National Art Museum Research Articles

Embodied interpretation: Gesture, social interaction, and meaning making in a national art museum

This study expands on sociocultural approaches to meaning making in art museums by exploring the physical aspects of interaction with art in traditional gallery spaces, and in the context of technology use. The notion of ‘embodied interpretation’ is introduced to explore the complexity of embodied interaction in interpreting art, and to contribute to existing vocabularies of gesture. The research is informed by sociocultural perspectives on meaning making as well notions of embodied interaction, and asks the following research questions: “What are the relevant bodily and gestural practices that shape socially situated interactions in art galleries?” and “What insights into meaning making in art museums can be gained through an approach of embodied interpretation?” The study incorporates interaction analysis and design-based research methods to investigate three episodes from a national museum in which groups of adolescents interact with three different kinds of objects: a sculpture, a painting, and an interactive tabletop. Analysis reveals that visitors use gesture, as well as bodily positioning and movement in a variety of ways to coordinate social processes, and to mediate thinking and perception in the interpretation of art.

Expert and adolescent interpretive approaches in a national art museum

In this article we empirically investigate the ways in which curators' expert knowledge and intentions in a national art museum's exhibition of works by Edvard Munch are made relevant in young people's interpretative activity. In which ways do adolescent visitors notice and comprehend the curator's meaningful arrangement of paintings? What are the respective interpretative strategies and disciplinary knowledge that visitors and experts draw on when relating works to one another? Using mixed methods, we explore and contrast the respective interpretative approaches using two theoretical perspectives on learning in art, specifically, information-processing and sociocultural traditions. We propose that a better understanding of such tensions may contribute to bridging semantic gaps between experts and non-specialists, and is particularly relevant in view of the democratising potential of social media currently explored in museums' communication designs.

Posing the Question: Visitor Posing as Embodied Interpretation in an Art Museum

This article identifies and explores posing by visitors to an art gallery as a unique meaning making activity. Conducted as a design experiment in partnership with a national art museum, this study builds on theoretical perspectives related to gesture and embodiment. Empirical findings suggest that particular posing activities function simultaneously to mediate internally and externally oriented processes of interpretation in encounters with art. Accordingly, these complex posing practices may be viewed as an integrated part of visitors’ meaning making experiences. Implications for this research include expanding our understanding of the roles of the body in visitor’s museum experiences.

Physical Science in Barcelona

We provide a tour of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, following four routes through the city and one elsewhere in the city and beyond, focusing on sites of importance in physics. Route 1 covers the Old Town, its Gothic Quarter, Placa del Rei, Placa de Sant Jaume, and Jewish Quarter. Route 2 identifies sites on and close to La Rambla, the main promenade in the city. Route 3 goes from the medieval shipyards to the Board of Commerce to Citadel Park. Route 4 concentrates on the Extension (Eixample) and covers the restored University, the Industrial University, and the new campus of the University of Barcelona. Elsewhere in the city and beyond are the Fabra Observatory; the Placa de les Glories with its large steel sculpture depicting the meridian arc from Dunkirk to Barcelona; Montjuic, the site of the National Art Museum of Catalonia; and the National Museum of Science and Technology in Terrassa.

The art museum in Africa – a utopia desired?

In this paper, I argue that museums in general are utopias, “no-places” in which categorisations of objects can be opened up for destabilisation. Following a discussion of the ways in which the categories “material culture” and “art” are reflected in museums, I argue that once the museum is transposed to Africa, its function as a space in which heritage is maintained through the conservation and preservation is thrown into disarray. I argue further that this is particularly the case with the most utopian of museums, the art museum. I argue that most African nation states do not have national art museums, and offer an argument about why they have museums of “arts and cultures” instead. I end with an analysis of the history and situation of art museums in South Africa and possibilities for alternative ways of conceiving the art museum as an inclusive rather than exclusive space.

Study of the acoustic of Jean Nouvel's Auditorium 400, at the Museum Reina Sofia in Madrid

The Auditorio 400 is one of the buildings that make up the National Art Museum Reina Sofia in Madrid. It is the work of renowned French architect Jean Nouvel. This space was designed to accommodate primarily chamber music concerts but now can be considered as a multi-purpose venue. This hall hosts events with different content: acts with the voice as main sound source as conferences, seminars etc. and concerts with music from diverse styles, classical, contemporary, avant-garde and electro acoustic music. This versatility assumes that the acoustic conditions required for the different uses of Auditorio 400 must be diverse and special depending on the sound source, in order to achieve the adequate sound quality for the various events that are held there. This paper presents the study of the acoustics of the Auditorium 400, analyzing various parameters for evaluating the sound quality of the room, highlighting the worst areas of listening, the reasons for the existence of such areas and the description of i...

