of revolution I. Gavrilov in the context of soviet memory policy in the 1930s

The aim of the article. On the basis of the archival investigative case of the director of the Dniprodzerzhynsk Museum of Revolution, I. I. Gavrilov, who was repressed in 1936, the formation of a memorial discourse about the revolutionary events of 1917 in the museums of revolution is investigated. Methods. In the course of the study, general scientific, historical and special methods are used. The first category is represented by historical, terminological, cognitive methods and axiological approach. Comparatively-historical, historical-typological, historical-systemic methods are used for historical methods. Special methods in the work are presented by methods of scientific critique of sources, textual and social psychology. The scientific novelty of the study is that for the first time the subject of historical research is the process of forming the historical memory of the October revolution of 1917 in the museum discourse of the 1930s. Main results. The archival and investigative case of the director of the Dniprodzerzhynsk Museum of the Revolution was put into scientific circulation, which made it possible to complete the picture of the repressions of the 1930s in Dnipropetrovsk region, to reveal the challenges facing museum workers during the terror. It is proved that in order to form historical memory of the revolutionary events of 1917, restrictions were imposed on the source base for the research and popularization of museums, records of oral history were strictly controlled, and expositions were checked. The basis of the Revolution Museums was the concept of the Great October and the Civil War, aimed at creating mythologized historical memory in order to legitimize Bolshevik power. It is established that with the onset of great terror, museums were faced with new challenges and prohibitions when the interpretation of events and the presentation of particular persons in the exposition required an urgent correction of museum work. On the example of the fate of the director of the Dniprodzerzhynsk Museum of Revolution, the formation of the ideological foundations of a totalitarian state is illuminated, when any deviation from the basic tenets was severely punished. The article is recommended for use in writing works on both the history of the repression of the 1930s and the history of museum work. Type of article: descriptive.

The Plunder of Maqdala: Ethical Concerns Around Belongings and Ancestral Remains in Museums

During the colonial period, museums did not just passively benefit from the plunder of human remains and culturally sacred items. When Britain sent a punitive military expedition to Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in 1863, it was accompanied by Richard Holmes, a staff member of the British Museum, whose purchase of loot from the expeditionary force institutionalised the plunder of cultural heritage. His inclusion in the expeditionary force was carefully planned, though the belongings he took — mainly manuscripts, religious items and emblems of power belonging to the Ethiopian royal family — were not the intended focus of his participation. Whilst the UK’s 2004 Human Tissue Act had a beneficial impact on the treatment of human remains in museums, objects belonging to colonised people are often still positioned as artworks or artefacts, evidencing ignorance of the deep personal and spiritual links that connect them back to their communities of origin. This article draws on our professional experience of curation and research in museums and libraries, as well as the impact of ICOM’s new Museum Definition on our practice. Joint research on the Maqdala expedition led us to question assumptions about the legacy of empire in museums and to scrutinise unexpected connections in the history of museum collections. This article addresses the problematic relationship between collecting and imperial power, the false dichotomy between ‘artefacts’ (belongings) and ‘human remains’ (ancestors) and the need to decolonise collections through further research and the recognition of ongoing cultural and physical violence.

How to research the concept of national identity with child respondents in museum research

Museums have been closely linked to national identity since the 19th century. Currently, museums have to cope with the ways they present themselves to visitors properly. Therefore, national identity in a museum has become the centre of research attention. Children are a large group of visitors who come into contact with the national narrative in museums. Involving children in the research of the concept of national identity constructed in the museum can bring many interesting findings. However, research with children is difficult. Especially for beginning researchers or museum staff, who do not have in-depth experience with qualitative research. Thus, the aim of the study is to present possible ways of researching national identity with children. Attention will be drawn to the discussion of which variables and which data collection techniques are possible to examine national identity and it’s concept with children.

