The Educational Imperative of a Museum

2014

Beyond Pedagogy: Reconsidering the public purpose of museums explores issues standing at the intersection of public pedagogy, memory, and critical theory, focusing on the explicit and implicit educational imperative of art, natural history, and indigenous museums, cultural centers, memorial sites, heritage houses, and other cultural heritage sites that comprise the milieu of educating, learning, and knowing. Taken together, the various essays comprising this book demonstrate that a more nuanced examination of the role of cultural heritage institutions as pedagogical sites requires a critical gaze to understand the function of the authority and ways through which such institutions educate. Beyond Pedagogy also makes a vital point about the complexity of such institutions and the need to comprehend how pedagogy emerges not only as an end result of the museum's educational purpose but also in relation to the historically defined mandates that increasingly come to question the dist...

International Journal of Heritage Studies, 2011

Viv Golding's Learning at the Museum Frontiers: Identity, Race and Power presents varied ways to understand the importance and possibility of learning from what she defines throughout the book as 'the museum frontiers'. These she defines as: 'a spatio-temporal site for acting in collaborative effort with other institutions, which provides a space of respectful dialogical exchange for promoting critical thought, for questioning taken-for-granted ideas in general and for challenging racist and sexist mindsets in particular' (p. 2). The theoretical framework that is woven throughout the book is described as feminist hermeneutics: a fusion of the 'politically mindful' (p. 2) black feminist thought of writers such as Patricia Hill-Collins, Audre Lorde and bell hooks; the creative writing of Toni Morrison; the philosophical writing of Hans Georg Gadamer and Franz Fanon; and the liberation pedagogy of Paulo Freire, among others. Golding draws on her experience of working as a museum educator, primarily in the UK, but she also uses examples from institutions trans-nationally. The institutions she examines include the Horniman Museum in London, England; the Museum of World Culture in Göteborg, Sweden; Colonial Williamsburg, USA; and the District Six Museum in Cape Town, South Africa. The exhibitions she focuses on all attemptwith varying levels of successto provide educational encounters that can enhance inter-cultural understanding. Golding's wide selection of museums from across the globe is complemented by her in-depth analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the exhibitions they present. Combined, these varied engagements present different examples of how learning at the museum frontiers can be an effective framework for a working practice 'which lights a different pathway, a new collaborative museum practice, which is interdisciplinary, heterogeneous and multiple' (p. 21). The first chapter, 'Race: Repositioning and Revaluing Cultural Heritage', takes as a starting point the reactionary ways in which race continues to be represented in contemporary museums. The chapter 'address[es] the pernicious effects that takenfor-granted ideas of race and racism continue to play in the museum and in the wider world today' (p. 23) as a result of the persisting legacies of imperialism, colonialism, humanism and the Enlightenment. The chapter goes on to explore the 'Art/ artefact debate' (p. 27) in the context of a number of museums that present collections of African art. Golding demonstrates how African art has often only been housed in Ethnographic museums (whereas the art of the West and certain Asian cultures are decreed the status of 'fine art'). She also demonstrates how western aestheticswhich often distinguish things through binary pairings such as

Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, 2012

Responding to feminist, postcolonial, and memorialistic critiques, museums have over the past decades radically revised their protocols of collection and display, aiming to register in their own curatorial and pedagogical practice the open and contested nature of the historical and ethnographic narratives on which their object lessons had traditionally conferred the status of hard evidence. In this new emphasis on the “museum encounter” as a performative and intersubjective “event”—sometimes referred to as the “educational turn” in museum curatorship—a new type of “inclusive museum” has emerged in diverse geographical and political settings. The inclusive museum seeks to recover the museum’s social role as a purveyor of shared, collective meanings precisely in departing from its high-modern predecessor and in forging “open representations” that acknowledge the diversity of the interpretative community thus interpolated. Inclusive museums, in short, aim to offer a new, contemporary s...

Lynch, B., 2016 ‘Good for you, but I don't care! " : critical museum pedagogy in educational and curatorial practice’, publication for .'DIFFERENCES' Symposium, University of the Arts, ZHdK, Zürich , 2016

The museum is failing…failing to support people's rights as active agents, much less

MUSEUMEDU 6, 2018

Museumedu 6 on "Museums, education and ‘difficult’ heritage" is the sixth issue of the on-line, open access, peer-reviewed international journal Museumedu, published by the University of Thessaly Museum Education and Research Laboratory in October 2018. Guest editors of this special issue are Esther Solomon and Eleni Apostolidou, both Assistant Professors at the University of Ioannina, Greece.The issue includes papers exclusively in English, accompanied by abstracts in Greek and English and an extensive introduction regarding the basic aspects of the relationship between museums, education and difficult heritage, as these are reflected in Greek and international literature. This issue (as well as the current introduction) of Museumedu explores difficult heritage issues from the perspective of museums and museum and history education. Ιt puts particular emphasis on issues of identity politics and cultural memory, while it presents a series of interesting case studies of academics, heritage professionals and history teachers who have variably tried to discuss and challenge ‘musealized’ difficult heritage in interesting and innovative ways, often using its educational potential. Among the issues discussed in the volume, historical education emerges as the most critical. The contributors’ interest in public history and archaeology brings together the editors’ academic interests, that is, critical museology and history didactics, and render museums one of the most fruitful and promising fields for the development of historical thinking, empathy, and the endorsement of a more sensitive attitude towards social ‘otherness’ (both in time and space) in a fragmented, unequal and, at the end of the day, ‘difficult’ society.

THEMA is a multilingual and international refereed journal that continues in the tradition of the Musées de la civilisation's core values by examining original and thought-provoking topics in an interdisciplinary way. THEMA aims to bridge disciplines and stimulate comparative approaches in order to illustrate the complexity of societies, past and present, particularly as they relate to museums.

Journal of Education, 2017

The role of museums in learning to teach with a critical lens Sarita Ramsaroop (Received 19 August 2016; accepted 8 May 2017) Abstract This study set out to explore the potential of student teachers learning to teach apartheid era history to learners in the primary school when learning in apartheid museums is blended with coursework. Using qualitative methods of inquiry, the findings show that student teachers learning in museums that dovetail with coursework at the university strengthens their ability to ‘know, think, feel and act like a teacher’. The multiple narratives contributed towards addressing misconceptions, strengthened citizenship and pedagogic content knowledge, fundamentals that can equip student teachers to teach apartheid era history with an informed lens. The study highlights the importance of developing in student teachers investigative skills before and after museum visits so as to ensure that they are not merely consumers but are able to interrogate multiple narr...

Lynch B., 2014, ‘Generally Dissatisfied: Hidden pedagogy in the postcolonial museum’, in THEMA, La revue des musees de la civilisation, Quebec, Vol 1 (1),79-92, 2014

This paper argues that residues of the colonial past continue to haunt the realities of the postcolonial present deep inside even the most progressive curatorial and public engagement practices in museums. We carry legacies of resistance to change and prejudice towards others from diverse communities (including originating and diaspora) that are embedded in the bricks and mortar of the museum. Examining case studies of committed and socially engaged museum practice, the paper argues that the continuing evidence of dissatisfaction by both those on the delivery and receiving end of museum engagement and participation practices has its roots in the museum’s identity as an educational institution. The paper will show that a central weakness of postcolonial museum practice lies in the centre/periphery role of museum pedagogy. Examining the lack of understanding of the “critical”, in the critical pedagogy of the museum that undermines well-meaning partnerships and participation with communities near and far, the paper also argues for a thorough review of engagement practices that may fundamentally challenge the “learning” role of the museum and lead to a liberatory rather than conciliatory postcolonialism in museum practice.