Museum Space Research Articles

Design formations and their reflections on showing the aesthetic values in the interior space of museums

ان الفضاءات الداخلية المدروسة للمتحف تساهم في تشكيل بيئة قائمة تشمل كل صفات الفعل التاريخي بكل ما تتضمنه من فعاليات وانشطة ولذلك من الواجب الاهتمام بالتصميم الداخلي للمتاحف من خلال دراسة الخصائص البصرية ووسائل العرض والمكملات الاخرى بشكل يظهر القيم الجمالية للعرض وظيفيا لتوصيل المعلومة الى الزائرين .ان افتقار التشكيلات التصميمية في المتاحف وعدم الاهتمام بتفاصيل تلك التشكيلات كوحدات العرض والاضاءة والالوان وتشكيلات الزخارف يؤدي على فقدان القيمه الجمالية لها . وبذلك يمكن صياغة مشكلة البحث بالسؤال الآتي :ماهو دور التشكيلات التصميمية على اظهار القيم الجمالية في تصميم الفضاءات الداخلية للمتاحف ؟ تكمن أهمية البحث في رفد المكتبة التصميمية والفنية و تعزيز المهارات والقدرات الفنية لتطوير التشكيلات التصميمية وانعكاسها في اظهار القيم الجمالية للتصميم الداخلي في المتاحف و دراسة المساحات والتوزيع لمحددات ومحتويات المتاحف , مع الاخذ بنظر الاعتبار التناسق والانسجام مع المحددات الداخلية للفضاءات الداخلية الملحقة بها ( وحدات العرض , الاضاءة , الاثاث) .أن هدف الدراسة البحثية هو اعداد تصميم مقترح تطبيقي عن التشكيلات التصميميه وانعكاساتها على اظهار القيم الجمالية في الفضاء الداخلي للمتاحف , أما بالنسبة لحدود البحث فقد , حدد من الناحية الموضوعية بدراسة التشكيلات التصميميه ( في السقوف واللارضيات والجدران ) وانعكاساتها على اظهار القيم الجمالية في الفضاء الداخلي للمتاحف في حين تضمن حدوده المكانية والزمانية الفضاءات الداخلية لقاعات العرض المتنوع للمتاحف في تركيا للفترة (1984 م _ 2004 م ) .

Paintings Alive

To reach younger audiences, museums worldwide have incorporated interactive and hands-on activities, while some venues specialise in children as their main audience. Videos, in particular, can be easily integrated into the museum space and provide a variety of application possibilities. Their use creates a hybrid experience for the visitor in which the interaction between physical and digital elements transforms and enriches their experience of the exhibits. Furthermore, interactive technologies have been proven to increase visitor numbers and interactions on- and off-site. In this context, our practice-based research focuses on the use of interactive video technologies and factors that can lead to the design of engaging and user-friendly museum experiences for children to investigate their application through the production of a new interactive film for young museum visitors. A museum was chosen as a case study, and a survey was conducted to achieve this. The results indicated that creating an interactive video could benefit the areas that were visited less; the preferable length is relatively short, while hands-on and video installations promote and prolong the engagement of young visitors and are favoured by both younger and older children. Additionally, fictional or dramatised stories are attractive to children compared to documentaries; accessing the interactive content on their mobile devices would be preferable. These have led to the production of Paintings Alive, an interactive film for children, featuring and reenacting the paintings in the museum’s art gallery and accessible on the visitors’ mobile devices. Our article also discusses the project's findings, alongside the challenges and limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and offers recommendations for future work.

Роль особистості у організації комунікації «музей–відвідувач» (пам’яті Віри Франчук)