Paulo Freire, Education, Dissemination and Natural Science Museums: relationships and tensions

The year 2020 celebrates the centenary of Paulo Freire, which takes place in the midst of the rescue of the founding concepts of his work and demonstrates the relevance of his critical thinking. His ideas have been present in Museology since the 1970s, influencing museological research and practice. In natural science museums, several works from the 1990s seek to identify theoretical and methodological trends in science education in exhibitions and educational activities. Within these trends, one can see the absence of productions that are based on critical theories and on Paulo Freire's ideas, which has been occurring more recently. This text discusses the articulations between research and practices in the fields of education and communication and science museums, questioning whether and how Paulo Freire's ideas became present. It was also intended to discuss the use of Freirean ideas in the context of science museums, focusing on two movements: scientific literacy and the relationships between science, technology, society and the environment. At the end, we propose some paths and argue in favor of a more intense use of some of the key concepts of Paulo Freire's work in the research and practices of natural science museums and problematize, given the complexity, conflicts and tensions that permeate today's world, about what science and what science education and communication we want to support in science museums. Key words: Paulo Freire; Education; Dissimination; Science museums

Printed publications in the system of expert research of cultural property

The purpose of the article is to confirm the peculiarity of expert research of printed publications from the standpoint of modern research as a separate field of professional knowledge that combines bibliography, history, and art of books, book monuments and emphasizes the importance of source data and preservation status in formulating expert opinions, clarify the parameters to rare or valuable publications. Research methodology. Analytical, historical,epistemological-axiological, and theoretical generalization methods were used to achieve the goal to specify the problem of expert activity. Scientific novelty the obtained results consist in theoretical comprehension of information from art and bibliographic sources, methods of examination of book editions, algorithm and sequence of work of the expert, differences of concepts "rare book" and "valuable book" are covered. Conclusions. To understand the place of expertise in the system of protection and promotion of cultural property, the systematization of existing basic concepts related to book editions was carried out. The process of expert research of book editions begins with a visual, optical, and physical study of the state of preservation, attribution, and identification of the circumstances that caused the damage and ends with the display of the monument in the museum space. The study outlined the sequence of examination of book editions, which determined the interaction of the following three concepts: data collection on the object of study; consultations with museum researchers and research institutions; specified parameters for classifying publications as rare or valuable books.Key words: examination of cultural property, "rare book", "valuable book".

Hotspots and Cutting-Edge Visual Analysis of Digital Museum in China Using Data Mining Technology.

During the last several years, the building and development of digital museums has grown in importance as a study issue of increasing importance. On the other hand, systematic and extensive literature study on digital museums is rare in the academic community throughout the world. This paper employs data mining technology to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the total amount of academic literature, research hotspots, frontiers, and trends in the field of digital museums in China since the beginning of the twenty-first century, including both historical and contemporary data. In this research, the CNIK database and the CiteSpace program are utilized. The findings revealed that the quantity of published literature expanded significantly between 2000 and 2021, with some variations along the way, but that the general growth rate remained consistent. Colleges and universities are the driving force behind academic research in the field of digital museums; research institutes and big museums play a key part in the academic research that is being conducted by digital museums. Cooperation between research institutes, on the other hand, is severely lacking. Furthermore, the advancement of digital technology is an unavoidable byproduct of the efforts to transform the digital museum into a smart museum, as previously said. When it comes to digital museum development in the postepidemic period, the optimization and updating of a user-centered information service platform is the most important step toward long-term success. In order to maintain the richness of Chinese traditional culture while also meeting the expanding cultural requirements of the general public, China's digital museum research has as its ultimate objective the construction of sustainable digital museums that are appropriate for the country's national conditions. The findings also demonstrate that the construction of a Chinese Digital Museum is a study issue with distinct Chinese features that has the potential to contribute to the preservation of Chinese cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible. This research gives insights into the following aspects: researchers and practitioners from across the world will work together to promote a better knowledge of the building and growth of the digital museum in China, among other things.

