Museum Purposes Research Articles

An Honest Display of Fakery: Replicas and the Role of Museums

AbstractThis essay brings together questions from aesthetic theory and museum management. In particular, I relate a contextualist account of the value of copies to a pluralistic understanding of the purpose of museums. I begin by offering a new defence of the no longer fashionable view that the aesthetic (as opposed to the ethical, personal, monetary, historical, or other) value of artworks may be detached from questions regarding their provenance. My argument is partly based on a distinction between the process of creating a work of art and the artwork in question.Next, I defend a pluralism about the purpose of museums and their exhibitions. I combine this with a pluralist account of the value of replicas which falls out of the above argument, exposing our preference for originality as being frequently fetishistic. I maintain that the importance of the provenance of artworks is relative to the specific purposes of any given exhibition or museum. Those that are primarily educational (such as encyclopaedic ones) are in many cases best served with high-quality replicas. This view may be extended to artefacts that are not artworks, such as fossils and dinosaur skeletons. Finally, I expound the variety of roles that replicas may play in museums and relate these to notions of authenticity.

Principles and Politics

Principles and Politics

From the physical to the digital and back: Fashion exhibitions in the digital age

Abstract The discipline of curating fashion has experienced a cultural turn in the last decades. What were controversial approaches are now recognized as pioneering and significant in having encouraged debates and opened the discipline through rethinking existing paradigms. This contribution analyses the challenges and criticisms surrounding fashion displays, with the aim to address the centrality of interpretation and performativity in relation to key fashion exhibitions. The article explores ‘the power of display’ (Staniszewski 1998; 2000) through mediums and spaces, whether physical, digital or both. Within museum studies, the focus on the visitors’ experience and on the narrative has been identified as a key feature of a ‘new museology’ (Vergo 1989; Hein 2000; Henning 2006), which ultimately leads us to question the purposes of museum and gallery displays. With references to museum studies, fashion curation and philosophy, and drawing from insightful conversations with fashion curators, the article examines the exhibition’s potential to provide a context for visual and material experiences, as well as for a new understanding and articulation of knowledge. The contribution embraces Foucault’s reflection on heterotopia (1986 [1967]; 1992 [1966]), arguing that the content of the museum as a space of difference is the interpretation itself. Reflecting on exhibition design as a medium in its own right (Celant 1996a), the article highlights performativity as a fundamental feature of the exhibits, of the installation and, more broadly, of the museum space.

The Museum Profession: Protecting and Promoting Professional Commitments

Throughout their history, museums have performed diverse public services: from preservation, collection, and exhibition, to interpretation, education, and civic engagement. As Stephen E. Weil (2002) explains, since the mid-twentieth century, museums have experienced two major revolutions. First, a revolution in focus from collection-oriented to visitor-oriented practices, and second, a revolution in public expectations as museums secured a position within the nonprofit sector (81–82). With competition for public, private, and philanthropic support resting upon measurable results, the evaluation of museums depends upon its ability to “accomplish its purpose” (5). However, the question remains: what is the museum's purpose? Which is the more important: collection and artifact preservation, or public engagement and education? An overview of museum practices reveals a multiplicity of professional tasks distributed among three imperatives: preservation, scholarship, and programming (Weil 2002, 11). The competition for resources devoted to each of these imperatives can spark controversy—particularly if museum professionals answer the question of the purpose of museums differently. Organizational communication scholar, Janie M. Harden Fritz, developed a theoretical framework that seeks to respond to such controversies in Professional Civility: Communicating Virtue at Work. This essay considers Fritz's “professional civility” in the context of the American museum sector, lending insight to the question of museum purpose and function.

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.