The article highlights the role of personality in the creation of museum exhibitions. Among the pleiad of prominent museum figures of the second half of the last century was Vira Franchuk (1916–2014). She managed the Geological Museum of the Natural Museum of Natural History NAS of Ukraine during its radical change in the 1960s. In addition to the permanent exhibitions, Franchuk organised temporary exhibitions in each year. She constantly organised field work and brought new valuable exhibits from business trips and enriched the scientific collections. The materials collected by her impress with their brightness, clarity, attractiveness, and correspond to the essence of scientific collections. And this also shows the reflection of the high erudition and versatility of the personality of V. P. Franchuk. Vira Prokopivna went from a young field geologist to a successful manager capable of bringing a private project (which was first a geological museum) to world level. Under her leadership, five widely visited exhibition halls were created displaying materials from Ukraine and all over the world—about five thousand geological specimens. She left a rich legacy of scientific and popular science publications that have not lost their relevance to this day. A distinctive feature of Franchuk was the love of stone, its unique beauty, which is transmitted to the visitor in carefully selected spectacular specimens. In combination with explanatory text, photographs, diagrams, and geological cuts, the visitor receives a complete imaginary model of the geological environment. The creation of a museum space under the direction of Franchuk was using versatile communication capabilities. For a long time, Franchuk led the scientific editing of the geology and geography sections of the Ukrainian Soviet Encyclopaedia, and for her active participation in its preparation and publication, she was awarded the diploma of the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The high standard for material selection and qualitative visualization of scientific knowledge laid down by the team of geologists under the leadership of Franchuk, until this operate on a worthy level for the benefit of enlightenment and science popularisation.

Barjeel Art Foundation: Cross‐National Bridge Building and Decolonisation of the History of Art

AbstractThis article focuses on the Barjeel Art Foundation based in Sharjah, UAE. Using a case study approach the work demonstrates how art, art exhibitions and museum spaces are positioned as influencers in the formation of an inclusive space within the History of Art for scholarship on modern and contemporary art from the Middle East and North Africa. Founded in 2010, the Barjeel is a strong proponent for cross‐national bridge building through national and international temporary exhibitions. However, in 2018 the foundation altered their exhibition practice from temporary shows to a long‐term display at the Sharjah Art Museum (SAM). I argue that this shift in exhibition practice from temporary/travelling to long‐term/stationary is demonstrating the foundation's pendulum swing away from acting as cross‐national bridge builder towards being an important supporter for the decolonisation of art history. To be clear, since its founding the Barjeel has always supported the development of Arab modern art through art collecting and temporary exhibition practices; however, since 2018, the foundation's curatorial choices are showing acknowledgment of the clear distinctions between engagement with art collecting or art criticism and the practices used in the discipline of the History of Art. To support this claim, the study argues that the Barjeel's recent long‐term show at SAM is posing nuanced art historical questions, which engage with yet move far beyond art criticism and political discourse. In addition, through its long‐term exhibition at SAM the Barjeel is defining its purpose away from modernism tied to Europe and making valuable contributions to region specific modernism in the History of Art.

Animal Bodies in the Museum: Acts of Artmaking, Collective Knowledge, and Complex Conversation Around Museum Taxidermy

The purpose of this paper is to explore how critical acts of making during a participatory museum workshop and subsequent studio-based research-creation can inspire poly-vocal discourses around museum taxidermy as repositories of complex histories. Centred on four animals on display at the Redpath Museum, this program of research sough to reanimate these animals and reposition their context within the museum space and wider world beyond. Through collaborative exploration and creative acts of making, art educators can engage and shape the discourse around taxidermied animal bodies, giving them new life as tools for teaching and learning in museum spaces.

Ground into Place

As a Trawlwoolway artist from Trouwunna, also known as Tasmania, I seek to challenge Western constructs of Australian colonial histories. I work to liberate Palawa cultural objects from their hidden status, often combining them with Western manufactured materials. I make art in response to legacies of colonial oppression and towards a full acknowledgement of Palawa presence. Tasmanian bull kelp and industrially produced steel wool are signature materials in my practice. Bull kelp becomes an expression of Palawa presence, while steel wool denotes erasures and the attempted colonialist “scrubbing out” of Palawa identity. Both materials transform over time, referencing how, as Palawa people, we are adaptable and able to incorporate change as a part of our strong cultural continuum. When installing my works in galleries and museum spaces, these sites often become my secondary studio. I use my signature materials in these spaces to literally and metaphorically disrupt colonial and institutional architecture. Such disruptions leave room for personal narratives to be formed. Some installation strategies that I employ include denying viewers access to my work and creating voids and dark spaces. These actions are utilised in the hope that they might ultimately inspire social and political change.