Dive in the flow experience: millennials’ tech-savvy, satisfaction and loyalty in the smart museum

ABSTRACT The smart museum, which is the ascendant of the museum industry, has caught academic attention for smart destinations. However, a few studies have examined millennial visitors in the research of smart museums, which are not only the core of the market but also born advantageous to smart technology. Drawing on flow theory and the information system (IS) success model, this study investigated the effect of tech-savvy, information quality and system quality on millennial visitor satisfaction and loyalty towards the smart museum via flow experience. From a quantitative point of view, the experiences of 519 millennial visitors in China were collected, and relationships were tested using partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM). The results show that millennials’ tech-savvy, information quality and system quality of smart museums significantly impact visitor satisfaction and loyalty through the mediating effect of flow experience. This study contributes to the current knowledge on smart destination marketing and identifies the effectiveness of the extended model. From these findings, practical implications for museum managers and marketers to promote smart museum development are discussed.

New Foundations: Principles for Disability-Inclusive Museum Practice

ABSTRACT This paper seeks to provide museum professionals with a practical road map to improving outcomes for people with disabilities in their museums. Written by a museum researcher with autism, this paper weaves museum research with interdisciplinary studies, while prioritizing the voices of people with disabilities, in order to develop clear, well-defined, and customizable steps for making the museum as an organizational unit more welcoming for people with disabilities. It examines several issues within the field, such as the overwhelming childhood focus of museum accessibility programming, the need to include people with disabilities in the process of creating inclusive practices, the importance of focusing on the larger picture as opposed to small issues, creativity in accessibility, and the dangers of performative accessibility and suggestions to avoid it, combining literature on each topic with the author's own knowledge of disability and museum accessibility.

Save the Ukrainian People First: They Carry their Culture in their Hearts

Save the Ukrainian People First: They Carry their Culture in their Hearts

박물관의 감정적 전시, 방문객의 감정이입, 그리고 역사교육과 유산교육

A museum is a place for emotions and actively engages in emotional work. The museum has been active in constructing nationalism and patriotism. However, since the memory boom, museums began to represent the past with personal stories and heritages that can rupture the nationalist narrative. In particular, museums tend to expand emotional exhibitions to represent the painful and traumatic past while actively accepting the paradigm shift of ‘emotional turn’.BR Some museum researchers and practitioners argue that museums should realize its social responsibility for social justice through emotional exhibition. They believe that emotional exhibitions can evoke visitors’ empathy and sympathy, which can be a driving force for changing visitors’ opinions on social problems.BR In this article, emotional exhibition techniques that represent the sensitive past, and empirical studies on visitors’ emotional responses and empathy were reviewed and analyzed. According to the studies, the majority of visitors to the museum have not not respond emotionally to emotional exhibitions, and even if they did, few experienced a fundamental change in their perspectives or opinions. However, there were a small number of visitors who engaged emotionally to past events or empathized with victims and changed their perspective or opinions. Teaching and learning in museums needs to be structured in such a way that, paying attention to those points, it challenges learners’ habituated cognitive and emotional responses to specific events or figures and provides opportunities for self-reflection on their perspectives and emotions.

The state of research among Icelandic museums

Museums are faced with complex challenges when seeking to fulfil their role as research institutions, whether at the organisational or the conceptual level. These challenges are particularly prominent in the Icelandic museum sector, where research remains obscure, undefined and unregulated. Based on findings from a survey conducted among accredited museums in Iceland, this article illustrates the state of research among Icelandic museums. Inquiring about institutional approach, management and capacity for research, the survey shows how Icelandic museums struggle with scarcity of time, funding and human resources, a picture well known throughout the international museum domain. Furthermore, the article reveals how discrepancies between formal research requirements on the one hand and the lack of criteria on the other create further ramifications for the development of research in Icelandic museums. This, in turn, leaves museums with mixed messages on how to embed research in their agendas and how to account for it.