A Study on the Intentions and Methodologies of Recent Exhibition Plans for Koreas Modern and Contemporary Arts by National and Public Art Museums

A Study on the Intentions and Methodologies of Recent Exhibition Plans for Koreas Modern and Contemporary Arts by National and Public Art Museums

User-interface design for the Ripoll Monastery exhibition at the National Art Museum of Catalonia

Computer graphics and virtual reality technologies provide powerful tools for visualizing, documenting and disseminating cultural heritage. Virtual inspection tools have been used proficiently to show cultural artifacts either through the web or in museum exhibits. The usability of the user interface has been recognized to play a crucial role in overcoming the typical fearful attitude of the cultural heritage community towards 3D graphics. In this paper we discuss the design of the user interface for the virtual inspection of the impressive entrance of the Ripoll Monastery in Spain. The system was exhibited in the National Art Museum of Catalonia (MNAC) and it is now part of the Romanesque exhibition at the MAPFRE foundation. The MNAC is the third most visited art museum in Spain, and features the world's largest collection on Romanesque Art. We analyze the requirements from museum curators and discuss the main interface design decisions. The user interface combines (a) focus-plus-context visualization, with focus (detail view) and context (overview) being shown at separate displays, (b) touch-based camera control techniques, and (c) continuous feedback about the exact location of the detail area within the entrance. The interface allows users to aim the camera at any point of the entrance with centimeter accuracy using a single tap. We provide the results of a user study comparing our user interface with alternative approaches. We also discuss the benefits the exhibition had to the cultural heritage community.

Transmediation: Tracing the social aesthetic

This article discusses how the use of mobile media in digital culture is ushering in a new set of conditions for the realization of the social reception of art. This is to say that mobile media practices present a renewed challenge to major national art museums in their organization and practices of display and exhibition. The problematic explored here is that between the art museum’s continued attachment to aesthetic abstraction in the modernist trope and the clamouring and tumultuous world of image reproduction. The article seeks to define an intersection between the academic discourses of media and technology on the one hand, and aesthetics and cultural policy on the other, through a focus on subjectivities and narration. It does this by way of a particular fieldwork example from the research project Tate Encounters: Britishness and Visual Culture (2006–2009).

Composing a Public Image Online: Art Museums and Narratives of Architecture in Web Mediation

As museums’ public images become increasingly intertwined with architecture and tourism on a global scale, spectacular museum buildings have come to have a presence both in local, urban landscapes and online. We analyze the website presentations of two new national contemporary art museum buildings, the Tate Modern Museum in London and the National Museum of 21st Century Arts (MAXXI) in Rome, to explore the ways in which multimodal compositions and architectural narratives are designed to communicate a museum's public image. Applying methods from social semiotics and text analysis, we identify the compositional means by which narrative themes of transformation, social space, and recovered origins become linked with global market forces and destination branding through communication design.

A Survey into the Environment of National and Public Art Museum Storage and a Study on Joint Storage

A Survey into the Environment of National and Public Art Museum Storage and a Study on Joint Storage

Colecciones, museos y conservación en el ámbito del arte contemporáneo: entrevista a Graciela de la Torre sobre el MUAC

For more than 30 years, Graciela de la Torre has worked as director of important Mexican museums, including the Museo de San Carlos, and the National Art Museum (MUNAL), both in Mexico City. Since 2004 she is Head of the Visual Arts General Office (DIGAV) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), to which the University Museum of Contemporary Art (MUAC) belongs. The Museum opened its doors in 2008, and from that time on, de la Torre has strived to innovate in museum managment strategies, she has set goals to place the museum in the international scene integrating exihibition and academic programs, the interview also addresses her opinion on Mexican contemporary art conservation and museum studies.