Transitions in US Perspectives Towards Immigration

The physical and social history of Ellis Island reflects important transitions in attitudes toward immigration in the United States. Mass immigration peaked in 1907; it declined sharply during World War I, was revived after the war, and then altered dramatically with the passage of a series of restrictive immigration laws in the mid-1920s. While the early history of Ellis Island reflected the liberal attitudes of the United States towards immigration, the latter half of its life was shaped by a more restrictionist policy that succeeded in narrowing the open door to the United States. These quota laws would remain in effect until President Lyndon Johnson signed a new immigration law in 1965, which was a radical break with the previous policy that had become intolerable.Ellis Island was added to the Statue of Liberty National Monument, National Park Service, in 1965 by President Lyndon Johnson shortly after he signed the new immigration law at the foot of the symbolically powerful Statue of Liberty. Ellis Island symbolised then (as it does today) the story of United States immigration, its cultural wealth, the contributions of the millions of immigrants that passed through its doors and the continuing debate about immigration policy. The museum purposes to tell the unending story of United States immigration through the people who experience it.

Stay Behind the Yellow Line: Young Children Constructing Knowledge from an Art Exhibition

AbstractStudies exploring very young children visiting museums and art galleries are few. The majority of research about museum and gallery visitors explores family group interactions. This paper examines the findings of a study involving three‐ and four‐year‐old children visiting an art exhibition in a national museum on more than one occasion. The children's construction of knowledge about being a museum visitor and exhibitor indicates their ability to develop an appreciation of art and an understanding of the purposes of museums and art galleries.

3D PHOTOGRAPHS IN CULTURAL HERITAGE

Abstract. This paper on providing "oo-information" (= objective object-information) on cultural monuments and sites, based on 3D photographs is also a contribution of CIPA task group 3 to the 2013 CIPA Symposium in Strasbourg. To stimulate the interest in 3D photography for scientists as well as for amateurs, 3D-Masterpieces are presented. Exemplary it is shown, due to their high documentary value ("near reality"), 3D photography support, e.g. the recording, the visualization, the interpretation, the preservation and the restoration of architectural and archaeological objects. This also includes samples for excavation documentation, 3D coordinate calculation, 3D photographs applied for virtual museum purposes and as educational tools. In addition 3D photography is used for virtual museum purposes, as well as an educational tool and for spatial structure enhancement, which in particular holds for inscriptions and in rock arts. This paper is also an invitation to participate in a systematic survey on existing international archives of 3D photographs. In this respect it is also reported on first results, to define an optimum digitization rate for analog stereo views. It is more than overdue, in addition to the access to international archives for 3D photography, the available 3D photography data should appear in a global GIS(cloud)-system, like on, e.g., google earth. This contribution also deals with exposing new 3D photographs to document monuments of importance for Cultural Heritage, including the use of 3D and single lense cameras from a 10m telescope staff, to be used for extremely low earth based airborne 3D photography, as well as for "underwater staff photography". In addition it is reported on the use of captive balloon and drone platforms for 3D photography in Cultural Heritage. It is liked to emphasize, the still underestimated 3D effect on real objects even allows, e.g., the spatial perception of extremely small scratches as well as of nuances in color differences. Though 3D photographs are a well established basic photographic and photogrammetric tool, they are still a matter of research and practical improvement: – For example, multistage concepts for 3D heritage photographs, e.g., combining before and aft images and images showing different focus, daytime etc., as well as combining 3D imagery of different sensors and comparing 3D imagery with drawings etc. and even standards for exposing and processing 3D heritage photographs are only some topics for recent research. – To advise on state-of-the-art 3D visualisation methodology for Cultural heritage purposes an updated synoptically overview, even claiming completeness, also will be dealt with. – 3D photographs increasingly should replace old fashioned subjective interpreted manual 2D drawings (in 2D only) of heritage monuments. – Currently we are witnesses of early developments, showing Cultural Heritage objects in 3D crystal as well as in 3D printings.

Dos modelos de musealización del patrimonio industrial de Langreo: El Museo de la Siderurgia y la Pinacoteca Municipal “Eduardo Úrculo”

Museums have become strategic elements of development, given its ability to regenerate deprived areas, as well as to promote the image of the cities receiving. This is why, in an attempt to overcome the crisis caused by industrial restructuring in recent years, the city of Langreo (Asturias) opted for a cultural policy focused on the rehabilitation and reuse of industrial heritage museum purposes. In these pages we will look at two interventions that have resulted in putting up Steel Industry Museum and the City Art Gallery “Eduardo Úrculo”.

