HI 386 Introduction to Museum Studies Syllabus

Cell phone Office Hours: Tuesdays 5:15-5:45 pm, by appointment Location:

Class Time: 2:30-5:30 p.m., Monday Classroom: 203 Mitchell Hall Office Hour: Mondays 1:30-2:30 p.m., or by appointment Course Description:

In this essay I analyse the 'ideas ', 'philosophies', 'contexts' and 'companions' of several recent museum studies anthologies, and examine whether they respond to key issues facing museums today. I am particularly interested in how effectively these anthologies represent social inclusion and diversity discourses, how they account for outreach programs that aim to link museums and communities, and how they engage with the more general work, experience, and critical analysis of museums and museum contexts globally.

2010

Too many museums are floundering under decreasing attendance and increasing commercialization. One very important way to address these ills is to reconsider museum presentation, specifically exhibitions and the visitor experience therein. Central to this reworking of museum presentation is the acceptance of the primacy of the visitor and her community: museums mount exhibitions to educate and entertain the visitor, to enrich and enlarge the person, even to change society. To fire the imagination and stimulate social change, museums must reconsider the nature of the architecture of their galleries; they must engage much more fully with their communities; they must transform the content of their exhibitions; they must rethink exhibition design and they must pay attention to learning systems. If these demanding modifications are made, I believe museums will become much more relevant and pleasurable. _________________________________________________________________ What do museum visitors want and how can museums give it to them? i What are museums for? What is the museum"s role in society? The rather ugly term edutainment has been coined to describe a blend of education and entertainment that many museums around the world serve up to their loyal visitors. The term underlines the dual nature of much museum presentation, a somewhat schizophrenic mixture of informal education and attempted fun. But how is each done and is it successful? This paper will argue that museums have great potential to educate their visitors in a relaxed social setting, but to do so a number of changes must be made, including establishing a new link with community, developing a greater understanding of what are important issues, concentrating on collaboration and undertaking a serious study of learning systems. We are all too familiar with museums where there seems to be more staff than visitors, where the halls echo with the isolated footsteps of quiet patrons peering into dark cases exhibiting the permanent collection. With the exception of the very major international museums, small attendance seems to be all too common. Many museums only come alive when the blockbuster arrives in town, that highly commercial, touring show accompanied by merchandise for sale in the museum shop, merchandise which some visitors consider as important and as interesting as the artifacts in the galleries. Add this to the glitzy opening and the fancy restaurant, and we see the commercialization of museums in full swing where it can seem that substance is outweighed by style. There is a trap here: the sad reality is that often the blockbuster and the commercialism are needed to fund all the other programming.

Museums and Globalization. Anthropological Quarterly. 78(3), 2005. Pp. 697-708. , 2005

New York University (NYU) Berlin (2015-2021).