Leonardo Network News

December 01 2008 Leonardo Network News Sean Cubitt Sean Cubitt Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Scholar Author and Article Information Sean Cubitt Online Issn: 1531-4812 Print Issn: 0961-1215 © 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology2008 Leonardo Music Journal (2008) 18: 104–105. https://doi.org/10.1162/lmj.2008.18.104 Cite Icon Cite Permissions Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Search Site Citation Sean Cubitt; Leonardo Network News. Leonardo Music Journal 2008; 18 104–105. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/lmj.2008.18.104 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentAll JournalsLeonardo Music Journal Search Advanced Search This content is only available as a PDF. © 2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology2008 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Exiled Modernism: Lithuanian Music Through The Second World War

Exiled Modernism: Lithuanian Music Through The Second World War

Art, Nationhood, and Display: Zinaida Volkonskaia and Russia's Quest for a National Museum of Art

In 1831, the journal Teleskop published Princess Zinaida Volkonskaia's proposal for a national art museum in Moscow. Volkonskaia's project was progressive to a degree (Russia had no such museum at the time), yet the model she proposed was highly traditional. She excluded Russian art entirely, despite her support of modern Russian artists. Instead, Volkonskaia privileged classical and more recent western European art, underlining the deference to western practice that influenced cultural politics even as Russia moved toward a stronger national sense of self. Volkonskaia's project marks an important juncture in Russia's cultural history: the intersection of aristocratic female patronage and the institutionalization of academic procedure. It also provides a platform from which to consider Russia's self-image vis-à-vis Europe in the aftermath of the Napoleonic campaigns. By tracing an intricate dialogue in which national pride developed alongside continuing admiration for neoclassical ideals, Rosalind P. Blakesley addresses the paradoxes of Volkonskaia's project, and the difficulties of conceptualizing a “national” space of artistic display. Volkonskaia's project poses significant interpretive problems and her exclusion of Russian art prefigures the segregation of Russian and western art in Russian museums today, which has marginalized Russian art even within Russia itself. Volkonskaia's project thus has wide resonance, for the question of whether and how museums encapsulate national cultural identities remains an issue of great intellectual concern.

Why Move the Viking Ship Collection from Bygdøy?

In 1996 it was decided to unite the National Gallery, the Museum of Applied Art, and the Museum of Modern Art, all in Oslo, into a new National Art Museum. It was also decided that the building kno...

Museums and modernity: art galleries and the making of modern culture

Part I Museums and Modernity in Europe and England Introduction From Court to State: The Emergence of National Art Museums in Continental Europe 'The Peculiarities of the English': The Formation of the National Gallery, London Part II Art, Society and the Birth of the National Gallery of Scotland Stirrings of the Modern: Art, Civil Society and the Scottish Enlightenment The Birth of the National Gallery of Scotland, 1800-59 The High Within and the Low Without: The Social Production of Aesthetic Space in the National Gallery of Scotland, 1859-70 Conclusion Bibliography Index

A. M. L. Touati: Ancient Sculptures in the Royal Museum. The Eighteenth-century Collection in Stockholm, 1. Pp. 176, 53 ills, 43 pls. Stockholm: Swedish National Art Museum, 1998. Cased. ISBN: 91-7100-567-6.

A. M. L. Touati: Ancient Sculptures in the Royal Museum. The Eighteenth-century Collection in Stockholm, 1. Pp. 176, 53 ills, 43 pls. Stockholm: Swedish National Art Museum, 1998. Cased. ISBN: 91-7100-567-6. - Volume 50 Issue 1

Artistic computing in art museums: Findings from a national survey

Art museum computing in the United States and Canada emphasizes the business objectives of institutions but deemphasizes the arts objectives. This major finding of the 1989 National Art Museum Computer Survey is the principal focus of this paper. Other major survey findings include documenting the largely micro orientation of museum computing, the dominant role of full-time noncomputer staff in performing computing tasks, the lack of planning and management control over information systems, and the generally high level of satisfaction with computing expressed by museum computer management.

Jāmi‘ al-maskūtāt al-‘arabīya bi-Ifrīqīya (Collection of Arabic coins of Ifriqiya = Tunisia), by ḤĀmid AL-‘AjjĀBĪ 378 pages, 41 black-and-white plates. Al-Ma‘had al-Qawmī lil-Āthār wa-al-Funūn (National Antiquities and Art Museum), Tunis [1988

Jāmi‘ al-maskūtāt al-‘arabīya bi-Ifrīqīya (Collection of Arabic coins of Ifriqiya = Tunisia), by ḤĀmid AL-‘AjjĀBĪ 378 pages, 41 black-and-white plates. Al-Ma‘had al-Qawmī lil-Āthār wa-al-Funūn (National Antiquities and Art Museum), Tunis [1988