Camp Lwandle: Rehabilitating a migrant labour hostel at the seaside

In southern African narratives of migrant labour, hostels and compounds are represented as typical examples of colonial and apartheid planning. Visual and spatial comparisons are consistently made between the regulatory power of hostels and those of concentration camps. Several of these sites of violence and repression are today being reconfigured as sites of conscience, their artefactual presence on the landscape being constructed as places of remembrance. In this trajectory, a space of seeming anonymity in Lwandle, some 40 km outside of Cape Town, was identified by the newly established museum, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as a structure of significance. The migrant labour compound in Lwandle, of which Hostel 33 is the last remnant, was designed by planners and engineers and laid out as part of a labour camp for male migrant workers in the 1950s. This article explores the ambitious project initiated in 2008, by the Lwandle Migrant Labour Museum (and funded largely by the US Ambassadors Cultural Restoration Fund), to restore Hostel 33. Although Hostel 33 was not a very old structure, having been built in 1958/9, nor was it easily considered to have conventional architectural significance, its material presence in present-day Lwandle represents a reminder of the conditions of life in the labour camp. The article traces the work entailed in the restoration process through paying attention to both the built fabric and its materiality, and by giving an account of the explorations into finding ways to restore the hostel to the museum through making it into a site of significance. In place of the centrality of the building as the object of restoration, the work shifted to considering how the hostel could function most effectively as a stage and destination for the Museum’s narrations of the past. Retaining and maintaining Hostel 33 was less concerned with the fabric as an empirical fact of the past, than with its projection into an envisaged future for museum purposes.

On difficult history displayed: the pedagogical challenges of interminable learning

The pedagogical purposes of public museums focus largely on the factual knowledge to be gained by attending an exhibit. What is often ignored are the affective and emotional responses prompted by the exhibit. The emotional response to difficult events may prompt youth to leave an exhibit with unintended, or interminable, knowing about the event itself. This article presents the results of a research study that examines a series of intergenerational interactions and conversations specific to war, which bears important educational consequences and implications for the learning of difficult historical events.

Us and Them: who benefits from experimental exhibition making?

In order to attract new audiences and increase their relevance to contemporary society, some museums are questioning their traditional role as expert and ‘gatekeeper’ to the knowledge bound up in collections. Sharing authority and experimenting with the conventions of exhibition making may appear refreshing to some, but to others seems simply gratuitous and self-destructive. In 2008, the Manchester Museum (United Kingdom) staked its reputation on an open-ended, dialogic and pluralistic approach to an archaeological ‘treasure’ – the 2000-year-old body of Lindow Man, on loan from the British Museum. The exhibition's unorthodox concept, design and construction polarised opinion amongst staff and visitors, triggering a heated debate about the purpose of museums. Employing Personal Meaning Mapping methodology to measure the impact of the approach on visitors’ learning and enjoyment, this case study shows that challenging convention, though extremely unpopular in traditionalist quarters, can add new layers of meaning to the museum experience.

Using Different Pasts in a Similar Way: Museum Representations of National History in Norway and China

This article explores how national histories are constructed in the museums of Norway. It does so through a comparative perspective, whereby museum displays of national past in Norway are being compared to museum displays of national past in the People’s Republic of China. This will involve comparing narratives, museological approaches, rationale and purposes of museum displays in the two countries. Fieldwork research in museums in Norway and China suggests that if national pasts are obviously unique to the historical trajectories of each country, their museum renditions are structured in an intriguingly similar way. Museum displays of national pasts in Norway develop around a set of themes including myths of ancestry and descent; epics of resistance leading the embryonic nation through a dark era and towards a “Golden Age”; a core of moral and aesthetic values; notions of national modernity; and selective amnesia. I will show how similar topics can be found in museum displays of the past in Chinese museums. The comparative perspective of the analysis enables me to assess the uniqueness of museum representations of the past in Norway and at the same time to explore analogies in the museum construction of national narratives beyond the European context, through the case study of China. This will lead me to put forward the hypothesis of the coagulation, at international level, of a canon for the museum representation of national history.

