Museum WorldsPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3167/armw.2023.110111
David Prince, Daniel Laven
{"title":"The Future of Museums","authors":"David Prince, Daniel Laven","doi":"10.3167/armw.2023.110111","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/armw.2023.110111","url":null,"abstract":"Originating from the Ancient Greek Mouseion early examples, such as the Institute for Philosophy in Alexandria (founded c. 280 BC), museums1 were temple-like buildings set apart for study, and often associated with libraries. Scholars arrived from all parts of the (mainly Mediterranean) world not simply to consult the material but to meet like-minded people. Museums were places of intellectual and social commerce in an age when the concept of a university was in its infancy. As such they were found in the commercial heart of their locations; their buildings were surrounded by taverns, cafes, public spaces, temples, and shops where the scholar could be refreshed after a day's study. Two thousand years later, town planners would define such places as being “cultural quarters.” There are an estimated 105,000 museums in over 200 countries which, collectively, cover every field of artistic, scientific, cultural, and historical endeavor (Statista 2022a). Museums of all types (national, not-for-profit, local authority, university) collectively make a significant contribution to the tourism, leisure, and educational infrastructures of their countries. As distinct from public libraries (themselves of great antiquity), most modern museums would align their statement of purpose with the definition recently approved by the International Council of Museums (ICOM 2022): “collecting, conserving, documenting, interpreting and displaying objects of artistic, cultural, or scientific significance for study and public education and enjoyment.”","PeriodicalId":40959,"journal":{"name":"Museum Worlds","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139364602","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Museum WorldsPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3167/armw.2023.110102
Sharon Macdonald
{"title":"National Showing Off and Telling Off","authors":"Sharon Macdonald","doi":"10.3167/armw.2023.110102","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/armw.2023.110102","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers the implications of using ethnological collections in the making of a national museum. It focuses on the case of the recently opened Ethnological Museum within the Humboldt Forum, Berlin, Germany, about which there has been much public debate and criticism, including about Germany's own colonialism. Through an analysis of the modes of display used by the Ethnological Museum, the article identifies how these variously engage in unreflexive “showing off” while others involve what is here called “telling off”— criticism directed at the German national self. The implications of the forms that these take, as well as their coexistence, are discussed, as is the case for replacing an ethnological approach with an anthropological one.","PeriodicalId":40959,"journal":{"name":"Museum Worlds","volume":"40 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139365376","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Museum WorldsPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3167/armw.2023.110118
Anthony Alan Shelton, Laura Osorio Sunnucks, Joanna Cobley, Hannah Star Rogers, Adam Bencard, Andrea Krieg, Ken Arnold
{"title":"Review Essays","authors":"Anthony Alan Shelton, Laura Osorio Sunnucks, Joanna Cobley, Hannah Star Rogers, Adam Bencard, Andrea Krieg, Ken Arnold","doi":"10.3167/armw.2023.110118","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/armw.2023.110118","url":null,"abstract":"Reviews are one of the chimeras that exhibitions leave behind along with, if we are lucky, archives, visitor books, and catalogs that record and imperfectly reinvoke their transient existence, the scholarship and resources that conjured them into being and the responses they elicited. Reviews have value, even when published after an exhibition closes, not only in its assessment, but as an integral part of its archive. The exhibition Arte de los Pueblos de México: Disrupciones Indígenas marks a turning point in public scholarship on the history and interpretation of what has variously been described as “artesanias,” “arte indigena,” and “artes populares,” which most assuredly warrants being widely recorded, remembered, argued over, and incorporated into the annals of critical museology, much as its curators, Juan Rafael Coronel Riviera, Octavio Murillo Álvarez de la Cadena, and Lucía Sanromán Aranda, and the director of the Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Miguel Fernández Félix, surely intended.","PeriodicalId":40959,"journal":{"name":"Museum Worlds","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139365644","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Museum WorldsPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3167/armw.2023.110113
Jin Yang, Jingfang Ai
{"title":"Managing Quality and Motivating Innovation","authors":"Jin Yang, Jingfang Ai","doi":"10.3167/armw.2023.110113","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/armw.2023.110113","url":null,"abstract":"The word “professionally” suggests that a museum is measurable and is able to be evaluated in terms of its nature, quality, and realm of expertise. In addition to the museum accreditation and quality evaluation system, the museum community worldwide establishes awards, in order to “push museums to seek a disciplinary attribute and a real professional status in the self-reliant industry with a stable status in the social contract and to develop the ability to shoulder responsibilities in decision making” (Šola and Cipek 2022: 129). Awards incentivize museums to improve their operations, to fulfill their missions, and to follow professional and ethical public quality standards. China's museums are no exception. In the PRC, museum awards cover a complete set of categories—displays and exhibitions, social education, creative cultural products and new media, and so forth—significantly enhancing the potential and capacity of museums to serve society at large. However, there are several noteworthy concerns. In this article, we use a quantitative data analysis method to study the history of China's museum awards and conclude that in the context of China's pursuit of high-quality social and economic development, the bodies issuing museum awards should refine and quantify the criteria to highlight the most important achievements of museums and to encourage social participation and academic research.","PeriodicalId":40959,"journal":{"name":"Museum Worlds","volume":"36 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139364688","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Museum WorldsPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3167/armw.2023.110114