Proximate interiors: When exhibition design activates museum architecture

In recent decades, the ocularcentrism of museums has been challenged by the design of immersive, multisensory exhibition environments. In many museums, these environments are placed within ‘white cubes’ and ‘black boxes’ that provide a (supposedly) neutral space for exhibition making, and in the case of historic museum buildings, materially rich but non-neutral interiors are sometimes covered by visual backdrops and projections. This article will explore how exhibition design can, instead, work actively with the architectural museum interiors. Based on analysis of two exhibitions at Copenhagen museums, it will explore the potential of exhibition design that taps into the material particularities of museum interiors, thereby strengthening the museum visitors’ sense of being present within the museum space. The article will draw on the concept of atmosphere (Gernot Böhme), while also making critical inquiry into the concept’s ability to capture the material proximity effects of exhibition design that activates architectural museum interiors.

Актуализация истории мореходства в имиджевой политике государства (Эстонский морской музей в Таллине)

The article is published based on the materials of the report of the same name, delivered at the second scientific and practical conference «Popularization of technical heritage in the museum» (Saint-Petersburg, GET, October 11, 2022). The author examines the transport thesaurus of maritime museums through the prism of state image policy. The Maritime Museum forms value categories related to the dignity of the state, its history, and the national narrative. The article examines the features of the exposition of the Estonian Maritime Museum in Tallinn, analyzes the place of finds in the phenomenological and semiotic field of the museum space. Special attention is paid to the Hanseatic kogg, discovered and exhibited in the museum in 2015. The medieval ship is presented as a trigger of attractive activity in the museum, as well as a figurative and symbolic element in the general narrative of the Baltic region.

Virtual Tour Three Dimensions (3D) With Polygonal Modeling At Sang Nila Utama Museum

Sang Nila Utama Museum is an institution that functions as a place for the storage, care, safeguarding and use of objects of human culture and natural products to support efforts to protect and preserve cultural wealth. Based on the results of the surveys and interviews conducted, there are currently problems, namely 1) There is no system to present information about the collection of objects in the museum visually in 3D. 2) Due to the outbreak of Covid 19 virus, the museum management had to close the museum so far, so the public is not able to visit the museum to get information about the collection of historical relics in the Sang Nila Utama Museum. Based on the problems described above, an Android-based application for a virtual tour of exhibitions of historical objects was developed. The virtual tour is a result of the development of multimedia information technology and 3D technology that can present a 3D atmosphere. In developing this system, the Multimedia Development Life Cycle (MDLC) method was applied, which consists of several phases, namely: concept, design, material procurement, compilation, testing and distribution. This application will later run on the Android platform and use a mobile stick controller as a medium for navigation, allowing users to walk through the museum space to see a collection of historical relics in three-dimensional (3D) visual form. It is expected that this research will be one of the solutions to overcome the problems encountered in trying to improve services to the community.

What Is There to Do If You Find an Old Indian Canoe? Anti-Colonialism in Maritime Archaeology

Following Max Liboiron’s claim that pollution is colonialism, the anti-colonial maritime archaeologist’s role in the Anthropocene might be to reframe research questions, so that focus is directed toward interactions between marine and maritime, and that the colonial ‘resurrectionist’ approach that has dominated nautical archaeology ought to be reconsidered altogether. This normative statement is put to the test with a 4000-year-old waterlogged dugout canoe that was illegally excavated from the Cooper River in South Carolina, USA. Upon retrieval, the affected tribal entities were brought into consultation with archaeologists and conservators to help decide how to proceed with the canoe’s remains. Tribal representatives reached a consensus to preserve the canoe with PEG and display it in a public museum. This procedure follows the resurrectionist model typical of maritime archaeology in the West, now the dominant protocol globally, where the scholar acts as savior by lifting entire wrecks from watery graves and promising to grant them immortality in utopian museum spaces. However, this immortalizing procedure is at odds with some Indigenous values, voiced by tribal representatives, which embrace life cycles and distributed agency. In the end, the desire to preserve the canoe as a perpetual symbol of intertribal unity dominated concerns surrounding the canoe’s own life, spirit, and autonomy, and that plasticizing it would permanently alter its substance and essence. We argue that the object of the canoe has become subservient to its postcolonial symbolism of Indigenous unity, resilience, and resistance. Further, by subscribing to the resurrectionist model of maritime archaeology, the immortalized canoe now bears the irony of colonial metaphor, as an unintended consequence of its preservation. We echo Audre Lorde’s famous sentiment by wondering if an anticolonial maritime archaeology can ever hope to dismantle the master’s boat using the master’s tools. The conclusions reached here have implications for other maritime and museum contexts too, including the highly publicized case of the wrecked 1859–1860 slave ship, Clotilda.