Proposing a sustainable marketing framework for heritage tourism

This study tests a sustainable marketing protocol for heritage tourism institutions. The marketing plans of 20 museums across the United States are examined to grasp the empirical reality of the proposed model. The model is crafted along strategic marketing criteria, including measures such as environment analysis, level of local community involvement, partnership, and maintenance of traditional preservation-based objectives of the museums. A gap between the philosophical underpinnings of the proposed model and the existing marketing strategies is found. It is noted that the contemporary museum ethos in many regions of the United States is centered on short term plans and current survival. Additionally, regardless of locations, funding and short-termism dictate the core elements of all marketing plans. Overall, the results indicate that dedicated efforts and more awareness are needed to sustain the core purpose of contemporary museums. Using an applied approach, this study offers a unique and realistic perspective to a conceptually drawn framework. The results enhance the marketing literature, offer suggestions on how museum marketing plans could include sustainable elements and become part of a sustainable heritage tourism paradigm.

Reading Weil: A Premature Appreciation

Abstract Reviewing the published legacy of museum scholar Stephen E. Weil, this paper analyzes the development of Weil's thought and appraises his contributions to museum discourse. It traces two shifts in Weil's published writings: first, the broadening of his interests from the legal field and the art world to the situation and purposes of museums generally; second, the liberalization of Weil's museological politics, which gradually altered his early view of the (art) museum as a private, sacrosanct realm and led to his later calls for museums to act as community servants. The paper also examines Weil's rhetorical strategies, with particular attention to the hypotheticals and analogies for which he was well known, and offers a provisional evaluation of the extent of his influence on museum debate and practice.

Essentialism, adaptation and justice: Towards a new epistemology of museums

This article treats the prevalent confused mixture of utilitarian, art-and-knowledge-for-their-own-sake and ideological interpretations of the purpose of museums as a problem of epistemology, arguing that that key dimensions of museum knowledge (of objects, visitors, museums themselves, and of society) need to be integrated to achieve coherence. A new object-based, visitor-centred, storytelling epistemology is proposed. This would take an interdisciplinary approach and aim to unleash, rather than mute the real power of objects. It would address human destructiveness, as well as celebrating human creativity and the wonders of nature. It would respect the meaning-making practices of real, as opposed to idealized, imaginary visitors, and promote staff self-awareness in managing bureaucratic drift into introversion and avoidance of difficult issues. Incorporating a theory of justice, it would erode boundaries created by presentation traditions which, though marginal to object experiences, discriminate in favour of specific social groups—often groups with whom staff identify. Providing a museum service on a visibly fair basis is essential for museums to achieve intellectual coherence as well as societal support.

Museums in a postmodern world: collections, exhibitions and opinions

Since the late 1980s museums have been simultaneously described as undergoing unprecedented growth and being in danger of extinction, as their traditional practices have come under attack from various directions. Perhaps the greatest intellectual change in museums has been a shift from the profession being essentially conservative (with or without a capital 'C') to one whose language reflects a left-wing pedigree. This has led to a greater emphasis on the present instead of posterity, people instead of collections and access instead of scholarship. A 'New Museology' was established (Vergo, 1989) and the writing of postmodern critics, such as Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida, was introduced to the literature (e.g. Ames, 1986: Hooper-Greenhill, 1992). Simultaneously, there has been a growth in consumerism and the 'leisure industry', which also encouraged people to visit museums. These two developments, while linked, have not created a coherent intellectual framework for museums. Instead, uncertainty continues as museums try to justify the continued care of vast collections created in a different age by claiming to be both socially useful and economically productive. Suzanne Keene's paper (this issue) highlights these tensions, suggesting that a postmodern critique can explain this predicament and offer salvation. Postmodernism has been described as many things, including 'an analytic scatterbomb waiting to be randomly secreted in argument by the cultural terrorist' (Jenks, 1993: 138). I therefore shirk from discussing Keene's identification of four perspectives or arguing whether or not her prescriptions are appropriately postmodern. Instead, while agreeing that using collections should be the main purpose of museums, it is the way that collections embody all that is not solid that is most powerful.