Reflecting and forging master narratives: A discursive analysis of a Belgian WWII museum's curatorial selection process

AbstractSociolinguistics can help us grasp how collective memory cultures are (in part) shaped by representations of historic events through varied linguistic – and other – sources (e.g. education, news media, conversations and museum displays). In this study, we specifically zoom in on the curatorial selection process of a Belgian Second World War (WWII) memorial museum, whilst simultaneously exploring the reflexive relation between this curatorial process and the wider WWII remembrance context. To this end, we compare exhibited video testimony fragments to the full testimonies available in the museum's research centre, to examine which narratives were selected or silenced. Additionally, we confront fine‐grained analyses of the testimonies with master narratives on WWII remembrance. As our analyses illustrate, the exhibited fragments align with these – typically coherent – master narratives, while the full testimonies are complex. Overall, we show that museums not only reflect master narratives, but are also sites for forging them.

Museum-based research: a typological exploration

ABSTRACT The term ‘research’ has multiple meanings in the museum context, ranging from a self-reflective practice integrated into any daily task to a highly specialised scientific activity. At the same time, conventional academic standards and scholarly publications are prioritised over practice-based research methods and museological forms of dissemination. This leads to an inherent hierarchy and a culture of exclusion when it comes to research practice within museums. In this article, I argue how the conceptual confusion around research creates major obstacles to this key function in museums, perhaps even more so than administrative challenges such as the lack of time and funding. To offer some clarification to a chaotic field, I present a five-fold typology of research models typically hosted by museums. Rather than presenting a fixed definition of how to do research in museums, the aim is to encourage a non-hierarchical and pluralistic approach to museum-based research.

Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum

Artefacts, Archives, and Documentation in the Relational Museum

“We Must All Be Ready for Major Changes”

This article analyzes a current exhibition, Climate for Change, which opened at the Norwegian Petroleum Museum in 2019. By engaging with the way in which the exhibition constructs a “we,” the article proceeds to examine how agency for mitigation is presented and analyzed. It assesses how futures are created and what types of futures emerge. These themes are addressed with reference to insights from museum research and energy humanities. The choices in the exhibition point toward a traditional understanding of continuities, of agency, and of future visions while tending toward a reduction of Norwegian accountability for climate change.

How to Support Academic Writing for Museum Professionals

When museum research is published, it is often written by researchers who observe or work with museum staff rather than by museum professionals themselves. By making academic writing and publishing more inclusive to museum professionals, their unique communication skills and experiences could be harnessed to better reflect the museum sector in the published literature. Encouraging professional development at workshops and conferences and developing resources and tools with and for museum professionals represent some of the positive developments in how museum professionals can develop their academic writing and publishing skills, and in turn gain control of how research is described in their fields.

The museum exhibition in the context of dispositive analysis

The aim of this study is to propose and present a suitable methodological framework based on the principle of discourse analysis, which would be suitable for the implementation of research on the museum environment, in particular museum exhibitions and their narratives. The potential of the dispositive analysis of the museum phenomenon is enormous, but the elaboration of this methodology in the context of museum research in our environment is lacking. This study aims to add to this underdeveloped area and provide readers and researchers with key information concerning the possibilities and uses of this methodology. As a suitable methodological tool, the study chooses dispositive analysis, which has the advantage of allowing the analysis of materializations in addition to the discourse plane, which is an advantage for the analysis of exhibitions and the exhibits housed therein. Dispositive analysis, which in the study is primarily based on S. Jäger’s approach, enables the examination of materializations without overlooking the role of visitors and the broader context of the exhibition, which, by its very nature of membership of a cultural institution, is always discursively conditioned. The relationship between the museum and discursive reality is thus a thematic part of the study, as is the exploration of the topics of discourse (Foucault) and the dispositive.

Об информационном сопровождении этнографических экспедиций Алтайского государственного краеведческого музея в 2019–2022 гг.

The publication presents the experience of the Altai State Museum of Local Lore in providing information support for field expeditionary research by museum researchers conducted in 2019–2022. Specific examples of publications on the resources of the institution in social networks, as well as regional media resources are given. The effectiveness of this experience is analyzed.