Perception of Light in Museum Environments: Comparison between Real-Life and Virtual Visual Experiences

Alternative environments to real-life have been in recent demand in regard to lighting design and in museums. In this study, the effectiveness of the perception of the museum space in simulations or virtual-based environments is studied. Answers to a questionnaire regarding lighting in four different visual experiences are compared: Real-life, virtual-video-based, virtual-photo-based and virtual-render-based. A total of 117 participants were divided into four visual experience groups. Each group answered the same lighting related questions for four exhibition halls in the Natural History Museum of the University of Pisa (Italy), which is housed in the Monumental Charterhouse of Calci. The answers were analyzed using ANOVA and a T-test. The results show that virtual experiences can be acceptable alternatives to real-life experience as the answers were indifferent in more than half of the criteria, and no criterion was affected significantly by experience, regardless of the hall’s characteristics. However, it was found that the hall’s characteristics also had an impact on the perception of the criteria in different experiences. Controlled artificial lighting or uniformly distributed lighting (full day or artificial light) were found to be more indifferent to the experience.

Research on the welcoming experience of the museum's arrival space

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic has affected many public places, including museums, which have experienced unprecedented situations, such as lockdowns and reopening with physical distancing requirements. Therefore, physical museums’ welcoming experience for visitors warrants greater research attention today. The entrance gate, foyer, and surroundings are areas that people must touch and pass through to enter the museum. To increase museums’ popularity and attract people from the very start of their visit, museum authorities must consider the appearance and the environment of the space where people first arrive when entering the museum. Therefore, this study proposes the arrival space as a new concept to examine how to create a welcoming arrival space in museums. By analyzing the Hintze and Earth Halls in London's Natural History Museum, the design principles of a museum's welcoming experience are described from a space design perspective as a reference for future museum development.

“I FELT LIKE ALL THESE OBJECTS WERE IN MY OWN HOUSE…”: LEARNING THROUGH SENSES IN THE MUSEUM

The benefits of multisensory learning are recognized both in the field of formal education, informal and non-formal learning environments and activities. In the case of museums and museum pedagogy learning through the senses is a key element. Furthermore, the idea of a multisensory museum is steadily gaining ground within museums and among museum professionals with the ultimate aim to enrich all visitors’ museum experiences. The present paper focuses on touch in the museum. It aims to investigate primary school students’ perceptions of touch in museums as well as their experience with regard to the use of permanent display cases with touchable authentic objects during an educational program in an archaeological museum in Greece. The data were obtained via: a. evaluation questionnaires filled in by the primary school students after the visit to the museum, b. semi-structured interviews by the teachers, and c. participant observation and field notes. The results revealed how the students understand and perceive the prohibition of touch in the museum in relation to aspects of cultural heritage and exhibits’ protection. Furthermore, issues related to the appropriate approach of permanently accessible exhibition display cases and facilitations in the museum space were observed. Students’ views about their own experience confirmed the significance of touch and multisensory activities as well as the value of the combination of sensory activities, object-based learning, play and other creative and experiential methods and activities that can lead to meaningful and memorable museum experiences.<p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0574/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>

Beyond Needle and Thread

Beyond Needle and Thread

뮤지엄 사인시스템 프레임워크 연구

The goal of this study is to establish a sign system framework that can efficiently access events such as exhibitions, education, performances, and festivals by curators and researchers based on the problems of the signing system, the need to redefine functional spaces, and the importance of setting guidelines. Therefore, previous studies on the sign-in system available in the museum, field inspection, and target group interview (FGI) were conducted. The findings are as follows. First, previous studies on the museum sign system and the sign system of domestic museums were investigated and analyzed. Second, the importance of basic, core facilities, and auxiliary facilities was presented to establish the name and function of the museum space. Third, to propose the museum sign system framework, we proposed the direction of four guidelines: location, installation, marking element, form and structure, and tone and manner, focusing on guide, descriptor, regulatory sign, guide sign, and decorative sign. Fourth, the process of developing a sign system was proposed to the museum. This study can bring about the improvement of exhibition and educational services and the increase of promotion in terms of museums, curators, researchers, and design.