Essentialism, adaptation and justice: Towards a new epistemology of museums

This article treats the prevalent confused mixture of utilitarian, art-and-knowledge-for-their-own-sake and ideological interpretations of the purpose of museums as a problem of epistemology, arguing that that key dimensions of museum knowledge (of objects, visitors, museums themselves, and of society) need to be integrated to achieve coherence. A new object-based, visitor-centred, storytelling epistemology is proposed. This would take an interdisciplinary approach and aim to unleash, rather than mute the real power of objects. It would address human destructiveness, as well as celebrating human creativity and the wonders of nature. It would respect the meaning-making practices of real, as opposed to idealized, imaginary visitors, and promote staff self-awareness in managing bureaucratic drift into introversion and avoidance of difficult issues. Incorporating a theory of justice, it would erode boundaries created by presentation traditions which, though marginal to object experiences, discriminate in favour of specific social groups—often groups with whom staff identify. Providing a museum service on a visibly fair basis is essential for museums to achieve intellectual coherence as well as societal support.

The Role Of Museums In Society: Education And Social Action

The museum community has long debated whether museums are primarily educational or aesthetic institutions. I propose two interrelated propositions. First, the raison d’etre of the museum is education broadly defined. It’s possible to have collections of objects, even collections carefully classified, organized and preserved, that are not primarily educational—the world includes many fine private collections and archives—but as soon as these are open to the public, the museum becomes an educational institution. Second, I argue that there are moral, social, and political consequences to accepting the view that museums are educational by nature. If we conceptualize museum education as more than particular tasks assigned to specific personnel, then we must acknowledge our worldview of the role of education in society as relevant to all museum functions. We must accept the responsibilities inherent in the kind of education we value and in our convictions about the purpose of education—and therefore the purpose of museums. I believe that the significance of the educative task in museums is greater than can be circumscribed by any list of specific tasks. Museum education is at the center of museum activities. Museums are primarily educational institutions; what makes them public institutions for the preservation of culture is their educational work.

House Museums and Domestic Life Displays in Scotland

House museums, period room displays, and museums set within old houses account for about 150 of the 400 or so museums in Scotland at the turn of the twenty-first century, and objects of domestic life are shown in many more of the general museums. Their large number reflects in part the suitability of domestic buildings for museum purposes, but also the particular importance given to domestic life within British culture in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The home is a central element of human existence, along with work (within or outwith the home), creativity, and the study of the world around us, and it is therefore no surprise that aspects of evolving domestic life should be preserved in Scottish museums. These display both the extraordinary wealth and grinding poverty of Scotland’s past and they play a vital role in the country’s present tourism industry. They also contribute to the shaping of a sense of identity and thus have a continuing relevance for Scottish, British and international culture. There are now several good definitions of the term ‘museum’ 2 but there are still some minor difficulties in defining a ‘house museum’. The National Trust for Scotland (NTS), for instance, has submitted only a few of its properties for registration under the national scheme administered by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council to ensure standards of practice in museums. The policies and activities of the NTS, however, comply with all the recent definitions of museums produced by the International Council of Museums (ICOM) and the Museums Association (MA), and as the major single player in the field of house preservation it cannot be omitted from this discussion. All over Scotland houses similar to those held by the NTS are opened to the public by private owners, some of whom continue a long family tradition of preservation and access. Where these are not protected by a charitable trust and are still entirely in private ownership, and therefore at some risk of future sale or dispersal, they cannot be regarded as museums and are not included here.