A mixture of classroom discussions and field trips, this course focuses on the five major museum buildings on Museum Island built over a period of 100 years (1830–1930). We also talk about the newest addition to Museum Island, the Humboldt Forum housing the ethnological and Asian art collections. Discussions focus on the nature and social function of museums as well as their role as places where the image of the state and its civil society are constantly reshaped. We will particularly focus on the role of museums in times of decolonial museum practice, gender fluidity, digitization, and the socio-cultural implications of climate action. The course is structured in six thematic, intersecting clusters: I Museum Politics and Soft Power II Un/EnGendering the Art Museum III Colonial-Imperial Legacies IV Post-Digital Museology – The Politics of Code V Post-/Decolonial Museum Practice VI Museum Climate Action. During the course of the semester, we will explore how to rethink museums politically and reshape museum spaces as educational landscapes. Key research questions centre around historical as well as current socio-cultural implications of museum politics. How might feminist and queer perspectives reshape museums narratives? What do we mean by 'the politics of display' and 'the politics of code'? How might decolonial museum practices, participatory approaches and outreach programs reshape Berlin museums in today's super-diverse, hyper-connected and post-migrant society? This course employs a student-centred approach to teaching and learning. In order to deepen our respect for each others' varied experiences and approaches to learning and problem-solving, you are expected to collaborate in small teams. In order to challenge existing narratives and generate more inclusive approaches to problem-solving, we draw on a wide range of experiences and imaginative, multi-faceted approaches to reconceptualizing museum work. You are required to balance your analytical as well as creative and imaginative skills in order to integrate your learning in this course with your academic interests and varied expertise. CO-CURRICULAR SESSIONS: Exhibition Design for Contested Cultural Heritage and ‘Difficult’ Heritage Issues. Guest speaker: Tom Duncan, Exhibition Designer, Co-Director Duncan McCauley, Berlin. We explore how topics of contested cultural heritage and difficult, challenging issues might be reconsidered by new ways of curating and designing exhibitions. We examine notions of 'epistemic violence' (Gayatri Spivak), the 'poetics and politics of ethnography' (James Clifford), the 'politics of display' (Sharon Macdonald) or the 'disobedient museum' (Kylie Message), and work in small groups to test a range of exhibition models. How might exhibition design and various curatorial approaches cater to the needs and expectations of diverse audiences? Augmenting the Pergamon: Interactive Media Arts & the Museum. Co-organized with Dr Stephanie Pearson. Guest speaker: Pierre Depaz, NYU Berlin lecturer of Interactive Media Arts. Fall term 2019. Pierre Depaz will join us for a creative workshop session about exploring how “augmented” museum displays might enhance the visitor experience. After an introduction to the politics of code, we discuss how to examine the virtual space as a socio-political space and explore games as creative tools in informal learning environments. In what way might coding and digital tools be biased? What might be the “rhetoric of video games”? And what is the “narrative architecture of video design”? Drawing on our field trips to the Pergamon Museum and Panorama, we work in small groups to explore how digital technologies might either reinforce or critically and creatively address existing bias in museum displays and narratives about contested cultural heritage. Decolonize Mitte! Humboldt Forum, Museum Island, and the Palace. Panel discussion, co-organized with Dr Ares Kalandides and Dr Stephanie Pearson, NYU Berlin. Guest speakers: Wayne Modest, Director Research Centre for Material Culture, Dutch World Culture Museum; Iris Rajanayagam, xart splitta and Alice Salomon University, Berlin. Fall term 2018. This session is a public panel discussion about contested cultural heritage and controversial narratives with regard to the museums on Museum Island, the reconstructed former royal palace and the planned Humboldt Forum in the palace, due to house the ethnological and Asian art collections of the National Museums in Berlin. Whose global? Whose heritage? Decolonizing the museum. Co-organized with Dr Stephanie Pearson. Guest speaker: Prof Dr Arjun Appadurai, NYU and Humboldt University. Fall term 2018. A joint session with Stephanie Pearson's class is planned to address challenging questions such as, What (or when) is a museum, collection, display? What kind of context(s) does a museum provide? How do museums address issues of provenance, acquisition and appropriation? How can we describe an object's 'journey'? What is the difference between the terms 'object' and 'exhibit'? Arjun Appadurai will lead a discussion about how questions such as these relate to controversial debates about the universal museum, the production of a global cultural heritage, and notions of shared heritage. We explore how museum narratives about memory and identity-building might include or reject issues of diversity and equity, and ask who has been producing what kind of narratives, who has been silenced. Whose heritage indeed have museums produced and keep (re-)producing through their narratives? What can be done? Difficult heritage: Displaying the disputes and conflict zones behind museum objects. Co-organized with Dr Stephanie Pearson, NYU Berlin. Guest speaker: Dr Christian Greco, Director Museo Egizio, Turin, Italy. Spring term 2018. This workshop is a joint project between two NYUB courses. A joint session is planned to address the theme of 'difficult heritage'—that is, material culture with contested ownership or deriving from conflict zones. Dr Christian Greco will lead a discussion with students about current curatorial theories, practices and challenges around this theme. Provenance and object biographies. Co-organized with Dr Ingrid Laube, NYU Berlin. Spring term 2017. In this workshop we connect with the course on art history/archaeology to focus on information about the provenance of certain objects, their finding conditions or purchase on the art market. We will analyze how and if the museums make this a subject of discussion and how this could be communicated to the public. Egyptianizing: Exhibition strategies in Berlin's Egyptian Museum from the 19th to the 21st century. Co-organized with Dr Stephanie Pearson. Guest speakers: Olivia Zorn, Vice-Director Egyptian Museum, Berlin; Mirjam Shatanawi, World Culture Museum, Amsterdam. Spring term 2016. Together with invited museum experts we will explore the multi-layered displays and narratives of 'Egypt' from the 19th to the 21st centuries as presented at the Egyptian Museum. The following key issues will be addressed: the museum's restoration by architect David Chipperfield, 'Egyptianized' ancient Roman objects in the antiquities collection, the multi-layered presentation of various (historical) notions of 'Egypt' in the Egyptian Museum and the meta-presentation of these historical exhibition concepts. Students will work in groups to develop concepts for improving the presentation of the complex multi-layered narratives to visitors, both onsite as well as on the museum's website and social media. Looking for the Pergamon Altar: Visitor orientation and public engagement at the Pergamon Museum. Co-organized with Dr Stephanie Pearson. Guest speakers: Prof Dr Sharon Macdonald, CARMaH, Humboldt University in Berlin, Prof Dr Katharina Lorenz, University of Nottingham, Dr Jane Masséglia, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford, Prof Dr Andreas Scholl, Director Antiquities Collection, National Museums in Berlin. Fall term 2015. Having been planned as an imperial institution to display large-scale architectural elements unearthed during various excavations by German archaeologists, the Pergamon Museum proved to be a burden to the young Republic’s self-image in the aftermath of a lost war. We will look closely at the way monumental architecture has been exhibited up until today, and explore the effects of the arrangement on the visitor. Since there have been claims for restitution, we will take into account the controversial debates on the concept of the “universal” museum and its colonial and imperialistic past. To sharpen the students’ plans for optimizing visitor orientation in the Pergamon Museum, the session comprises a three-part workshop program with talks by invited specialists: “Challenges for Museums in Berlin and Abroad” by Sharon Macdonald; “Social Media Strategies in Museums” by Jane Masséglia and “Effectively Communicating with Groups of Museum Visitors” by Katharina Lorenz.