Mark Stocker
{"title":"Virgin in a Condom and Te Papa: 25 Years On","authors":"Mark Stocker","doi":"10.3167/armw.2023.110114","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/armw.2023.110114","url":null,"abstract":"One of Aotearoa New Zealand's greatest art controversies was caused by a disproportionately tiny 105-millimeter-high assemblage by Tania Kovats, Virgin in a Condom (1992) (see Figure 1). It featured in the British Council touring exhibition Pictura Britannica: Art from Britain, held at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa (Te Papa), Wellington, from 1 March to 26 April 1998, opening just fifteen days after the museum itself. Thirty-three thousand people signed a Catholic Communications Office petition demanding the Virgin's removal. Thousands of phone calls, many abusive, bombarded Te Papa's Enquiry Centre. The display case was vandalized twice and a nearby visitor host assaulted. The controversy was repeatedly televised, culminating in a TV3 debate. Column meters of press coverage included a Sunday Star-Times (Auckland) article and 250 letters in Wellington newspapers alone. The BBC World Service Focus on Faith made the controversy its lead item (Stocker 2021: 81–82). Hence, critic Justin Paton warned in his New Zealand Listener article: “Yes, this is another article devoted to a certain religious statue sheathed in a certain birth-control device, but do not change the channel yet” (Paton 1998: 42).","PeriodicalId":40959,"journal":{"name":"Museum Worlds","volume":"7 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139364754","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Museum WorldsPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3167/armw.2023.110105
Serena Iervolino, Domenico Sergi
{"title":"We Need to Talk about Class","authors":"Serena Iervolino, Domenico Sergi","doi":"10.3167/armw.2023.110105","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/armw.2023.110105","url":null,"abstract":"Class differences have historically received limited attention in museum theory and practice, and scholarly publications on issues of class and heritage are still scarce. COVID-19 has shone a particularly harsh light on class divisions. At the height of the pandemic, working-class laborers (such as supermarket cashiers, social care workers, truck and delivery drivers) were asked to shoulder high levels of health risks, exposing entrenched socioeconomic inequities. In this article, we build upon a small-scale research and collecting project, Inequalities, Class, and the Pandemic, carried out in 2021 by the London Museum (formerly known as the Museum of London) and King's College London, to discuss how museums can meaningfully engage with working-class lived experiences in our contemporary neo-liberal societies. We begin by analyzing whether and how museums have addressed working-class issues and (hi)stories. We then draw on the voices and experiences of our research participants to examine the ongoing structural inequalities experienced by working-class Londoners. Building on our empirical research, we argue for museums to play an active role in reclaiming the centrality of class in public culture, particularly addressing the contemporary lived experiences of working-class people.","PeriodicalId":40959,"journal":{"name":"Museum Worlds","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139364859","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Museum WorldsPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3167/armw.2023.110117
Conal McCarthy
{"title":"Centering the Museum","authors":"Conal McCarthy","doi":"10.3167/armw.2023.110117","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/armw.2023.110117","url":null,"abstract":"Thanks for speaking to me today, Elaine. Can we start by talking about you and your background and how you first got into museums?","PeriodicalId":40959,"journal":{"name":"Museum Worlds","volume":"24 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139364592","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Museum WorldsPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3167/armw.2023.110110
Kylie Message
{"title":"Look Left and Right","authors":"Kylie Message","doi":"10.3167/armw.2023.110110","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/armw.2023.110110","url":null,"abstract":"This article, a short critical analysis, explores dominant social and museological approaches to understanding museum collections made from current-day political crises. It focuses on events and collections in the US, a nation that has a museum sector directly tied up in political decision-making and crises since its inception (Message 2014) and reeling more acutely from events leading up to and surrounding the election of President Donald Trump in 2016. The article does not universalize the American experience in relation to either museological trends or broader twenty-first-century political crises. Its reflections are based on observation of political and museological activity occurring in Washington, DC and New York.","PeriodicalId":40959,"journal":{"name":"Museum Worlds","volume":"28 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139364710","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Museum WorldsPub Date : 2023-07-01DOI: 10.3167/armw.2023.110109
Julian Meyrick
{"title":"The Arts as a Vocation","authors":"Julian Meyrick","doi":"10.3167/armw.2023.110109","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3167/armw.2023.110109","url":null,"abstract":"This article is a revised version of the 2022 Michael Volkerling Memorial Lecture. It offers insights for the GLAM sector into the history of Australian national cultural policy (NCP), now in a new phase with the delivery of Revive in January 2023. It draws on the author's experience as a theatre director, a researcher into evaluation methods, and a policy activist to reflect on the challenges facing cultural policies at the current time. If arts organizations confront tough questions about diversity and inclusion, what happened to the economic ones of market efficiency and value-add that seemed all-consuming just a few years ago? The article utilizes Max Weber's conception of “a vocation” to reconsider the aims and purpose of an NCP. As the world contends with problems of entrenched inequality, catastrophic climate change, and democratic deficit, how can cultural policies, as distinct from other kinds, address these? Should they even try?","PeriodicalId":40959,"journal":{"name":"Museum Worlds","volume":"12 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.3,"publicationDate":"2023-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"139364924","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}