Energy saving potential in open museum spaces: A comparative hygrothermal microclimates analysis

Open-spaces Museum consumes a significant amount of energy to provide stable indoor climate for valuable exhibited items. This paper evaluates the energy saving potential of using a local air-conditioning system in open-space museum using simulation-based hygrothermal microclimates analysis. The new Viking Age Museum in Norway is taken as a case study. IDA-ICE building simulation tool was used to evaluate the thermal performance and energy consumption. ANSYS-FLUENT software was employed to assess the indoor (thermo-hygrometric parameters) Tair and relative humidity (RH) distribution, in compliance with ASHRAE requirements for exhibition objects. The simulations were conducted by dividing the large-scale museum into two separate zones and investigating different HVAC systems. Case-1 was the base case, where the open exhibition room including the exhibition object (i.e., Viking ship), is conditioned by a single constant-air-volume air handling unit (CAV-AHU). Two separate CAV-AHUs served the ship as a microclimatic zone and the exhibition room in case-2. Cases-3 and 4 had CAV-AHU for the microclimate zone. Besides, a variable-air-volume air handling unit (VAV-AHU) and a radiant floor system are used to exhibition room in case-3 and 4, respectively. Each simulation was performed during two separate weeks in winter and summer. The results showed that case-4 achieves 48.2% and 55.9% total energy saving from the base system for the winter and summer seasons, respectively. CFD modelling showed that case-4 provides a good uniformity of the Tair and RH around the ship with Tair and RH variation of 1.4 °C and 3.7%RH in winter and 3 °C and 6.5%RH in summer.

The museum is like a temple: the Fo Guang Shan Buddha Museum in Taiwan1

This article describes how a museum built by the Taiwanese Fo Guang Shan (FGS), one of the largest Buddhist groups on the island, triggers emotions and spirituality in its visitors. We explore how the conceptualization of materiality by the founder of FGS, Hsing Yun, is presented to visitors at the FGS Buddha Museum (FGS-BM) and how Humanistic Buddhism is materially expressed at the museum. By analysing the museum space and investigating visitors’ responses to the FGS-BM through ethnographic research, we describe how the FGS uses material artefacts, museum space and embodied activities to communicate Buddhist ideology to the laity, triggering some visitors’ emotions and leading some to describe the museum as being similar to a temple.

Translation as a practice of resemiotization: A case study of the Opium War Museum

ABSTRACT This article aims to investigate how written and spoken texts can be translated, or resemiotized, in different semiotic modes in a multimodal museum space. The inclusion and exclusion of certain semiotic resources in the museum space is further discussed through the process of de/recontextualization. The data were collected from a bilingual exhibition in the Opium War Museum in Dongguan, China. The two research questions are: (1) How have the semiotic resources of the exhibition been translated from one form into another? and (2) Why were certain semiotic resources chosen over others in this exhibition? The findings illustrate how source texts can be resemiotized, and ultimately reveal how the diplomatic discourse on “China’s foreign friends” seems to motivate the process of de/recontextualization in the Opium War Museum.

Technology Use and Familiarity as an Indicator of Its Adoption in Museum by People with Intellectual Disabilities.

This paper describes the process of co-design of technological products to increase museum accessibility and engagement in visitors with mild or moderate intellectual disabilities (IDs). By using an Inclusive Research approach, a multidisciplinary team of experts, including researchers in Users Experience (UX), psychology, and education, museum curators and a group of participants with IDs (n=9) have participated as the research team. Participants with IDs were involved in two rounds of interviews. The first-round interview aimed to explore participants' use and familiarity with technologies and to understand their interest in using technological tools in different contexts. The second-round interview aimed at exploring participants' spontaneous choice between different tools classified as low (easy-to-read vs Augmentative and Alternative Communication) or high-tech (Augmented Reality) aids for acquiring new knowledge within a museum space. The analysis of the interviews revealed that there was a general consistency between previous technology use/experience/interest and the choice of ICT-based products by participants with IDs. These results highlight the importance of emphasizing a multidisciplinary dialogue and the active participation of IDs users to outline methodologies, programs, procedures, and international standards to foster inclusive access to cultural heritage.

Surviving Installations: Examining the Natural in the Museum Space

Surviving Installations: Examining the Natural in the Museum Space