Routledge eBooks, 2018

Museums today find themselves within a mediatised society, where everyday life is conducted in a data-full and technology-rich context. In fact, museums are themselves mediatised: they present a uniquely media-centred environment, in which communicative media is a constitutive property of their organisation and of the visitor experience. The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication explores what it means to take mediated communication as a key concept for museum studies and as a sensitising lens for media-related museum practice on the ground. Including contributions from experts around the world, this original and innovative Handbook shares a nuanced and precise understanding of media, media concepts and media terminology, rehearsing new locations for writing on museum media and giving voice to new subject alignments. As a whole, the volume breaks new ground by reframing mediated museum communication as a resource for an inclusive understanding of current museum developments. The Routledge Handbook of Museums, Media and Communication will appeal to students and scholars, as well as to practitioners involved in the visioning, design and delivery of mediated communication in the museum. It teaches us not just how to study museums, but how to go about being a museum in today's world. Drotner is Professor of Media Studies in the Department for the Study of Culture at the University of Southern Denmark and founding director of the research programmes Our Museum and DREAM. Author or editor of 30 books, her research interests include media history, media and information literacies, digital creativities, and museum communication. Her most recent book is Museum Communication and Social Media: The Connected Museum (co-edited, Routledge, 2013).

Museum International, 2019

'Society in the Museum' (SoMus) is a research project in Sociomuseology that began in 2014 from Portugal. SoMus aims to define four different participatory management models at four local museums placed in different European countries, taking as starting point their rationales and daily practices. Chosen for the innovative nature of society's cultural participation, these museums symbolise a diverse range of contexts, cultures and challenges, which allow us to reflect on their place in the construction of new models of full cultural democracy. In this article, we present the model created by the Pusol School Museum (Spain). Its innovative practices in heritage education link up museum and school, knowledge and the appreciation of traditional culture, in a rural area located in the inland of the province of Alicante, at the Southeaster Mediterranean Spanish coast.